James Baquet

    Few people have brought as much happiness to millions of people as Walter Elias “Walt” Disney (1901-1966). He has even been called “Uncle Walt,” as though he were everyone’s favorite relative.

    In 1878, Disney’s father had emigrated from Canada to look for gold in California before becoming a farmer in Kansas. After marrying, the young couple moved to Chicago — where Walt was born — then returned to farming in Missouri. There, Walt copied cartoons from the newspaper for fun, and was paid to draw pictures of a neighbor’s horse. In 1911, the family moved again, to Kansas City, where Walt sold newspapers and studied art formally.

    When the family moved to Chicago again, in 1917, Walt attended high school in the daytime — he drew cartoons for the school newspaper — and studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts at night. Later, he went to France, where he drove an ambulance for the Red Cross after World War I. In Kansas City again, he illustrated newspaper advertisements and formed an animation studio.

    Though his cartoons were popular, the studio failed, so he moved to Hollywood and — with his brother Roy — founded the Disney Brothers’ Studio (later, the Walt Disney Company). After producing several popular characters, in 1928 the studio finally created the little mouse that has become a global icon: Mickey was born. In 1932, this earned Walt a special Academy Award, the first of the 26 he received. This is still the record for the most Oscars ever.

    Greater success was to follow. He produced the first full-length animated feature, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (for which he also won an Oscar), produced more cartoons and eventually live-action movies, founded the theme park called “Disneyland,” started a weekly television show, followed by many more and eventually the Disney Channel, and worked on development of EPCOT Center, a planned community to be located in Florida.

    When Walt died in 1966, this last project was abandoned, but it shows the breadth of Disney’s vision. He summed up his philosophy in these words: “If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse.”

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. humorous drawings

    2. another name for an Academy Award

    3. the art of making drawings move

    4. symbol, well-known image

    5. moved from (as to another country)

    6. started, began

    7. extent, great size