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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Walt Disney
WALTER DISNEY
Awarded by
President Lyndon B. Johnson
September 14, 1964
Artist and impresario, in the course of entertaining an age, he has created an American folklore.
"You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway."
1901 – 1966
Walter Elias Disney was an American movie producer, pioneer in animated cartoons, b. Chicago. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago and began his career as a cartoonist in 1920. In 1928 Disney created the character Mickey Mouse in the silent film Plane Crazy. That same year Mickey also appeared in Steamboat Willie, a short that initiated the concept of making a separate cartoon for each animated movement. Instantly famous, the film was also Disney's first attempt to use sound (his own voice for Mickey). He also experimented with the use of music (The Skeleton Dance ), the portrayal of speed (The Tortoise and the Hare ), three-dimensional effects (The Old Mill ), and the use of color.
Disney produced the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), which took three years to complete. Additional features included Pinocchio (1939), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). In Song of the South (1946), he merged live actors and animated figures. During World War II, Disney's studio produced cartoons for the armed services as training tools and morale builders.
Beginning with Treasure Island in 1951, Disney added live-action movies to his output, while still producing such animated classics as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). Thereafter, his studio produced several animal stories (e.g., Greyfriars Bobby, 1960), musical fantasies (e.g., Mary Poppins, 1964), and television programs. Disney and his productions received numerous Academy and other awards during his lifetime. After his death, the Disney studios remained active, diversified, and ultimately became enormously successful. In the early 1980s, they began producing films for adults.
Disneyland, a huge theme park in Anaheim, Calif., was opened by Disney in 1955. Disney's California Adventure, a second, smaller theme park in Anaheim, opened adjacent to Disneyland in 2001. An even bigger park, Walt Disney World, opened near Orlando, Fla., in 1971 as a theme park and resort, and Epcot Center, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom have since been added. Disneyland parks have also opened near Tokyo (1983) and in Marne-la-Vallée, near Paris (1992).
Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme park have developed into a multi-billion
television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-two hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, and twelve television networks.
Disneyland has developed from a cramped theme park to an open resort of two theme parks, three hotels and a large shopping complex. Walt Disney World is the a popular destination for vacations by tourists worldwide, and Tokyo Disneyland is the most visited theme park in the world (it's sister park Tokyo Disneysea is the second). In September 2005, The Walt Disney Company will open Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in China.
Traditional animation, with which Walt Disney built the success of his company, no longer continues at the Walt Disney Feature Animation studio. After a stream of financially unsuccessful traditionally-animated features in the late-1990s and early 2000s, the two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility. In 2004, Disney released their final traditionally animated feature film for the foreseeable, Home on the Range . The DisneyToons studio in Australia continues to produce lower-budget traditionally animated films.
On May 5 2005, The Walt Disney Company will open the Happiest Homecoming on Earth celebration in front of Walt's Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, celebrating fifty years of the world's most famous theme park.
Walt Disney has also been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal
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Medal History
