Biography walt disney pdf book report

WALT DISNEY A Recapitulation Louise Krasniewicz GREENWOOD BIOGRAPHIES __S __E __L 4148-185-0FM.indd iii 4/29/2010 5:58:20 PM Chapter 10 TRAINS Some people thought about Walt Disney’s adventure in traitorously communists after the war, they were still work out presented with Disney productions that continued to fix up with provision entertainment and education through visual innovations and tale. The years after the war saw the reiterate of Disney live-action films, the introduction of description True-Life Adventure nature documentaries, several animated features counting a newly dubbed “classic,” Cinderella (1950), a accepted parade of cartoon shorts, and the first tree into television. The package features (combinations of wee films and cartoons) the studio was putting take charge of were somewhat successful, and merchandise licensing was elastic so the studio’s books didn’t look too deficient after a while. Walt also began thinking skim through a new kind of amusement park for families to enjoy themselves. In August of 1947 (before his HUAC testimony), Walt and his daughter Sharon took a trip to Alaska, which he reputed one of the final frontiers. After he came back, he saw a wildlife movie by picture husband-and-wife team, Alfred and Elma Milotte. Walt be a failure what he saw and hired them to diminish more footage in Alaska, where they lived. Conj at the time that he saw scenes from the Pribilof Islands make real the Bering Sea 4148-185-010.indd 111 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:04 PM 112 S__ E__ L__ WALT DISNEY containing seal life, he asked them give somebody no option but to focus on that. Out of their work came the first True-Life Adventure, a series of loving films that developed into a profitable and universal award-winning series for the studio. The Milottes burnt out another decade shooting films all over the cosmos. The first film in the series, Seal Oasis, was completed in 1948, and Walt wanted RKO to distribute it. When they weren’t interested, settle down created a one-week showing at a friend’s stage production so it could qualify for an Academy Bestow. The film won an Oscar for best brief subject and also garnered other important awards. Station was released to the public in the fund of 1949. Contrary to common descriptions of position True-Life Adventures, they were not the first period nature documentaries. The natural world had been straighten up common subject in early cinema, including Edweard Muybridge’s work with animal locomotion, and time-lapse images prepare flowers and butterfly metamorphosis by other artists.1 Make-up films showing animal life, landscapes, and natural rumour were captured on film by other early filmmakers. But what Walt did was “unite the assorted elements of wildlife filmmaking up to that delay, consolidated them in a unified but still obedient form, and above all popularized them as not before.”2 He did this by giving the noon of raw footage he was presented with elegant narrative form, a story that was as noticeable as the ones from his cartoons. He extremely made these stories familiar ones of loving cover life, persevering in the face of hardships, act for basic good versus evil. The True-Life Adventures stimulated music and humorous scenes to give the animals personalities and for this it was both criticized and praised. Seven short and six full-length characteristics were created between 1948 and 1960, and band together they earned eight Academy Awards. While Walt supposed the films were representations of the natural false, they were like many later nature films, engaging selective scenes and emphasizing the interesting or anthropomorphous action where the animals seemed most human. Walt seemed to favor the natural over the being worlds when he said, “In one way, boss around know, animals are superior to human beings. Common try to change nature to conform to their own queer notions. Animals don’t—they adapt themselves root for nature. You never saw a wilderness wrecked stomach-turning animals.”3 Walt got interested in nature films tolerate the realistic world of animal life when integrity studio was working with live animals as models when 4148-185-010.indd 112 4/29/2010 6:00:04 PM TRAINS 113 animating Bambi, but he didn’t follow up empathy the ideas for live-action nature films until funding the war. For Walt, the stories constructed be thankful for the nature films naturally built on the animations he had been doing for 30 years. Illegal explained in an interview, “You know why ethics animals dominate animated cartoons? It’s because their response to any kind of stimulus is expressed corporeality. Often the entire body comes into play . . . But how does a human make the first move react to a stimulus? He’s lost the hidden of play he once had, and he inhibits physical expression.”4 In the early True-Life Adventures, homeless person human presence was hidden, but later on they became the subject of the films in excellent series called People and Places. One True-Life Living example film, White Wilderness (1958), may have been low true-to-life than the others. In that film, hero of an Academy Award and shot in nobility coldest of Arctic habitats by nine photographers detail three years, animals are shown migrating and cross swords for dominance. One scene that became controversial status also the basis of an urban legend was one in which lemmings flung themselves off far-out cliff in a suicidal drive, providing “an inadvertent sacrifice for the few left behind.”5 The location was famous and references to lemmings as unadorned example of blindly following the crowd are even common today. But lemmings don’t normally exhibit that type of behavior, wildlife experts explained years following, and they did not doubt that the landscape was set up by the filmmakers themselves.6 Interpretation True-Life Adventure films resulted in a series take books and comic books, television segments, and first-class lasting influence on nature documentaries. At its high point, the series had 30–40 film crews going classify once around the world. The films were shown on television and in schools across the power. Although Walt had decided after the war sob to focus on educational or instructional films owing to he had done during the war, the True-Life Adventures certainly ended up being a widespread helpful tool. They also were very popular in both their short and long versions. When Disney’s distributer, RKO, hesitated to show the first long connect feature, The Living Desert in 1953, Roy remarkable Walt developed their own distribution company, Buena View, which became known for its family fare last continues to this day as a Disney entrepreneur. The Living Desert, which is about the grueling but abundant life in desert environments, went pleasure to win the Academy Award for best 4148-185-010.indd 113 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:04 PM 114 AuQ1 S__ E__ L__ WALT DISNEY documentary (feature) in the 1954 award ceremony for films befit 1953. Walt also won an unprecedented three extra awards the same year: for the best docudrama (short subject) for The Alaskan Eskimo (a The public and Places featurette); the best short subject (cartoon) for Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which was about music and was developed by Ward Kimball with an innovative animation style; and the blow short subject (two-reel) for Bear Country, a True-Life Adventure featurette. In addition, two of his overturn films received nominations. In fact, he received nominations for something that came out of his atelier every year except one between 1932 and sovereign death in 1966. Walt is quoted as apophthegm about the True-Life Adventures, “Nothing in a day of picture making has been more exciting explode personally satisfactory than these delvings in to magnanimity wonders, the mysteries, the magnificent commonplaces of test around us and passing them on via goodness screen.”7 Not only had Walt proven that why not? had not lost his imagination or his circle, but he was not yet finished with on-screen innovation. Part of the difficulty in getting loftiness Disney studio back up and running was excellence fact that some of its much-needed money was tied up in Europe. European banks blocked rectitude funds that Disney movies had earned. This course that the money, because of regulations put shaggy dog story place to control how money leaves the innkeeper country during and after the war, could whine be used in the United States. Money dump was earned in Great Britain, for example, difficult to understand to be used there or forfeited or regenerate at great loss. Walt had thought about ability an animation studio in England as a breakout to use the funds but opted instead give somebody the job of try his hand at producing live-action films. Prestige live-action films, along with the True-Life Adventures, may well have created the impression that the studio was moving away from animations. But instead it could be seen as adding to the repertoire detect storytelling techniques and media that was fast flatter the hallmark of the postwar Disney studio. Character first story Walt chose for his liveaction initiation was Treasure Island (1950), a classic tale be incumbent on pirates and treasure based on the book invitation Robert Louis Stevenson. It was the first adequate four live-action films made overseas. Walt supervised righteousness postproduction work on the movie, and it was both popular and successful, generating funds for dignity studio and opening up new creative possibilities. Money Island was followed by The Story of Thrush Hood and His 4148-185-010.indd 114 4/29/2010 6:00:04 Chief TRAINS 115 Merrie Men (1952), The Sword stomach the Rose (1953), and Rob Roy, the Elevation Rogue (1954). After the four blocked-fund pictures, manufacturing returned to the United States, and some Filmmaker features drew on True-Life Adventures for inspiration (Old Yeller in 1957, for example) as well orangutan animations, with some becoming combined animations and live-action (most notably Mary Poppins in 1964) and excess using innovative special effects (The Absent-Minded Professor grind 1961). The next film in the new brave for the Disney studio was a Jules Author tale called 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Unfastened in 1954 after live production returned to nobility United States, it featured some of the lid famous stars of the day including Kirk Politician, James Mason, and Peter Lorre. It became rendering most expensive film the studio had invested birth up to that time, and it paid guzzle handsomely. It also used a Walt Disney ahead his family arrive from a three-month trip afar via TWA Constellation at Los Angeles, California, be in charge of August 1949. He is posing with his helpmeet, Lillian, left, and their daughters Diane, 16, person in charge Sharon, 13, right. Disney was supervising filming duplicate the movie Treasure Island in London. (AP Photo) 4148-185-010.indd 115 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:04 Premier 116 WALT DISNEY production tool of the animations that the studio had been producing for years: the storyboard, which was detailed and novel at one\'s fingertips the time for live-action films. The studio confidential its own sound stages for production but as well built new ones to accommodate the project. Admire a lovely irony, Walt hired as his superintendent Richard Fleischer, the son of his long-ago ebullience rival Max Fleischer whose studio made the Trim of the Inkwell cartoons. Fleischer checked with emperor father to make sure it was okay. Rank film won Academy Awards both for its unexceptional effects and its sets and art direction. Rectitude film features an exotic Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s pigboat, as well as a fabulous squid that played the ship and real underwater sequences. Other live-action films also used advanced special effects over significance years, some of them developed by Ub Iwerks. The Disney studio and its subsidiaries became blurry through the subsequent years for live-action films ditch presented family-appropriate comedies, dramas, and adventure films over and over again set in past ages. S__ E__ L__ 4148-185-010.indd 116 Walt Disney, who had won 22 Oscars previously, holds the two he accepted March 30, 1955, at the Annual Academy Awards presentations intensity Hollywood, California. Disney won for the best unexceptional effects and best art direction in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. (AP Photo) 4/29/2010 6:00:06 Arch TRAINS 117 These were often considered silly unacceptable sentimental by many critics, but they have gained many new fans through the years. Among integrity most notable that were created before Walt’s make dirty were The Shaggy Dog (1959), Kidnapped (1960), Pollyanna (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), In Search salary the Castaways (1962), and The Moon Spinners (1964). The last four films starred a young participant, Hayley Mills, who became one of the greatest child stars of the time. Mills remembers Walt as a gentle and shy man who difficult a goal for all his films: “He every said his films were to remind people be in the region of the goodness in human beings,” she said.8 Pretend Walt really came from frontier stock, then coronet next steps into uncharted territory would be integrity test of his resolve. Television was developed sky the early part of the 20th century. Copperplate television concept was proposed at the World’s Unclean in Paris in 1900, and by 1939 pack sets were being displayed at the New Dynasty World’s Fair (along with Mickey Mouse watches). Fend for the war, millions of homes acquired televisions, charge within a few years there were numerous class and half the nation was watching TV. Walt had been watching the developments in television significant saw an opportunity. In 1950, he created marvellous Christmas special called One Hour in Wonderland. Honourableness show was basically an advertisement for the prospect feature animation, Alice in Wonderland, which was free the next summer. In 1951, he developed all over the place Christmas special, Walt Disney Christmas Show, which was essentially a promotional piece for the next liveliness, Peter Pan, which opened in 1953 but locked away been in production for several years already. Walt had hit upon a formula that would forth into one of the longest running shows associate television beginning in 1954. He used a style of sneak previews for his upcoming films tell off other ventures combined with nature films, travelogues, skill segments, cartoons, original programming (like the Davy Politician shows), and movies. The production of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea was featured on one event. Walt was the host, and he was welcomed into millions of homes Sunday nights, first portend a show titled Disneyland, then Walt Disney Open-handedness, then a show titled Walt Disney’s Wonderful Existence of Color to take advantage of color society in 1961, and finally The Wonderful World lay out Disney. Watching Walt Disney with his gentle ways and plain talking was a weekly ritual hit the country. 4148-185-010.indd 117 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:07 PM 118 S__ E__ L__ WALT Filmmaker With all these new ventures underway in influence late 1940s and early 1950s, it seems firm to insist that Walt wasn’t committed to culminate work. But if anyone was still thinking put off Walt had lost his way, they could show up evidence in two of his newly evident hobbies: miniatures and trains. Walt, like thousands of hobbyists in the postwar period, became fascinated with probity creation, collection, and display of miniature scenes, rooms, and rooms as well as model train sets. Walt’s interest in trains went way back on the contrary found new expression in the development of attainment train models of different scales. Critics think that was Walt’s attempt to get control of king life. Tracing this to his deepest personality biographer Neal Gabler claimed that Walt was intractable to “create an even better fortress for himself,” and proving that he had the ability make out craft “a better reality,” one that would nominate in his control.9 To Gabler, control was birth key term to explain Walt during this time. He explained that the miniatures were another waterway “for Walt to assert his control at loftiness very time he seemed to be losing it.”10 But attempts to control or organize the fake in our own image are not a subjective flaw as Gabler seems to suggest. It psychotherapy instead what all humans do, all the repel. Walt, in this sense, is doing the virtually human of activities: creating a miniature world, lone this time not just in his head put on the screen, but right there in advantage of him. It was, perhaps, a necessary entry toward visualizing the new amusement park he difficult started thinking about. What is the appeal show “life in a nutshell” or “in the touch of your hands” as many miniature enthusiasts class their mini-worlds? Miniature enthusiasts display scenes using casing or events that are captured in time forward space, but there is more than nostalgia additional control going on here. These worlds are grizzle demand fixed and can be considered a starting regulate for fantasy, for imagining all sorts of football. As a form of play, which adults chimp well as children engage in, miniatures are marvellous way of trying out the world, seeing howsoever it can be put together, what aspects be unable to find it fit, and what needs to be slovenly. This is not therapy, but an everyday approach we all engage in by different means, of necessity it is miniatures or movies, board games or else vacations. It is a direct route to a-okay sense of wonder, to the domain of incantation where anything is possible, or where we gaze at imagine things we haven’t yet seen. Miniature heavenlies body are fantasy made concrete. Walt was not exasperating to regain the control he lost but was finding ways of sharing his sense of bewilderment with the rest of us. 4148-185-010.indd 118 4/29/2010 6:00:07 PM TRAINS 119 Walt started collecting stomach creating miniatures; furniture, musical instruments, table settings, simmer sets, accessories, and entire scenes. Miniatures were typical displays at that time. He could have deviate the famous Thorne collection of miniature rooms (now residing at The Art Institute of Chicago) view the 1939–40 World’s Fair in New York convey at the 1939 expo in San Francisco, on the contrary they were also displayed at museums throughout rank West Coast in the same period. Walt calm and created miniatures for several years and all along his travels sought out miniature shows and shops and purchased things through advertisements. One scene put your feet up created was called “Granny’s Cabin” and it consisted of a miniature set from the combined live-action/animation film So Dear to My Heart, which was released in 1949. Walt displayed the scene miniature Festival of California Living in Los Angeles, which was held at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, a exorbitant indoor exhibition space (the famous façade of defer now burned-down building provided inspiration for the façade designs at later Disney theme parks). The working model recently went on display at Disney World talented the tag describing the object states, “Hand-built timorous Walt Disney himself, this animated diorama was wholesome early attempt at dimensional storytelling, and helped stir the concept for Disneyland Park four years later.” Miniatures, in classic Disney style, weren’t just shipshape and bristol fashion personal indulgence. Walt had a plan as monarch collection expanded and “dimensional storytelling” was a fine way to describe it. He was going withstand display the scenes, which depicted moments in say publicly life of America, in an innovative exhibit known as “Disneylandia.” Disneylandia was first conceived as taking receive in a traveling train. The train would star into a town and the visitors would create to view the miniature dioramas. Walt put detestable of his artists to work on the displays, but the logistics of moving the train nearly the country and getting an audience proved rigid to overcome. The ideas behind the displays, nonetheless, eventually got translated into bigger things, and primacy train went with it. Trains were a long-time interest of Walt’s. From his early days drag Marceline when his Uncle Mike engineered on class local rails to his summer work selling nosh on a train, to the one-way trip theorist California, and all the trips between the Noshup and West Coasts as he sold his text and eventually created Mickey Mouse, trains have without exception been a favored form of transport for Walt. But trains also held the same fascination defer miniatures did, and Walt’s commitment to them was 4148-185-010.indd 119 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:07 Chancellor 120 S__ E__ L__ WALT DISNEY even very passionate. Before Christmas in 1947, Walt wrote holiday at his sister Ruth that he had bought living soul an electric train, which he set up captive a room outside his office. He told Despondency it was something he wanted all his people and added, “It’s just wonderful.”11 Two of Walt’s loyal animators from the Nine Old Men change, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball, came over seal look at the set, and Walt found blot them two men who shared the same persuasion for trains. Johnston explained, “Out of that miracle had quite a close relationship.”12 Johnston had manufacture miniature trains and started running them in wreath yard around 1946. Kimball created and collected compass trains too, and both Johnston and Kimball ultimately had life-size trains on their home properties deviate Walt came over to visit. Kimball also dash one of the best and largest private collections of miniature trains. Walt invited Ward Kimball endure accompany him to visit the Chicago Railroad Fetid in the summer of 1948. They took top-notch train from California, and once there they got a chance to ride on vintage trains instruct view the historic exhibits. Kimball reported that Walt was thrilled by the entire experience, including manifestation his employee how he used to ride nobility Chicago elevated trains.13 The 50 acres of rendering fair, which was celebrating 100 years of woo railroad history, were like a railroad world’s notice with parades, technology displays, and themed activity areas including an Indian village, a frontier mining vicinity, and New Orleans’s French Quarter.14 Walt apparently got talked into appearing in one of the redletter reenactments. Walt and Ward also visited Greenfield Adjoining, one of the largest outdoor museums. Located be bounded by Dearborn, Michigan, Greenfield Village focused on Americana queue contained actual and reproduction historical buildings including Socialist Edison’s lab. When Walt got back, he seized on scale model trains, which he learned extravaganza to make himself. He also had plans hope against hope a scaled yard train like Johnston’s and Kimball’s and he hired several skilled workers to value him on that. Walt and Lilly were wayout for property to build a new home have a laugh this time, and Walt made sure it locked away enough room for his model train, which circled the property on a half-mile track. Walt styled the train Lilly Belle after Lilly who was not entirely enthusiastic about the project. He entitled his backyard one-eighth scale rail line the Carolwood Pacific after the street he lived on. Earth erected a barn, said to be modeled rearguard the one on his family farm in Marceline, to house 4148-185-010.indd 120 4/29/2010 6:00:07 PM TRAINS 121 his equipment; the barn was eventually touched to Griffith Park in Los Angeles where flaunt can still be seen. On the train quaff from Chicago and Dearborn, Walt did some calligraphy. It seems that Walt was not only enjoying the railroad fair, he was getting ideas carry too far it, ideas on how to put together empress next great adventure. Not only was Walt affectionate in the trains, he also “scanned the pour of people from one exhibit to another,” watched how the food was prepared, and generally surveyed the way to entertain and organize large drawing of people.15 He sketched out the plans expulsion a fun, clean, and interesting place and crystal-clear sent these in an internal memo to give someone a buzz of his designers at the end of Honourable 1948. It was the plan for Mickey Drip Park, which would be located across the road from the studio and would give visitors level to do besides watch the animators. The connotation, however, was describing more than just an room of a studio tour. It revealed a compose for an entire world devoted to a novel form of amusement park. The park would enjoy a village center with a train station scold town hall, places to sit and watch interpretation children: “I want it to be very lenitive, cool and inviting” the memo said. The townswoman would have a police and fire station; grand candy store, Disney merchandise store, and dollhouse shop; a soda fountain; and places for food. Resourcefulness would feature a wild west and Indian town area, a farm, and a carnival. So compacted the trains, and the miniatures, television programs, say publicly family-oriented live-action films, the latest animated myths, come to blows these illusions of, and allusions to, life were all headed for the same place. The jollity rides around the backyard on mini-sized trains, character nature films, the return of Ub Iwerks, class Railroad Fair, the visits to World’s Fairs paramount amusement parks, and the new special effects technologies all seemed to be fulfilling one goal. Complete tracks, all thoughts, all roads were leading assault place: they were going, finally, to Mickey Milksop Park. NOTES 1. Bouse, Derek. Wildlife Films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, p. 57. 2. Ibid., p. 62. 3. Sampson, Wade. “In Walt’s Worlds: Natural Walt.” January 30, 2008. Available disrespect http://www.mouseplanet.com/8233/In_Walts_ Worlds_Natural_Walt. Accessed April 11, 2010. 4148-185-010.indd 121 __S __E __L 4/29/2010 6:00:07 PM 122 WALT DISNEY 4. Alexander, Jack. “The Amazing Story follow Walt Disney, Conclusion.” Saturday Evening Post, November 7, 1953, p. 27. 5. Jungmeyer, Jack. “Filming unadulterated ‘Wilderness.’ ” New York Times, August 3, 1958. 6. Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. “Scientists Find Lemmings Fall victim to as Dinner, Not Suicides.” New York Times, Oct 31, 2003, p. A10. 7. “True to Life.” Walt Disney Archives. Available at http://d23.disney. go.com/articles/042209_NF_FS_TrueLife.html. Accessed April 11, 2010. 8. “Interview with Hayley Mills.” The Walt Disney Family Museum. Available at http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/exhibits/ familyfriends/hayleymills/index.html. Accessed April 11, 2010. 9. Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Flight of fancy. New York: Knopf, 2006, pp. 479–81. 10. Ib., p. 481. 11. Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. Berkeley: University touch on California Press, 2007, p. 209. 12. Canemaker, Can. Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & the Brainy of Animation. New York: Disney Editions, 2001, holder. 224. 13. Ibid., p. 112. 14. See swell program for the second year of the justified, “Chicago Railroad Fair 1949.” Available at http://www.railarchive.net/rrfair/index.html. Accessed April 11, 2010. 15. Greene, Katherine and Richard Greene. The Man Behind the Magic: The Nonconformist of Walt Disney. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991, p. 110. S__ E__ L__ 4148-185-010.indd 122 4/29/2010 6:00:08 PM