By Lucie M. Winborne, ReMind Magazine
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” It’s hard to dispute such a statement when one considers the life and career of Walt Disney. The man whose surname became synonymous with wholesome sentimentality and the magic of belief was an artist, inventor and innovator whose unflagging determination and entrepreneurial brilliance left a permanent mark on both entertainment and popular culture.
Walt’s calling was evident at an early age: By 7 he was selling his drawings to neighbors, and in high school he studied art and photography while honing his drawing skills at night school. At 20 he launched Laugh-O-Gram Films to produce animated shorts for local businesses but went bankrupt in less than two years. A high-school dropout, with little more to his name than a suitcase and $40, Walt headed for Hollywood, where he teamed with his supportive and business-savvy older brother, Roy, and started over in their uncle’s garage.
Walt always claimed that his most iconic character was based on “a particular friend,” one of the tame mice that nightly scrounged in his Laugh-O-Grams office wastebasket. Whether fact or fable, Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon to include a synchronized soundtrack, made Mickey Mouse an immediate hit, but Walt was already planning something bigger: the movie-length, full-color Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Another instant favorite, the film earned Disney a special Academy Award and was followed by the equally classic Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.
For all his pioneering achievements in cinema and later television, Walt’s greatest gamble — and achievement — arguably lay in the creation of Disneyland, for which he mortgaged nearly all he had to purchase the orange grove near Anaheim, Calif., where “The Happiest Place on Earth” opened in 1955 and soon became one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions. Yet even then he was not satisfied. Ever the dreamer-entrepreneur, a little over a decade later he began construction of Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Sadly, he would not live to see it completed, succumbing to lung cancer in 1966 at age 65.
Shortly before his death, Disney said, “I hate to see downbeat pictures. I know life isn’t that way, and I don’t want anyone telling me it is.” As long as we can believe and imagine as he did, the endearing worlds Walt fashioned from pen, ink and dreams will continue to delight and inspire us for generations to come.
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