LIFE Walt Disney: From Mickey to the Magic Kingdom

By The Editors of LIFE

Disney World is often referred to as the "happiest place on earth" and the character Mickey Mouse is long ingrained in our collective memory. The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world. But behind all of that was one ambitious small-town farm boy who failed as often as he succeeded, and finally found worldwide fame - thanks to a cartoon mouse.

Throughout the rise of Walt Disney, LIFE magazine was there, covering everything from the first Mickey merchandising to the launch of Walt Disney World in 1971, and now in this all-new special edition, LIFE revisits both the man and the magic in LIFE Walt Disney: From Mickey to the Magic Kingdom. Very few people know that as a young entrepreneur, he struggled with bankruptcy, borrowing money until he had a hit with the Mickey Mouse cartoons in the late 1920s. Beloved movies of today - Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi - bombed when first released, and it wasn't until the astronomical success of Disneyland in 1951 that finally put his company into the black.

From early days to troubled times, and successes and failures too numerous to count that bring us all to the World of Disney that we all know and love today, LIFE Walt Disney is a fitting tribute to a creative force that has and will continue to influence countless generations for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life
• Release date: Apr 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781683303848

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

The World of Walt Disney

By J.I. Baker

YALE JOEL/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

LIFE’S OCTOBER 15, 1971, COVER celebrates the opening of Walt Disney World in Orlando. Characters and park staff pose before Cinderella Castle, which was twice as tall as Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland and contained what LIFE called a lavish restaurant. The park’s Hall of Presidents featured all (then 36!) of the American leaders, whereas Disneyland featured just one: Abraham Lincoln. And the vinyl leaves of Florida’s Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse were draped with real Spanish moss.

Future entrepreneurs and geniuses, take note: Despite the perception that Walt Disney’s career was an unbroken series of triumphs, the great visionary arguably failed (materially, at least) more often than he succeeded. As a poor boy in Kansas City, Missouri, he delivered papers in the deep snow to help his unsuccessful father. As an ambitious young adult in the Midwest and Hollywood, he struggled with bankruptcy, borrowing money and subsisting on beans for years—until he had a hit with the Mickey Mouse cartoons in the late 1920s. (Would you believe no one wanted them at first?)

Hollywood insiders called the world’s first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s Folly—until Walt proved them wrong when it became a worldwide hit in 1937. But three of the four Disney animated features that followed—Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi—bombed. (Only Dumbo, a rush job, was a hit.) Though the ever-optimistic Walt kept wishing upon stars, that didn’t pay the bills—and he struggled through a debilitating strike, a catastrophic war, and plenty of box-office bombs. (Where’s the Blue Fairy when you need her?) But his dreams came true again in the mid-’50s when the astronomical success of Disneyland put the company in the black, erasing decades’ worth of debt.

Whether Walt was riding high or suffering from what he called the D.D.s (disillusionment and discouragement), LIFE was there, covering everything from the first Mickey merchandising to the launch of Walt Disney World in 1971. During the studio’s World War II doldrums, we published full-page storyboards from the patriotic project Victory Through Air Power and showed child-friendly (eek!) Mickey Mouse gas masks. In the 1950s, we went behind the scenes of such classic films as Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And long before Johnny Depp became a household name, LIFE took readers inside the launch of a Disneyland attraction called Pirates of the Caribbean.

You’ll find all of these things—and much more—in the pages that follow, painting a portrait of the entrepreneur and genius whose life, like his films, began Once upon a time . . .

Marceline and the Mouse

How an ambitious small-town farm boy found worldwide fame—thanks to, well, a cartoon rodent

CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP

DOWNTOWN MARCELINE, Missouri, on September 21, 2001, Walt Disney’s 100th birthday. The unassuming town had an enormous impact on Disney, who lived there from 1906 to 1911 while his father struggled to support his family as a farmer. The place became a paradigm that Walt was constantly seeking to replicate in the likes of, say, Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. It was where he first had the normal settled life that a child craves, says author and animator Stephen Cavalier.

The trick of making things move on film is what got me.

—Walt Disney

In 1906, an unsuccessful carpenter named Elias Disney moved his wife, Flora, and their five children from Chicago to the town of Marceline, Missouri, hoping to find success as a farmer. Little more than a whistle-stop between the Windy City and Kansas City, Marceline was then—as now—an unlikely source of inspiration for the artist who would almost single-handedly transform American popular culture in the 20th century. But every great man was a boy once—and the Disneys’ youngest son, Walt, was not quite five years old when he fell in love with the little town.

Born in Chicago on December 5, 1901, Walt would come to see Marceline as the source of the only real childhood he ever had. He spent his four short years there prowling its main street, marveling at the locomotives, and sketching the animals that populated the family farm. It was the most important part of Walt’s life, his wife, Lillian, later said. And it would exert an enduring influence on nearly everything he did—from homey films