History Creator / WaltDisney

-->I'm not Walt Disney. I do a lot of things Walt Disney would not do. Walt Disney does not smoke. I smoke. Walt Disney does not drink. I drink.
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Perhaps the oddest UrbanLegend that after his death Walt's body was placed in a [[HumanPopsicle cryostasis chamber]] [[note]]This rumor probably originated from a joke. In the 90s the Walt Disney company produced several ice skating shows featuring characters from their movies. These shows were collectively known as "Disney on Ice", leading some to joke that the actual Walt Disney had been put "on ice" (i.e. cryogenically frozen) after his death[[/note]] under Ride/{{Pirates of the Caribbean}} at Disneyland. (Everyone knows it's really just his head that was frozen in Cinderella's Castle at Disney World, of course. When it's not under Epcot.) The ''actual'' truth is that he was cremated, and the rumor was further spread by friend, animator, and royal prankster Ward Kimball. (''Website/SCPFoundation'' would later ShoutOut to this legend by making Disney's frozen head [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2805 SCP-2805]], with a TearJerker twist.

Perhaps the oddest UrbanLegend that after his death Walt's body was placed in a [[HumanPopsicle cryostasis chamber]] [[note]]This rumor probably originated from a joke. In the 90s the Walt Disney company produced several ice skating shows featuring characters from their movies. These shows were collectively known as "Disney on Ice", leading some to joke that the actual Walt Disney had been put "on ice" (i.e. cryogenically frozen) after his death[[/note]] under Ride/{{Pirates of the Caribbean}} at Disneyland. (Everyone knows it's really just his head that was frozen in Cinderella's Castle at Disney World, of course. When it's not under Epcot.) The ''actual'' truth is that he was cremated, and the rumor was further spread by friend, animator, and royal prankster Ward Kimball.

* NaziProtagonist: During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Disney produced many propaganda films in support of the Allied cause. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJT9XbX4Thg One of these]] was about a German boy named Hans, it was to show how Nazi indoctrination can cause a small child to grow up into a bloodthirsty monster. He also cast Donald Duck as a Nazi in ''WesternAnimation/DerFuehrersFace'', showing what terrible conditions the Nazi soldiers were forced to work under (exaggerated both for comedic effect and PatrioticFervor), though it turns out to be AllJustADream of the real American Donald Duck.

Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), one of America's (and the world's) most famous animators and entertainment entrepreneurs, has quite an interesting history. He started out as a boy who wanted to entertain people. He attempted various careers to find out how best to do that—acting, cartooning, filmmaking—until he decided to try and break into the new and expanding field of animation. Since cartoons were mainly a novelty at the time, he had little trouble absorbing all there was to be known about it, and then he began pushing the envelope. After several of his animators were recruited out from under him, and his [[WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit mascot character]] stolen away by his [[Creator/{{Universal}} old employer]], it seemed all hope was lost for this aspiring animator.

He is played by Creator/TomHanks in the film ''Film/SavingMrBanks'', about the production of ''Film/MaryPoppins''. Thomas Ian Nicholas played him in the film ''Walt Before Mickey'', which is about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Walt's early years in animation before creating Mickey and founding his successful independent animation studio.]]

* AnimalWrongsGroup: Several Disney stories revolve around cutesy animals who are either killed by humans or saved in the nick of time, ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians'' being among the most famous. This has helped make millions of audiences sympathetic of animals' causes all over the world.

* ArtEvolution: While Disney himself hardly drew any drawing himself after 1926 since he was famous enough to hire animators, said animators achieved an enormous technical advancement between 1928 and 1940. Just compare ''WesternAnimation/PlaneCrazy'' to some of the sequences in ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' and you'll see exactly what we mean.[[note]]The water effects in Pinocchio are still talked about to this day due to how even computers until recently had a hard time of animating water correctly.[[/note]] Disney is still associated with top-notch art work.[[note]](1991s ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' used computer animation to make the "camera" swoop around the pair in a ballroom dancing scene, and animation has never been the same since.)[[/note]]

** ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', his first animated film, begins with the camera zooming in on the villain as she walks onscreen. His last animated film ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'' ends with the camera zooming out on two of the protagonists as they walk off screen.

** Disney's ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'' is acclaimed as a legitimate animated feature classic, even though its plot is wafer thin. Creator/WaltDisney specifically told the story artists to not read or follow the book and even chewed them out when they had concerns over the simplistic story, saying the characters and entertainment were more important. Animator and story artist Floyd Norman, who worked on the film, [[http://floydnormancom.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/5/requiem-for-a-gagman summed it up on his blog]]:

* HesBack: After being out of the production side of Animation since the 1940s and the poor reception of ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' and the ''WesternAnimation/TheSwordInTheStone'', he decided to become heavily involved with ''WesternAnimation/{{The Jungle Book|1967}}''. Both the critics and artists said that it was like Disney never left. Sadly, that was also the last film that he worked on as he died before the movie could be completed.

** Disney's ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'' is acclaimed as a legitimate animated feature classic, even though its plot is wafer thin. Creator/WaltDisney specifically told the story artists to not read or follow the book, and even chewed them out when they had concerns over the simplistic story, saying the characters and entertainment were more important. Animator and story artist Floyd Norman, who worked on the film, [[http://floydnormancom.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/5/requiem-for-a-gagman summed it up on his blog]]:

* {{Expy}}: WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse was more or less based on Disney's earlier successful character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, only with the rabbit ears changed into round mouse ears. As Disney's film catalogue grew on some critics complained that certain characters in his films were virtually similar in design or personality. For instance, Jiminy Cricket (''Pinocchio'') and Timothy the Mouse (''Dumbo'') fulfill the same kind of roles and even have the same height. Alice from Alice In Wonderland and Wendy from Peter Pan not only share very similar builds, faces, personalities, and roles in the story, but also the same ''voice actress.''

* HesBack: After being out of the production side of Animation since the 1940s and the poor reception of WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty and the WesternAnimation/TheSwordInTheStone, he decided to become heavy involve with ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967''. Both the critics and artists said that it was like Disney never left. Sadly, that was also his last film that he worked on as he died before the movie could be completed.

* SugarBowl: Disney was a master in creating idyllic fantasy worlds where any child or nostalgic parent would enjoy living. Even if scary or evil stuff happens it is usually defeated or overcome in the end. This gave his work a timeless entertainment value, ideal for forgetting your troubles for a couple of minutes or hours. However, in his theme parks he tried to create these worlds in reality, which crosses into creepy territory for some observers.

Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), one of America's most famous animators and entertainment entrepreneurs, has quite an interesting history. He started out as a boy who wanted to entertain people. He attempted various careers to find out how best to do that—acting, cartooning, filmmaking—until he decided to try and break into the new and expanding field of animation. Since cartoons were mainly a novelty at the time, he had little trouble absorbing all there was to be known about it, and then he began pushing the envelope. After several of his animators were recruited out from under him, and his [[WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit mascot character]] stolen away by his [[Creator/{{Universal}} old employer]], it seemed all hope was lost for this aspiring animator.

Disney died of lung cancer (though he didn't smoke in public in order to project a wholesome personal image, Walt was known to be a chain smoker when in private) before EPCOT was finished, and without his guidance the plan soon became another theme park. However, thanks in part to his prescient foundation of the California Institute of the Arts which taught major film greats like Creator/TimBurton and Creator/JohnLasseter, his legacy lives on with The Walt Disney Company, one of the most powerful media enterprises in the world. The Disney studios are [[VanityPlate symbolized]] by an image of Cinderella's/Sleeping Beauty's castle.

[[caption-width-right:350:The man with one dream and who made many more dreams come true...]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/time2.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:The man with one dream and who made many more dreams come true...]]

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* TalkingToHimself: Walt did this in some of the early Mickey shorts where he voiced multiple characters - for example, Mickey and the traffic cop in 1931's "Traffic Troubles."

* BookEnds: Walt's first and last works in any subject tend to match up surprisingly well.

[[caption-width-right:350:The man with one dream and who made many more dreams come true...]]

Perhaps the oddest UrbanLegend that after his death Walt's body was placed in a [[HumanPopsicle cryostasis chamber]] under Ride/{{Pirates of the Caribbean}} at Disneyland. (Everyone knows it's really just his head that was frozen in Cinderella's Castle at Disney World, of course. When it's not under Epcot.) The ''actual'' truth is that he was cremated, and the rumor was further spread by friend, animator, and royal prankster Ward Kimball.

There are [[http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/walt.asp numerous]] UrbanLegends. Rumors about Walt Disney being less friendly than many people would see him are common. He was rarely satisfied with the films his studio produced and was intensely critical of his employees (and perhaps justifiably afraid of unions, as he once had an entire animation staff sell him out to work with a competitor when he lost WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit)[[note]]However, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, who later on help create the Looney Tunes, both have gone on record saying that one of the main reasons a lot of the staff left back then was because Walt was becoming very hard to work with and was not allowing the staff to have more control. This story was later on backed up when Ub Iwerks, who was one of the few animators who stayed with Walt when Harman & Ising left, also left Walt years later due to the same reasons.[[/note]] but stories also abound of Walt's supposed racism, sexism and antisemitism, and supposedly he never actually drew anything[[note]]Almost all of the WesternAnimation/NewmanLaughOGrams & early WesternAnimation/AliceComedies were drawn by him or he was deeply involved in the drawing himself. However he stopped drawing regularly in the mid 1920s as he was able to hire people to draw for him. This is with the exception of the first handful of WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse shorts, as Walt had only 6 people left at the studio and were drawn mainly by Ub Iwerks with Disney helping Iwerks. [[/note]], took credit for people's work [[note]]It was common in the 20s to have the producers name attached to cartoons with no credits who every person who worked on the film[[/note]], and was so extremely paranoid with the threat of communism he put innocent people in jail during the [=McCarthy=] Communist witch hunts. Many of these attitudes can be attributed to the time in which he lived -- [[ValuesDissonance most of America at the time saw little problem mocking blacks, Jews, Native Americans, and women, and reporting suspected communists was actively encouraged by the government]]. In truth Walt hired several Jewish, female, Hispanic and black employees (Floyd Norman, Mary Blair, Rudy Zamora, and the Sherman Brothers to name a few) was close with his female employees, had a rabbi as one of the three military chaplains invited to the opening of Disneyland[[note]]Alongside a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister[[/note]], and was very devoted to his daughters and grandchildren -- EPCOT, by all accounts, became his obsession in large part because of how worried he became for their future by the Sixties. However, [[NotHelpingYourCase he didn't help his case with some of his actions]] -- for instance, he was the only Hollywood figure prepared to meet Creator/LeniRiefenstahl, director of Nazi propaganda film ''Triumph of the Will'', when she visited Hollywood (and no, he wasn't a Nazi sympathizer). That said, rumors that he was anti-union and supported [=McCartheyism=] are true and easy to substantiate -- he reacted to a 1941 strike by not only firing many employees, but reporting them as communists, caricaturing them in his films, and on one occasion physically assaulting strike leader Art Babbitt.