Walt Disney in 1946

So as it turns out I lied. I will be continuing this blog series for the foreseeable future and I am looking forward to writing about even more stories of inspiration. Today the topic of that story is Walt Disney.

Disney has been a household name in animation, business, and theme parks for nearly the past 100 years from when he founded The Walt Disney Company in 1923. One of the more impressive things about Walt Disney is the fact that this company is only one of many great successes. Walt by himself has the record for the most Academy Awards earned by an individual, with 22 Oscars and 59 nominations under his belt. Walt has also been given 2 Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. He is widely known as a pioneer of early American animation and is considered to be a very important historical figure. But as you can probably piece together, this did not happen overnight and nor was it without any hardships.

As a child, Walt discovered his love for drawing and was always supported and encouraged by his family. He would copy front page cartoons and do some small commissions as practice. Throughout high school he drew cartoons for the school paper often depicting patriotic images of WW1 where he also took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In September of 1918, Walt joined the Red Cross and was eventually deployed to France in November, after the armistice on the 11th.

After returning from his short and relatively uneventful time in France, Walt got his first apprenticeship at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio where he met Ub Iwerks, his lifelong friend and business partner. Unfortunately the art studio had a steadily declining revenue and was forced to lay off both Disney and Iwerks. Instead of simply finding another job to replace the one he lost, Walt and Ub decided to start their own business called Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. This was a career defining moment for young Walt who decided to take matters into his own hands and let his fate be decided by his own will. 

But like many things in life, it was a short lived venture that failed to gather even an ounce of attention from the general public. After understanding their revenue issue, Walt and Ub decided to take work elsewhere and earn some money to support their venture at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was here that Walt wanted to integrate the newer “cel animation”, but the company refused to change from their “cut-out style animation”. In response, Walt simply left the company and made another business called Laugh-O-Gram with a fellow co-worker, Fred Harman. Disney was not about to let some two-bit company exec tell him his idea was trash, especially when his own opinion on the matter was starkly in opposition. Disney knew what had to be done to further his own passions and reach the visions he had set out for himself. 

With this new company Walt would produce a short film series called Alice’s Wonderland based off of the ever so popular books. Unfortunately he could not get it to sell and had to close down his animation studio. But by some stroke of luck, Walt was able to find New York film distributor, Margaret J. Winkler, who contracted Walt for this animated series with the potential for two additional seasons to be produced, and Walt subsequently founded The Walt Disney Company to produce these upcoming seasons. 

A few years later, Mickey Mouse was created and the rest is history. Walt had finally created his animation empire all based off of his passion for drawing and cartoons. An empire that would rise to the power of a monopoly worth billions. There are quite a few things that could’ve changed this outcome, and who knows how much luck he needed for his plans to work. The point is that if Walt never even gave himself a chance and gave up early Disney would not be called Disney. Walt didn’t know if he was going to be successful or not, he simply did what he wanted to do because he loved to do it and as a result he somehow finagled his way to the 1%.