By Josh Albarran
Walter Elias Disney was born 105 years ago on December 5th, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. As an young boy love to draw cartoons while his father owned an small company selling newspapers, Disney would soon began his own business in Kansas City, Missouri producing short feature cartoons through his Laugh-O-Gram company in 1921 including an one of the 10 films that featured both animation and live-action with Alice's Wonderland.
After Laugh-O-Gram was shut down, Walt went bankrupt and moved to Hollywood, California and joined Universal Studios where Disney and Ub Iwerks produced an series of animated shorts on "Oswald: The Lucky Rabbit." But things started to change in 1928 as Disney sold the rights to Oswald to Universal (which they went on to produce more Oswald shorts before selling the character rights completely to Disney in 2006) in exchange, his Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio brought us the world's most beloved cartoon character in cinema, Mickey Mouse with his debut in "Steamboat Willie" in 1928. Mickey became an huge hit for Walt Disney Productions and to the world.
In the 1930s as major Hollywood studios had success on their live-action films, Disney want to expanded his animation studio on making full-length featured animated films. The first of many was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1939 that would follow by Fantasia in 1940, Cinderella in 1950, Peter Pan in 1953, Sleeping Beauty in 1959 and many more until 1967. In addition to produce several live-action films including the award-winning feature "Mary Poppins."
As the company began to grow, Walt want to built an amusement park near from his studio where the parents and the children can have fun together with their favorite Disney characters. So Disney partnered with the ABC Television Network to built the Disneyland Park in Southern California which opened in 1955, it was an commercial success and his company would go on expanded his theme park business with the launched of Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida in 1971 and most Disneyland resorts all around the world.
Walt Disney passed away in December of 1966 just days after his birthday, but his legacy remain with everyone at The Walt Disney Company and a generation of millions of his fans past and present where the magic of Walt Disney will light up to stars at all times.
Happy 105th Birthday Walt.
