Walt Disney’s parents, Elias Disney and Flora Call, were married on New Years day, 1888. In five short years they had three children, Herbert was born in 1888, Raymond in 1890, and Roy was born in 1893. When Walt was born on December 5, 1901, they were living in Chicago. Two years later Walt’s sister, Ruth was born. Elias and Flora were beginning to feel unsafe in their neighborhood after a local boy was arrested for killing a cop, so in 1906 they moved to a property owned by Elias’s brother, Robert in Marceline, Missouri. This small town had a population of about 5,000 (Finch 12). The Disney’s settled on this forty - five acre farm. They lived in this boxy farmhouse, built by a civil war veteran named William Crane. This town was always full of spirit, especially at harvest time. Walt and Ruth, as the youngest in the family had few chores to keep up the farm; so most memories of the farm were pleasant, except the time they got in trouble for doodling on the barn with tar (Mickey Mouse perhaps?). When Walt got older, he met many people around town, including Erastus Taylor, a Civil War veteran, who would tell Walt fantastic stories about the War. In 1908 Herbert and Raymond left the farm to find their fortune in Chicago. In fall 1910, Elias caught typhoid and almost died, he knew he couldn’t keep the farm, so he sold it for five thousand dollars and moved to Kansas City in the summer of 1911.

In Kansas City, Elias bought a newspaper route. Walt and Roy were his staff, and not a paper went out that wasn’t absolutely perfect. Walt had to wake up a three-thirty every morning to deliver the papers behind the customer’s storm door. This also caused Walt’s schooling to suffer. Walt loved theatrics and art; he drew comics for his father’s newspaper. Elias soon lost interest in his newspaper and invested much of his money in a jelly company, O’Zell Jellies. This company was planning on creating a bottled, carbonated drink; this forced Elias to move back to Chicago. Walt decided to stay behind and live with his brother, Roy and Herbert. Herbert was at this point married and had a two-year-old child, named Dorothy. That summer, Walt got a summer job selling newspapers, candy, fruit, and soda. Walt loved the uniform, the trains, and the chance to see the country. He paid little attention to the business aspect of this job, he ended up losing money. He didn’t care much. At the end of summer, Walt went back to Chicago and attended the Chicago Institute of Art, there he drew patriotic sketches for the school newspaper, and worked at a post office. In 1918, Walt was sixteen and wanted to join in the war effort; he lied about his age and joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps, and began training. He was never on the field though; he caught influenza and was discharged. During the war, he and a friend took metal helmets, bashed them up to look like battle scars, and sold them as war souvenirs.

In the fall of 1919, Walt was determined to become an artist. He went back to the old Disney house in Kansas City with his brothers, Roy and Herbert, and got a job at a commercial art studio drawing horses and bags. Just before Christmas, he and a friend he met on the job, Ub Iwerks were laid off. The two of them decided to start their own commercial art business together, Iwerks-Disney. The business had one large client right away, United Leatherworkers Journal. Soon, however they lost both interest and money in the business and started making their own freelance cartoons. They worked out of Walt’s garage. Walt worked late into the night, until he finished a creation that he called Laugh - O - Grams. Walt successfully sold several of these to the Newman Theater. Walt often priced them too low, and made almost no money (“Life of Disney”). As this was happening, Elias and Flora moved to Portland and Herbert and Ruth left for Portland also. Roy then got sick and was in the hospital and Walt went to a rooming house. Walt brought in several young, unpaid apprentices and sold a series of the Laugh-O-Grams totaling $11,000, after six months of work, the client claimed bankruptcy. Walt never saw a penny. After this, Walt himself claimed bankruptcy, and spent his last few dollars for a train ticket to California.

Walt wrote a letter to Margaret Winkler, a film distributor, announcing that he was “establishing a studio in Los Angeles for the purpose of producing a new and novel series of cartoons,” (“Life of Disney”)the studio was his Uncle Robert’s garage and the new series was Alice’s Wonderland, a combination of a real little girl and animated characters. Winkler bought six cartoons from Walt for $1,500 each, Walt was in! Walt convinced Roy to join him and take care of the money, while Walt took up the creative aspect. In 1923, they launched the Disney Brothers Studio. With $200 Roy saved, $500 borrowed from Uncle Albert and $2,500 from Flora and Elias, they bought a used camera, and rented a tiny studio behind a real estate office.

On the way to international fame, Walt fell in love with a sweet, gentile woman named Lillian Bounds. Every night Walt would drive her home from work, after a while, they would take long drives and talk about their childhood. Walt and Lilly were married June 13, 1925; just several months after Roy and Edna Francis were married. “Lilly” learned that Walt’s first priority was his cartooning. He would often in the middle of an outing say “I have one little thing to do down at the studio, I’ll be back,” Next thing Lilly would remember was Walt waking her up on the couch in his office in the middle of the night. Margaret Winkler turned the company over to her husband Charles Mintz, he didn’t like the Alice series, and so Walt went to work on a new series, starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald enjoyed a life of great success, and gave Walt and Roy a great sense of job security. They both bought identical homes next door from each other. As Owald’s stardom grew, Walt tried to renew the contract for a higher price. As Walt negotiated, he realized that Charles Mintz owned Oswald and forced Walt to work for a lesser price, Mintz already signed Walt’s staff (except Ub Iwerks) to work for him, Mintz wanted Walt to do the same, Walt refused. On the way home, he sent Roy a telegram: “LEAVING TONIGHT STOPPING OVER KC ARRIVE HOME SUNDAY MORNING SEVEN THIRTY DON’T WORRY EVERYTHING OK WILL GIVE DETAILS WHEN ARRIVE – WALT” Walt wanted desperately to make the telegram true, so he dreamed up the idea of Mickey Mouse on the way home. At first Walt wanted to call his little mouse Mortimer. Lilly didn’t like the name, “How about Mickey?” she suggested. Walt took her advice.

Soon after Walt got home, he asked Ub Iwerks to start the beginning panels; he decided to do it all in one night. Walt was amazed that Ub did this all in one night (“The Hand Behind the Mouse”). This first Mickey Mouse cartoon was called “Plane Crazy”. After two, they decided to try to sell them to movie theaters, but there was no reason for theaters to use Mickey over others, such as Felix the Cat and even Oswald the Lucky Rabbit! So Walt designed something so incredible, that movie theaters would absolutely buy the reels, the answer was a sound synchronized cartoon, they made a cartoon specially designed to impress the audience, this cartoon was “Steamboat Willie”. The plot was Mickey and Minny turn the cargo of a steamship into a musical orchestra. “Mickey’s popularity skyrocketed,” wrote Charles Solomon, a well - known animation historian.

Unfortunately as Mickey’s success grew, a man named Pat Powers thought he could do better, if he had Disney’s top animator, Ub Iwereks! He tricked Ub into leaving Disney and come to work for him on his own character, “Flip the Frog”. Walt was upset when he heard his long time friend and partner had left, but he pressed onward still. Walt decided to make a cartoon in color, so after much arguing with Roy he took a nearly completed cartoon, “Flowers and Trees” and re-did it in color. This delighted audiences and further pushed the boundary of cartoons. Meanwhile, Mickey was gaining many more supporting characters, such as Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy. The first color cartoon including Mickey was “The Band Concert” in 1935. Around this time the studio was starting to use storyboards to keep the cartoon’s animation to run more smoothly and to keep the plot flowing.

A child was born to Walt and Lilly on December 18, 1933, Diane Marie Disney. Walt and Lilly wanted another child, but after several failed attempts, they adopted Sharon Mae Disney. “We weren’t raised with the idea that this was a great man, he was Daddy.” Sharon had said. By the time Sharon was adopted, Walt was into his next animation idea. The first animated movie! Snow White took up a lot of time and money. This type of animation requires a new way of getting the cells to a reel. Developed by Ub Iwerks (Back with Disney now) they put a background cell on the bottom, and moved the foreground more rapidly, making a three-dimensional image. This creation was called the multiplane camera. The entire movie ended up costing one and a half million dollars; this was more than estimated due to Walt’s perfectionism. When the movie was nearly done, Walt decided that Snow White was too pale, so the animators went back through the cells and changed the color of her face through all the thousands of cells she was in. When Snow White went to theaters, it did extremely well and prompted him to make another movie titled Pinocchio. This movie went over well to! Walt was on top of the world! Until he made a movie of interpretive animation against classical music, called Fantasia. This bombed at the box office, and put Disney $4,500,000 in debt (Greene 126). Then the union organized the workers and started to strike. Walt was hurt that these people whom he considered family would do something like that. He was so upset at this “God awful nightmare” that he went on a goodwill mission to South America. When he got back, his parents died, and the strike had blown over. He never again considered his staff family. From 1942 to 1943, Disney made many movies that encouraged people to support the military in World War II. Some were training videos, some were for the public, but all the videos were animated. One example is “Der Fuehrer’s Face” shows Donald Duck stuck in Nazi Germany; luckily for Donald it was a dream.

After the war, the studio was deeply in debt Walt wanted to try bold, new projects; Roy wanted to be more careful. They fought a lot, and finally agreed on a new movie, “Song of the South”. Nothing seemed to go right all throughout the movie. When it came out it was accused of being racist. For a while, the studio was limited to doing short, well-made cartoons. Walt was sick of being in the doldrums, so he made another leap and created ”Cinderella”. This saved the studio! Walt was so pleased, that he bought himself a model train set. He wrote to his sister Ruth, “I bought myself a birthday/Christmas present, something I’ve wanted all my life – an electric train…you probably can’t understand how much I wanted one when I was a kid, but I’ve got one now.” (“Life of Disney”) This eventually led to a half-mile circle of one - eighth - size train tracks, which Walt could ride on top of. Extensions to Walt’s house include a projection room and a soda fountain in the playroom. Walt would go into the playroom and mix sodas into strange concoctions that even he wouldn’t drink. Once Walt and Roy had a fight and wouldn’t speak to each other for months, when they made up, Walt gave Roy a Native American peace pipe, engraved on it was, “It was wonderful to smoke the pipe of peace with you again - the clouds that rise are beautiful.”

Walt wanted to create a theme park that was safe and clean. This thought was turning over in his mind for some time now. He consulted Roy, Roy didn’t like the idea and Walt was short on cash. That has never stopped him before, though (both Roy’s arguments and money). ABC paid Walt to make a television show about all the characters from the classic shorts, so “The Mickey Mouse Club” came to be. The money that came in paid for Disneyland. The opening day was not as good as Walt had hoped, many rides were breaking down, and people were printing counterfeit invitations and the park was packed. Several noted guests were Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan Many additions were added to Disneyland after opening day such as Dumbo Flying Elephants, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Tom Sawyer Island. “Disneyland will never be completed” Walt said. He never even got to see Toontown.