Back then it was traditional to dress baby boys in dresses.
December 5, 1901-Walt Disney was born in Hermosa, Illinois to Elias Disney and Flora Call Disney. He was the fourth son to be born. 1906-1911- Walt and his family move to Marceline, MO where they will live on a farm for the next 5 years. Walt finds his love for drawing and begins selling paintings/pieces of artwork to neighbors and family friends. 1911- The Disney family moves to Kansas City and Walt discovers his love for trains. Since his uncle Mike was was a train engineer, Walt worked on the railroad with him during the summer and sold snacks and newspapers to the public. 1917- The family moves to Chicago and Walt finds his passion for drawing cartoons. He draws for the McKinley High school newspaper and he also attends classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. 1918- Walt drops out of high school to join the army at the age of 16 but was not accepted because of his age. Instead he joins Red Cross and was sent to France to drive an ambulance for a year. 1919- After Walt came back he moved to Kansas City and got a job at Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio for $50 a month. He met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks. 1920- Iwwerks and Disney created a company named Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. It failed to flourish after a month. They both got jobs at Kansas City Slide Company where they discover animation. Walt decided to open his own animation business and his first choice to recruit was a man named Fred Harman who worked in the ad company with him. They both made a deal with a theater to screen their cartoons which Walt called Laugh-O-Grams. They became a great hit and brought in a lot of money. 1922 & 1923- Now with Disney's own studio and a number of employees including Fred Harman's brother Hugh, it looked like a very preposterous company. They did a series in 1923 named Alice in Cartoonland. However, in the same year their studio got overrun by debt and Disney declared bankruptcy. Walt, his brother Roy, and Iwerks decided to move to Hollywood. The three create the Disney Brothers' Studio. Their first deal occurred was for their Alice cartoons with a New York distributor who was named Margaret Winkler. The three men also created a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and they settled on $1,500 for each short. 1925- Walt married Lillian Bounds, who worked at the Studios as an inker beginning in 1924. 1926- Walt and Roy move their new-named studio to a new building in Hyperion Avenue. Its name is Walt Disney Studios. 1927- Charles Mintz, who was the film distributor, contracted Walt Disney Studios to make a series involving the undeveloped character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Since Charles was the distributor for the cartoons he owns rights to it. The series succeeded and so Walt asked for a larger pay but was refused. Instead, Mintz cut his pay and if Walt wouldn't accept his cut, Mintz would take Oswald away from him. Walt had no choice but to abandon his character to Mintz. 1928- With most of his employees now working for Mintz, Walt and Iwwerks created Mickey Mouse. The first Mickey cartoon was completed on May 15, 1928 and it was called Plane Crazy. It focused its story on a man named Charles Lindbergh who was the first pilot to make a solo plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean. On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered in theaters and it was the first cartoon with sound. It gained popularity and a man named Harry Reichenbach payed Disney $1,000 to run in a Broadway theater. Nobody wanted to invest their money on this movie but Harry was different. He gave him two weeks for his movie to play in his theater. 1929- Walt wanted to incorporate sound and music into his animations so that he could keep moving forward. During the fall season of 1928, Carl Stalling, a musician, shared with Walt his opinion of doing a musical novelty called The Skeleton Dance which was the first of the Silly Symphonies which was Walt's idea. Pat Powers, a business person who sold Walt a Cinephone system so that he could record sound and music, was not convinced of The Skeleton Dance being successful. Instead, Walt convinced the owner of the Carthay Circle Theater to premiere his Silly Symphony. So many people loved it and the publicity was astounding! Powers has now changed his mind about these sound cartoons. October 29,1929- The Stock Market Crashes. January 21, 1930- Ub Iwerks resigned after accepting a job from Pat Powers. April 13, 1931- Walt and his brother Roy abandoned Colombia Studios and joined United Artists. May 1, 1932- Walt is contemplating whether he should use color pigments in his animation reels so that his animations will look better than before. Many problems came to light after Walt consulted his thoughts with his brother-in-law and his close collaborator, Bill Cottrell. One of them was whether the paint would adhere to the cels. Roy's biggest problem was whether this will help them financially or not. Paint was expensive back then and producing a cartoon with color did not mean that Colombia Studios was going to pay Walt and his crew a higher salary. July 30, 1932- Flowers and Trees premieres which was Walt's first animated color film to be released. It gained so much attention and positive feedback after it was approved by Sid Grauman who was the founder of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The film also won an Oscar. December 1, 1932- The Three Little Pigs was made during the era of the Depression where many families struggled to pay rent and buy food for their young and themselves. Down the road it won an Oscar by the Academy. January 1, 1933- The animators working with Walt Disney create a military insignia for a Naval Rescue Squadron. February 23, 1933- The first colored Mickey Mouse film is made and the Band Concert opens in theaters. June 3, 1934- Walt Disney works on his first full-length film which will cost him roughly about $250,000. The feature was based on the sketch he made of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. November 5, 1937- The Old Mill opens in theaters. It is the first film to use the Multiplane Camera which is a huge camera that uses multiple layers of glass to add more depth into an animation. The Old Mill was used as an experiment to test out the Multiplane Camera. It succeeded and so the makers of the camera won a special Academy Award. December 21, 1937- Snow White premieres in theaters. April 30, 1940- Walt's brother Roy calls for a 25% cut in cost production because of dwindling financial situations. May 28, 1941- Many of the artists at the Walt Disney Studios go on strike because of cuts made to their salary, failed attempts to unionize and layoffs made to many artists. August 17, 1941- Walt was asked by the U.S. government if he would go travel to South America in order to create good relations with the countries there but Walt refused because he "was not good at that." So, they asked him if he would mind creating some films while he was there and learning about many different stories that people from South America had. He then created Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros whilst travelling around Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. September 16, 1941- The workers who went on strike return after a lengthy negotiation process including wages and rights were settled five weeks after they began. December 7, 1941-The U.S. enters the war after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. Tensions were growing and everyone was living in fear of being attacked. Walt's studio was soon being used as a place to house soldiers, thus, making it a hard working space with soldiers being everywhere. The artists at the studios however created around 1200 unique military insignia to help boost the soldiers morale and decrease their fears. Also, some artists were drafted into the army but workers still created short films to educate the people of what the war is about and what cautions they should take. One film they produced was named Der Fuehrer's Face. October 1, 1944- The Disney Brothers are in a financial crisis because their films aren't bringing in much profit and they still owe the bank $4 million. The owner of the bank however, saved them from not being able to borrow anymore money when he said that the war is not going to last forever and that their films will make a breakthrough. May 8, 1945- Germany surrenders marking the end of WWII in Germany and three months later Japan surrenders. The positive side of this for Walt is that he doesn't have to make anymore propaganda films anymore for the U.S. Government. The downside however is that they were still in serious debt with the bank and it'll be hard to get back on track January 1, 1949- Walt wants to make a live-action film but no one agreed with him on his idea. Everybody wanted the same old animated movies that he always makes. Walt's persona isn't that of a repetitive routine but instead he wanted to venture out his capabilities and show people what else he could do. With the debt increasing he knew he had to do something to save his company. July 4, 1949- The filming of the live-action film Treasure Island commences. March 1, 1951- Walt begins to think about creating an amusement park. The spark that ignited this idea was when he came about some parks that had rides two or three rides that children could have fun on. He started asking kids if they like the carousel that they rode on and what color it was. All these questions made him think of new answers to improve the modern amusement park. April 1, 1952- Walt has decided that he wants to construct a theme park but is having trouble finding a location to put it in. He hired the Stanford Research Institute to help him on locating an ideal place to start his park and they looked at the population growth, temperature differences, smog, and freeways to make sure its in an ideal society. Walt picked the place where it was 5 miles away from the Santa Anna freeway on each side. December 1, 1952- Walt begins his company WED to work on Disneyland. His ambition to construct a grand amusement park was a risky take back then and not many stockholders were betting on it being a success. Walt was using his money to construct this however, not the Walt Disney Company's money. January 1, 1954- Filming started for the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is the most successful films that Disney has ever made and the most expensive as well. It cost around $4.2 million to make and the storm that Walt wanted to add when the squid attack scene came on added another $250,000. July 1954- Construction for Disneyland begins. July 17, 1955- Disneyland opens. The opening of the amusement park was broadcasted on t.v. but there were many flaws throughout the day of the opening day. Gas leaks, food shortage in restaurants, and rides not working were problems that were creating mayhem. But Walt was still happy seeing the amusement park being successful. January 27, 1959- Work on Sleeping Beauty is finished. February 8, 1960- Walt receives two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. September 1, 1961- Walt plans on making a school of fine arts to teach up and coming animators how to animate using other people as models. For example, dancers at this school can serve as models for animators so that they can draw them dancing and thus creating an animation. The name of this school will be the California Institute of the Arts. August 1964- Walt was secretly buying a bunch of land in Florida so that he could make a "city of tomorrow." July 1, 1966- Walt took all of his family on a trip from Vancouver through the inland channel and they saw many little islands during the memorable trip. They took a big boat and Walt celebrated his anniversary with his wife Lily and they also celebrated a birthday while on the trip. Walt brought two books with him which made it clear that he was thinking about the California Institute and Epcot. December 16, 1966- Walt's funeral is held at Forest Lawn with immediate family only due to Walt's wishes.
Walt Disney (on the left) and Ub Iwerks (on the right).
Taken from the episode of Plane Crazy.
Taken from the episode of Steamboat Willy.
From the Silly Symphony named The Skeleton Dance.
Colombia Studios Logo in the 1920's
United Studios Logo
On the plane it shows the insignia that Walt Disney's animators created for the military.
The founder of Bank of America, A.P. Giannini. He helped Walt's company financially.