2023-10-16 03:10:00
With more than 60 animated films that marked several generations, a cast of iconic characters, a million-dollar business and the challenge of competing in the golden age of platforms and political correctness, The Walt Disney Company will celebrate its centenary today with the presentation in Disney+ of the short “Once upon a time there was a studio”.
Written and directed by Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, this short film in which the more than 500 animated protagonists of their factory appear, aims to cover a century of history of the studio that created the first cartoon with synchronized sound, the first animated feature film and the first computer-generated animated film, among other milestones.
Walter Elias Disney, the co-founder of the world’s most successful entertainment company, came from humble beginnings. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, Mickey Mouse’s creator discovered his talent and interest in drawing when he moved with his family to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, and his aunt He gave him pencils and paints.
As a teenager he enlisted in the military and spent a year as an ambulance driver in France, just following the end of the First World War. It is said that, instead of camouflage, his ambulance was decorated with drawings and caricatures.
After the war, “Walt,” as he was known, returned to Kansas and founded his first art and animation company, known as Laugh-O-gram Films. The shorts, developed with collaborators such as animator Ub Iwerks, showed the potential of combining new and classic techniques. But the project did not make money and, on the verge of bankruptcy, he had to abandon it.
In the summer of 1923, he used his last dollars to buy a train ticket to Los Angeles, where he and his brother Roy began making animated films in their uncle’s garage.
When the cartoon distributor, Margaret Winkler, finally agreed to finance 12 episodes of the shorts known as the “Alice Comedies,” brothers Walt and Roy founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.
The appearance of a new character in that saga called “Julius the Cat” boosted the reputation of the fledgling company and earned the young brothers a contract with Universal Pictures to make short films starring “Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit,” which premiered in 1927.
The following year, something happened that changed animation forever. Walt and his wife, Lillian, traveled to New York to renegotiate Oswald’s contract but the series producer refused to offer reasonable terms for a renewal. On the train back to Los Angeles, Disney decided to replace the rabbit with a mouse that he nicknamed Mortimer, but his wife thought it was a terrible name and suggested they call him Mickey.
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