Walt Disney: The dark personality behind the beloved Mickey Mouse

His name remains one of the strongest “brand name” in the field of entertainment and entertainment, but also as the greatest storyteller who went through the cinema, beyond his intelligent business choices, which set up an empire with tens of billions of profits and repercussions. worldwide.

Walt Disney, almost before he became a man, in October 1923, in a garage in California, founded the Disney film company, implementing an idea he had for mass entertainment, with immortal favorite cartoon characters, who impressed in his time. and still dominate the world today.

The lucky. Mouse

There he will come up with the idea to replace “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”, which did not have the response he expected, with the most famous mouse, Mickey Mouse. In fact, as he is said, he and his wife were initially named Mortimer Mouse, but his partner Lillian Bowds thought he was too pompous and suggested Mickey, a clearly more familiar and playful name. The cutest handmade mouse will give Disney an unprecedented boost, making him the record holder for the Oscars, with a total of 26 gold statuettes in his collection, out of a total of 59 nominations! And of course many other awards and distinctions, but which look like details in front of the fame and apotheosis he experienced, even when the dark aspects of his character began to become known.

120 years of Disney

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth (December 5, 1901) is an opportunity to browse the book of life of the inspirational creator, who gave us a series of masterpieces of animated films, set up an entertainment industry, which even today flourishes and in other areas, but at the same time in his personal life he transformed into a misanthrope, as he was an incurable half-brother, a cruel racist, a brutal employer, an unconscious traitor, with rich action during McCarthyism, while he probably nurtured positive feelings in Nazism as well.

From Chicago to Los Angeles

Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, the last child of a large family. Flora Cole’s mother was a teacher and Elias’s father was a construction contractor, and at the age of 14 he began studying painting at the Kansas Art Institute and selling newspapers. At the age of 20 he started working in an art studio in the same city. The $ 40 he made a week was not enough to create his own business and he was forced to borrow for the first animation company, and in 1923 he moved to Los Angeles to begin his triumphant career.

Together with his collaborators he will work hard on Mickey’s design. His thinking was based on the simplicity of the design, but also how it could attract the child’s eye. Round ears, pear-shaped trunk, large feet, while in his hands he put on gloves to tie the sketch. To a large extent the imaginative sketch was of the close associate of Oub Iwerks, but Disney is the one who managed to do the miracle. To give him a soul.

Mickey, Donald and the other paper kids

Mickey Mouse first appeared in May 1928, in a test run, without finding a distributor. So he went to the next step, creating the first cartoon with sound. The movie, “Steamer Willie”, which lasted about 8 minutes, premiered on November 18, 1928 in New York, received rave reviews and the films with Mickey became very popular. Mickey will appear in more than 120 films, five of which are feature films. In 1934 he will present for the first time the most famous duck in the world, Donald, initially in a minor role, and then will follow several adored characters such as Mini, Goofy, Pluto, etc. The creative imagination of the performers and exceptional artists next to him, he would turn Disney’s craft into an industry and in 1934 he would find more than 700 staff.

Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasy

1937 is a milestone year for him and his company. After three years of preparation, he will present the first animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, where he applies innovative techniques, such as the multiplane, while the work done in the sketch – of course by hand – remains even today. unsurpassed. After all, the film will cost about $ 1.5 million, but it will bring them back many times over, as its huge success at the box office translated into $ 8 million, an incredible amount for the time. In 1940 follows the classic “Pinocchio”, while in the same year he will deliver “Fantasy”, a film smashing ideas, which were loved even more by adults. A film in which the image followed the pieces of classical music that flooded the big screen.

Immortal quality

With the know-how and hard work of all those who worked at Disney, they will follow several huge successes, a cinema that gave the people in difficult times an economic way out of fun and ups and downs. All at the highest level of quality and of course immortal, as is the name of Disney. Some of them are: “Dubo” (1941), “Saloudos Amigos” (1943), “Treis Kampaleros” (1945), “Cinderella” 1950, “Alice in Wonderland” (1951), “Peter Pan” (1953) ), “The Lady and the Tramp” (1955), “The Sleeping Beauty” (1959), “The 101 Dogs of Dalmatia”, “The Sword of King Arthur” (1963).

American Dream

In 1955 he founded the Disneyland Theme Park in California, which has been visited by over 700,000,000 people, followed by others in various parts of the world, the most famous being the one in Paris. What is indisputable is that Disney was just as intelligent in both the creative arts and the business. In the 43 years of his career in soubise, he has been perhaps the leading figure as a creator of mass entertainment, always experimenting with new techniques, while he will rightly be described as the main representative of the “American dream”.

Misanthrope and traitor

However, behind the dream he hid his dark character, which created nightmares for several people on the show, disliked by the extreme super-conservative circles with which he was associated. Well-founded rumors want him half-breed and that despite his mythical profits we trembled at the idea of ​​losing a few dollars for a maternity leave…

He was accused of being a member of an anti-Semitic lobby, but also a fan of Hitler, as he had invited Lenny Riefenstahl, a well-known filmmaker of the Nazi “epic”, to Disney studios shortly after Crystal Night …

He also starred as one of the most eager associates of the McCarthy Anti-American Action Committee, even betraying his trusted associates and officials on suspicion of having links to Marxist ideology.

The information he gave to McCarthy put several artists on the infamous “black list”, destroying them professionally and widening the climate of terrorism and hysteria that had haunted Hollywood.

Empire

He died on December 15, 1966, at the age of 65, of lung cancer, and while he had seen the garage, from where he started, become a proper empire, which is still considered one of the most powerful in the United States, with a turnover of tens of billions in year, 134,000 employees and much more for financial analysts. Let us keep the good side, the one we saw with our own eyes, of the great storyteller, of the master of the image, of the inexhaustible imagination, who made billions of people all over the world have fun with his paper but vivid characters.

Source: AMPE