"Always remember that it all started with one mouse," said Walt Disney in 1954 on a TV show. At that time, his production company had existed for more than three decades and was one of the most successful in the US. Mickey Mouse was not only a hero on the movie screen, his smile could also be seen on t-shirts, soccer balls, and even toothbrushes. And in 1955, the first Disneyland in California was opened. The popular mouse Mickey has "come to life".
Walt Disney grew up on a farm in Missouri. He started his career drawing commercials, and over time fell in love with cartoons. With only 40 dollars in his pocket, he headed to Hollywood and there exactly one hundred years ago he founded the Walt Disney Company, today a media empire "weighing" several billion dollars.
"It's a pleasure to do impossible things." That was one of the maxims of the pioneers of motion picture animation. From that statement, one can read not only that he was exceptionally hardworking, but also an unshakable faith in his own idea. Namely, the young man from the farm faced the collapse of his company more than once. His projects were too daring, he always had to try the latest film technique and perfect it. That mixture of business elan led him to the fact that he very quickly started sleeping on the couch in his studio, that he rarely saw his own children, and all this in order to enchant children unknown to him with fairy tales from the movie screen.
Achievements and rewards
In 1937, Walt Disney began writing the history of film. Then "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" appeared, the first full-length cartoon that was shown in cinema halls. Mickey Mouse and other cartoons were in short film format. No one could have guessed at the time that 60 new feature-length Disney films would follow.
Disney could not even dream of success then, because he was troubled by other concerns. He was threatened with collapse again, as a producer he miscalculated. Instead of 250.000, the film cost a million and a half dollars. Instead of 18 months, his artists worked on the project for three years. Three years of working on an idea that many in Hollywood at the time considered foolish. A full-length cartoon? So who else will stand in line and buy a ticket for such a film, they asked themselves...
But, as it turned out, many were ready to stand in line. Soon after the film began showing, it became clear that it was an emergency: "Snow White" brought Disney an income of eight million dollars. A movie ticket at that time cost an average of 25 cents. The film was translated into ten languages, and was shown in 46 countries around the world. The American Film Academy awarded Walt Disney with an Oscar - and in fact there were eight figurines: one large and seven small, which was an association with Snow White and the dwarfs.
A tough boss with a big ego
Work at the Walt Disney Studios wasn't always a fairy tale, however. Overtime, poor pay, a boss who meticulously oversees every stroke of the brush and who keeps a strict eye on his creative ego – namely, there was always only one name at the beginning of the film: his. His signature adorns the logo of the concern to this day.
But the company cannot thank only Walt Disney for its success. He founded the studio with his brother Roy, who later took over the finances. The mouse that started it all was created by art director Ab Iwerks, probably under strict instructions from his boss.
Walt Disney was a visionary, but also a businessman. He had the good sense to surround himself with talented people. It was during the economic crisis at the end of the twenties of the last century, when many companies went bankrupt and families became poor, that he established merchandising. With the genius marketing manager Kay Kamen, from the thirties, the character of Mickey Mouse began to adorn socks, muesli packages or soccer balls. Very quickly, the company began to make significantly more money from advertising contracts than from films.
After "Snow White", "Pinocchio" (1940), "Dambo" (1941) and "Bambi" (1942) arrived in cinemas. However, they were not as successful as the first hit. Part of the expected income was lost, because the Second World War started and the important European market was lost in the years that followed. Given that it was increasingly difficult to find banks that would lend to the company's operations, Disney went public. Today, according to the data of the Institute for Media and Information Policy, that company is in sixth place on the list of the most successful media concerns globally. Disney shares are listed on the Dow Jones index, which means that they are in the company of the most successful American companies.
During World War II, Disney became part of the American war propaganda machine. The studios began to produce numerous short films and cartoons, in which the American conduct of the war was glorified, i.e., the image of the enemies was reproduced. In the famous propaganda film "Führer's Face" (1943), Paja Patak had to work in a weapons factory in Nazi Germany, where he almost went crazy from the constant shouts of "Heil Hitler". Disney also produced films for the training of the American army, and critics told him that, instead of war propaganda, he should rather devote himself to the spread of pacifist and humanist ideas.
Even 26 Oscars
In the post-war years, Disney returned to the old paths of success with films such as "Alice in Wonderland" (1951) or "Peter Pan" (1953). In 1955, he came up with another visionary idea, which seemed megalomaniac to many at the time: he turned his fairy tale worlds into reality and the first Disneyland was opened in California. During the years and decades that followed, copies of that amusement park were opened all over the world: from Florida, through Paris, to Tokyo or Shanghai.
Disney has been awarded a total of 26 Oscars. That's a record to this day. The company founder did not personally experience the premiere of the movie "The Jungle Book". Walt Disney died in 1966 of lung cancer, but the Disney brand lived on.
Over time, however, it turned out that the template on which his films functioned, that puritan world of fairy tales, no longer works on the market. In the eighties of the last century, they fell into a crisis. The share price has recovered. From 1986, the management of the concern was taken over by Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney, who, together with Jeffrey Katzenberg, is responsible for the renaissance of Disney: "Ariel, the Mermaid" (1989), "Beauty and the Beast" (1991) and finally "The Lion King". (1994).
"If Disney can be associated with anything, it's what makes the company special, in my opinion, is magic, fantasy and creativity. That's what makes us so special. We tell stories and create magic in everything we do," Betty Klein, director of the Walt Ditney Archives, tells DW. Since the beginning of this century, the concern has been expanding. First, he bought the successful Pixar animation studio, then "swallowed" Marvel superheroes, and finally Lukasfilm, with its successful "Star Wars" series. In 2019, the Disney+ streaming platform was launched, which, after initial difficulties, managed to establish itself and today is globally the number three in the industry, after Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Criticism of Disney
And while the concern realizes a turnover that is measured in billions of dollars, the target of criticism is the very segment with which Disney started: its fairy tales. Due to the racist elements in classics such as "Dambo" or "The Jungle Book", Disney began to warn the audience about this with appropriate captions at the beginning of their films.
After loud criticism for the way the concern used (and appropriated) the cultural heritage of certain cultures in the promotion of its films (such as the African saying "Hakuna matata", taken from Swahili), Disney today takes much more care of the cultural treasures of other nations and peoples. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary, the remake of the hit about the mermaid Ariel is finally starting - but with real actors. In the main role is the dark-skinned American star Halle Bailey.
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