Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Walt became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $30 billion.

Walt Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He received twenty-two Academy Awards and forty-eight nominations during his lifetime, holding the record for the individual with the most awards and the most nominations. Disney has also won seven Emmy Awards. Disney and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse. He is also well-known as the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, France, Japan and China.

Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, a few years prior to the opening of his Walt Disney World dream project in Orlando, Florida.
Hollywood

When Disney arrived in Los Angeles, he had $40 in his pocket and an unfinished cartoon in his suitcase. Interestingly, he first wanted to break away from animation, thinking he could not compete with the studios in New York City. Disney said that his first ambition was to be a film director. He went to every studio in town looking for directing work; they all promptly turned him down.

Because of the lack of success in live-action film, Disney turned back to animation. His first Hollywood cartoon studio was a garage in his uncle Robert's house. Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler, who promptly wrote back to him. She wanted a distribution deal with Disney for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.

Disney looked up to his brother Roy, who was recovering from tuberculosis in a Los Angeles veteran's hospital. Disney pleaded to his brother to help him with his fledgling studio, saying that he could not keep his finances straight without him. Roy agreed and left the hospital with his brother. He never went back and never had a recurrence of tuberculosis. Virginia Davis (the live-action star of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were relocated at Disney's request from Kansas City to Hollywood, as were Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning of the Disney Brothers' Studio. It was located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, where the studio would remain until 1939.

In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to ink and paint celluloid. He was immediately taken with her. After a brief period of dating the two married in this same year.

In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of Mickey Mouse, whose series was moved into color in 1935 and soon launched spinoff series for supporting characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto; Pluto and Donald would immediately get their individual cartoons in 1937, and Goofy would get solo cartoons in 1939 as well. Of all of Mickey's partners, Donald Duck- who first teamed with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon Orphan's Benefit- was arguably the most popular, and went on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character of all time.

Early 1960s successes
By the early 1960s, the Disney empire was a major success, and Walt Disney Productions had established itself as the world's leading producer of family entertainment. Walt Disney was the Head of Pageantry for the 1960 Winter Olympics. After decades of trying, Disney finally procured the rights to P.L. Travers' books about a magical nanny. Mary Poppins, released in 1964, was the most successful Disney film of the 1960s and featured a memorable song score written by Disney favorites, the Sherman Brothers. Many hailed the live-action/animation combination feature as Disney's greatest achievement. The same year, Disney debuted a number of exhibits at the 1964 New York World's Fair, including Audio-Animatronic figures, all of which were later integrated into attractions at Disneyland and a new theme park project to be established on the East Coast, which Disney had been planning ever since Disneyland opened.

Death of Walt Disney
Songwriter Robert B. Sherman said about the last time he saw Walt Disney:
“He was up in the third floor of the animation building after a run-through of The Happiest Millionaire. He usually held court in the hallway afterward for the people involved with the picture. And he started talking to them, telling them what he liked and what they should change, and then, when they were through, he turned to us and with a big smile, he said, 'Keep up the good work, boys.' And he walked to his office. It was the last we ever saw of him.”

Disney's involvement in Disney World ended in late 1966; after many years of chain smoking cigarettes, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital across the street from the Disney Studio lot and his health began to deteriorate, causing him to suffer cardiac arrest.

He died on December 15, 1966 at 9:30am, ten days after his 65th birthday. He was cremated December 17, 1966 and his ashes reside at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Roy O. Disney continued to carry out the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World in honor of his brother.

A long-standing urban legend maintains that Disney was cryonically frozen, and his frozen corpse is stored underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. However this is not the case, as Disney was cremated, and the first known instance of Cryonic Freezing a corpse occurred a month later in January.

The Disney entertainment empire
Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme parks have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network.

CalArts

Disney devoted substantial time in his later years funding The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), which was formed in 1961 through a merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, which had helped in the training of the animation staff during the 1930s. When he died, one fourth of his estate went towards CalArts, which greatly helped the building of its campus. He also donated 38 acres (154,000 m2) of the Golden Oaks ranch in Valencia for the school to be built on. CalArts moved onto the Valencia campus in 1971.

Lillian Disney devoted much of her time after her husband died to pursuing CalArts and organized hundreds of fund raising events for the university in her late husband's honor (as well as funding the Walt Disney Symphony Hall). After Lillian's passing, the legacy continued with daughter Diane and husband Ron continuing the tradition. CalArts is one of the largest independent universities in California today, mostly because of the contributions of the Disneys.

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