The story of the "Walt Disney Company" began in the distant 1901 December 5, when the family of a carpenter and teacher was born the fourth of five children - Walter Elias.
When Walt was 4 years old, the Disney family moved to the small town of Marseilles, Missouri. There, the Disney family bought a farm. The family had no money for pencils and paper, and Walt wanted to draw. He found resin, a stick, and drew the house...
A lot of people in Marseilles knew Walt. He had a cheerful temper, so his neighbors and acquaintances loved him very much. One of his neighbors, an elderly veteran Dr. Sherwood, paid Walt 25 cents for drawing his horse on a piece of paper. Later, Disney believed that it was a good portrait of Dr. Sherwood's mare and pushed him to become an artist.
Walt has shown interest in drawing since childhood, and his first comics began to sell in seven years. Young Walt participated in the creation of the school newspaper as an artist and photographer, and in the evenings visited the Academy of Fine Arts. Then he took a course of newspaper cartoonists, where they taught non-standard thinking, funny violations of the usual logic and concise manner.
Soon they decided to move to Kansas City, - as well as many poor families who migrated to America in search of a living. This move played a significant role in Walt's life. In Kansas City was a giant rich mansion, hiding behind a high fence and surrounded by a lush garden. The mansion belonged to a private owner and was the object of desire of local children. All of them so wanted to crawl through some secret hole, play in the garden, and maybe sneak into the mansion itself, run along its luxurious enfilades, look at the old portraits.
Walt tried many times to get into the property, and all his attempts ended in failure. Then he swore that when he grew up, he would build a huge house with entertainment for the children, with a huge garden for games. So, apparently, was born a dream, after forty years of embodiment in Disneyland.
Creating the Walt Disney Company
Interested in serious animation, Walt Disney decides to leave his native Kansas, and in August 1923, having nothing but a few drawings, one ready-made animated game film and $40 in his pocket, goes to Hollywood.
"I went from one studio to another, there I visited all the offices in a row, from human resources to the set. The only job I managed to get was to be a statistician. I had to ride a horse a few meters in a crowd of other extras. However, it was raining heavily, the shooting was moved to another day, and then our scene was just thrown out of the script. It was the end of my acting career," writes Disney in his memoirs.
Quite desperate to get a job in Hollywood, Walt settles in his uncle Robert's garage, promising to pay for its use someday. For $500 borrowed from his brother, he buys paints, tassels, spotlights - everything he needs to make cartoons. Roy becomes Walt's companion and they create Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.
Soon Swarm faces a giant problem: how and how to feed a brother who has plunged himself into the work of his brother? Normally, Roy would leave the garage and go to a small room where the two of them would huddle together to make a modest dinner for two. But suddenly, Walt, who hadn't paid attention to any everyday difficulties, was having a terrible scandal, during which he was yelling at the confused Roy that he wouldn't have to eat the miserable balance that his brother was feeding him. And then Roy decides to take the "desperate step": he proposes to his beloved girlfriend, Edna Francis, who, having become the wife of the luckless cook Roy, moves to the brothers and for many months becomes their cook.
Walt himself had already thought about getting married. A wonderful girl, Lillian Bounds, got a job in the studio. She was mostly in charge of paintwork," she said, painting the characters Walt had created. Walt didn't have to take special care of Lillian - she immediately fell in love with her "boss", and when he was broke, it was easy to refuse to earn $15 a week - for the good of the studio.
The idea of the first cartoon Walt scooped up, interested in cartoon paintings of Max Flasher, who has a cartoon character as it were in the real world. Disney did the opposite - he introduced the REAL hero in the cartoon world, which, in fact, is much more difficult. So was born "Alice in Wonderland".
Having received a small amount of money for this cartoon, Walt and Roy decided to change the name of the studio. October 16, 1923 Walt Disney signed a contract with Margaret Winkler - the distributor from New York. This date is considered the day of foundation of the current Walt Disney Company. This name turned out to be more lucky for brothers.
The studio had been producing Alice's films for four years, and then Walt decided to switch to producing fully animated cartoons. The star of the new series was a funny rabbit named Oswald, invented and drawn by Walt Disney. In just one year, the studio released 26 episodes of rabbit adventure, but when it came time to start a new season, Walt was horrified to find that the practical Margaret Winkler managed to lure the four artists of the studio and now plans to release cartoons about Oswald without the participation of the creator. Alas, the contract was drawn up in such a way that it was the distributor, and not the author owned the rights to the cartoon character. It was a bitter, but useful lesson for Disney, who has since carefully ensured that the rights to all his creations belonged only to him.