"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse."-Walt Disney
When sound was introduced into motion picture, Disney saw it as his chance to step up in his career. He produced a Mickey Mouse cartoon that included both voices and music, called Steamboat Willie. It appeared in 1928 and was an instant hit. Mickey Mouse grows in popularity and soon his friends were brought into the series too, i.e. Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.
Even as the Depression progressed, Disney’s economic wealth was not harmed. Disney continued on with the creation of a series called “Silly Symphonies” and in 1932, he brought Technicolor into the world of animation through the film Flowers for Trees. This breakthrough brought Disney his first out of 32 Academy Awards and it was the first cartoon to ever win an Academy Award. Another contribution he made to animation was the invention of the multi-plane camera, used in his 1937 cartoon called The Old Mill (Walt Disney Archives, “Walt Disney biography”). |
|
Walt Disney wanted to strive his business even further, so he began to construct a cartoon to present in a full-length feature film. In December of 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. In the year 1945 Disney finished The Three Caballeros, which is a film that combines both live action with animation. to the left is a short clip from The Three Caballeros which visually explains what the design looked like. He soon used that technique in several other films, such as Mary Poppins and Song of the South (Aldridge, “Walt Disney Biography”). Disney was also interested in educating his viewers about real life, which was when he came up with the A True-life Adventure series. Through this series he taught viewers about wild life and inspired them to respect the environment through entertainment (Walt Disney Archives, “Walt Disney biography”). |
Walt Disney’s first amusement park, Disneyland, was opened in 1955 in Anaheim, CA. Also in the 1950s, Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club began and was an instant success. Another one of Disney’s accomplishments was in 1961 when the television program Wonderful World of Color was created and presented in full-color. As the 1960s rolled around, Disney purchased land in Florida and began the construction of Walt Disney World as well as the design of Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). This amusement park wasn’t opened until after Walt Disney’s death (Walt Disney Archives, “Walt Disney biography”).