WALT DISNEY FACTS

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Walter Elias Disney (1901 – 1966) - American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur – was born in Chicago but hos forbears go back to France, notably to Isigny sur Mer, a small town in Normandy. The town is famous for its dairy farms, the cows there being known for producing the richest, creamiest butter and cheese. When the Dupont family established the Dupont d’Isigny confectionary company, it began producing its signature d’Isigny caramels.

In 1066, William the Conqueror awarded the title “Lords of Isigny” to the French father-and-son duo Robert and Hugues Suhard, as a thank you for helping him conquer England. They became Robert and Hugues d’Isigny, and settled in England, where d’Isigny became the anglicized Disney. A branch of the family eventually moved away to Ireland — Walt Disney’s ancestors.

D’Isignyland wouldn’t have been the same.

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Disney’s first visit to Normandy, the home of his ancestors, was in 1918. Aged 17, he was too young to fight in the Great War, so had doctored his birth certificate so he could serve as a driver in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in France. He drew cartoons on the side of his ambulance for decoration and had some of his work published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes.

The war ended not long after Disney arrived, so he was able to then visit Normandy. It was said that he was constantly sketching during his time there, and that he always looked back on that first trip with fond memories. Not long after he returned to the US, Disney opened his first studio in Kansas City.

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Disney’s research into his family tree resulted in the creation of a Disney family crest inspired by the original d’Isigny coat of arms, which is emblazoned above the gates to both the Sleeping Beauty and Cindrella castles at Disneyland.

The Disney Family Crest on Sleeping Beauty Castle

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Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private but adopted a warm and outgoing public persona. He had high standards and high expectations of those with whom he worked. Although there have been accusations that he was racist or antisemitic, they have been contradicted by many who knew him.

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In 1927, just before the transition to sound in motion pictures, Disney and experimented with a new character—a cheerful, energetic, and mischievous mouse called Mickey. They had planned two shorts to introduce Mickey Mouse when The Jazz Singer, a motion picture with the popular singer Al Jolson, brought the novelty of sound to the movies. Recognising the possibilities for sound in animated-cartoon films, Disney quickly produced a third Mickey Mouse cartoon equipped with voices and music, entitled Steamboat Willie, and cast aside the other two soundless cartoon films. When it appeared in 1928, Steamboat Willie was a sensation.

It's rumoured that Walt Disney had a phobia of mice. While this is hard to prove, it is a fact that his big-eared creation was named 'Mortimer', until his wife persuaded him that 'Mickey' had a better ring to it…

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Disney had long thought of producing feature-length animated films in addition to the shorts. In 1934 he began work on a version of the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. While he actively engaged in all phases of creation in his films, he functioned chiefly as coordinator and final decision maker rather than as designer and artist. Snow White was widely acclaimed by critics and audiences alike as an amusing and sentimental romance. By animating substantially human figures in the characters of Snow White, the Prince, and the Wicked Queen and by forming caricatures of human figures in the seven dwarfs, Disney departed from the scope and techniques of the shorts and thus proved animation’s effectiveness as a vehicle for feature-length stories.

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Thereafter he developed a wide variety of full-length entertainment films, such as Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). Disney also produced a totally unusual and exciting film—his multisegmented and stylised Fantasia (1940), in which cartoon figures and colour patterns were animated to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Paul Dukas, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and others.

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Quick Facts:

The sorcerer in Fantasia is called 'Yen Sid', Disney spelt backwards.

Lots of early Disney films are a mother-free zone: The Jungle Book, Pinocchio and - sob - Bambi. It's been suggested that this was because of their creator's guilt over the death of his own mother in 1938. Fresh from the success of Snow White, he had bought a home for his parents, but tragically a faulty heating system led to Flora Disney's death from carbon monoxide poisoning.

The rubbish-compactor, Wall-E, was named after WalterElias Disney

Disneyland, California, was built in the early 1950s, opening in 1955. Anxious to be on site as much as possible, Walt built an apartment for his family above the 'Fire Department' on Main Street. A lamp in the window signalled to staff that he was in residence, and this is now always alight in his honour.

Disney World, Florida, opened in 1971, long after after the original Disneyland in California. Walt was unsettled by the sight of costumed characters having to run through the 'wrong' lands to get to their allotted spots, spoiling the magic at the first site. He came up with an elaborate tunnel system which runs beneath Disney World, and allows actors to put on their costumes and appear in the appropriate land without shattering the illusion. The entire park is built on a gentle incline to accommodate these.

Main Street is based on 1910 America, while Tomorrowland was designed to represent 1986 - both were chosen because they were Halley's Comet years.

Bruce, the 'vegetarian' great white shark of Finding Nemo, was named after the mechanical shark used in Jaws, which, in turn, was named after Steven Spielberg's lawyer!

Walt's final words - written rather than spoken - were, rather cryptically 'Kurt Russell'. No one has any idea why.

Mickey Mouse was the first animated character to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Contrary to rumours, Disney's daughter has assured he wasn't cryogenically frozen. “There is absolutely no truth that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen," Disney's daughter, Diane, wrote in her 1972 biography. "I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics.”55

A saucy detail was hidden in the Rescuers, where a photo of a nude lady was sneaked into the background. Disney admitted to this one and had to recall 3.4 million videos!

In 1957, President Harry Truman (a Democrat) took a trip to Disneyland and refused to ride the Dumbo ride because elephants are the symbol of the Republican party.

Though commonly referred to as seven 'dwarves', the films actual title is Snow White and the Seven 'Dwarfs'. This is because in 1938 when the film was released, 'dwarfs' was the accepted plural. Blame JRR Tolkien for the change.

The Lion King was originally called 'King of the Jungle', before someone noted that lions don't tend to inhabit jungles.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was make-or-break for Disney, costing his studios $1.4m to make. It was widely derided as Disney's Ruin, by people subsequently proved non-psychic. Adjusted for inflation, it's one of the ten highest-grossing films of all time.

Disney had been a heavy smoker since World War I. He did not use cigarettes with filters and had smoked a pipe as a young man. In early November 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was treated with cobalt therapy. On November 30, he felt unwell and was taken by ambulance from his home to St. Joseph Hospital where, on December 15, at age 65, he died of circulatory collapse caused by the cancer.