Walt Disney

Born in Chicago in 1901 and raised in Missouri, Walter Elias Disney drew early and often, took art classes as a boy, and worked as a commercial illustrator at eighteen. He moved to California in the early 1920s and founded the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy; with Ub Iwerks, he created Mickey Mouse in 1928 and voiced the character himself in the early years. As the studio expanded, he pushed synchronized sound, three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons, and new camera technologies into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). After the war came Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Mary Poppins (1964), which took five Academy Awards; across his career, Disney won 22 Oscars and received 59 nominations, both individual records. In 1955 he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, funding it with television programs like Walt Disney's Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club, and began planning Disney World and his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. A heavy smoker, he died of lung cancer in December 1966, months before ground was broken in Florida.