Had he still been alive, today would have marked Walt Disney’s 110th birthday. Happy birthday, Walt Disney, and a big thank you for all the wonderful things you’ve given us!
Walt Disney
A hundred years ago, Wagner conceived of a perfect and all-embracing art, combining music, drama, painting, and the dance, but in his wildest imagination he had no hint what infinite possibilities were to become commonplace through the invention of recording, radio, cinema and television. There already have been geniuses combining the arts in the mass-communications media, and they have already given us powerful new art forms. The future holds bright promise for those who imaginations are trained to play on the vast orchestra of the art-in-combination. Such supermen will appear most certainly in those environments which provide contact with all the arts, but even those who devote themselves to a single phase of art will benefit from broadened horizons.
- Walt Disney
If Steve Jobs was the Walt Disney of the computer industry, as many claim, I think it’s only fair to argue that Walt Disney was the Henry Ford of the television industry. Whomever you decide to compare him to; Walter Elias Disney will probably be remembered as one of the very biggest names and most important people of the 20th century. He produced and directed several films, was both an entrepreneur and an entertainer, a philanthropist and animator and founder of one of the best-known motion picture production companies in the world. Walt is particularly noted for his long career as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as his innovation in both animation and theme park design.
Together with his staff, including his long-time collaborator Ub Iwerks, he created some of the world’s most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won twenty-two Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year. Walt Disney holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (fifty-nine) and the number of Oscars awarded (twenty-two). He also earned four honorary Oscars while his last competitive Academy Award was posthumous.
Walt Disney’s death from lung cancer came very suddenly, barely a month after it had first been diagnosed. On December 15, 1966 – only ten days after his 65th birthday – Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer. The last thing he reportedly wrote before his death was the name of actor Kurt Russell, the significance of which remains a mystery.