Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois in nineteen-oh-one.

His family
moved to the state of Missouri. He grew up on a farm there. At the age of sixteen,
Disney began to study art in Chicago. Four years later, he joined the Kansas City
Film Ad Company. He helped make cartoon advertisements to be shown in movie
theaters. Advertisements help sell products.

In nineteen twenty-three, Walt Disney moved to Hollywood, California to join his

brother Roy. He wanted to be a movie producer or director. But he failed to find a
job. So he decided to make animated movies. In them, drawings are made to
move in a lifelike way. We call them cartoons. Disney the artist wanted to bring
his pictures to life.

A cartoon is a series of pictures on film. Each picture is a little different from the
one before. Each shows a tiny change in movement. When we see the movie, the
pictures seem to be alive. The cartoon people and animals move. They speak with
voices recorded by real actors.

Disney opened his first movie company in the back of an office. For several years,
he struggled to earn enough money to pay his expenses. He believed that cartoon
movies could be as popular as movies made with actors. To do this, he decided he
needed a cartoon hero. Help for his idea came from an unexpected place.

Disney worked with Ub Iwerks, another young artist. They often saw mice
running in and out of the old building where they worked. So they drew a cartoon
mouse. It was not exactly like a real mouse. For one thing, it stood on two legs
like a human.

It had big eyes and ears. And it wore white gloves on its hands. The artists called
him "Mickey." Earlier filmmakers had found that animals were easier to use in
cartoons than people. Mickey Mouse was drawn with a series of circles. He was
perfect for animation.

The public first saw Mickey Mouse in a movie called "Steamboat Willie." Walt
Disney himself provided the voice for Mickey Mouse. The film was produced in
nineteen twenty-eight. It was a huge success.

Mickey Mouse appeared in hundreds of cartoons during the years that followed.
He became known all over the world. In Japan, he was called "Miki Kuchi." In
Italy, he was "Topolino." In Latin America, he was "Raton Miquelito." Mickey
soon was joined by several other cartoon creatures. One was the female mouse
called "Minnie." Another was the duck named "Donald," with his sailor clothes
and funny voice. And there was the dog called Pluto.
Mickey Mouse cartoons were extremely popular. But Walt Disney wanted to
make other kinds of animated movies, too. In the middle nineteen thirties, he was
working on his first long movie.

It was about a lovely young girl, her cruel stepmother, and the handsome prince
who saves her. It was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." "Snow White" was
completed in nineteen thirty-seven after three years of work. It was the first full-
length animated movie to be produced by a studio. It became one of Hollywood's
most successful movies.

Movie experts say Walt Disney was responsible for the development of the art of
animation. Disney's artists tried to put life into every drawing. That meant they
had to feel all the emotions of the cartoon creatures. Happiness. Sadness. Anger.
Fear. The artists looked in a mirror and expressed each emotion. A smile. Tears.
A red face. Wide eyes. Then they drew that look on the face of each cartoon
creature.

Many movie experts say Disney's art of animation reached its highest point in
nineteen forty with the movie "Pinocchio." The story is about a wooden toy that
comes to life as a little boy.

Disney's artists drew two-and-one-half million pictures to make "Pinocchio." The

artists drew flat pictures. Yet they created a look of space and solid objects.
"Pinocchio" was an imaginary world. Yet it looked very real. Disney made other
extremely popular animated movies in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties.
They include "Fantasia," "Dumbo," "Bambi," "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland,"
"Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," and "Sleeping Beauty." These movies are still
popular today.

In addition to cartoons, Walt Disney produced many movies and television

programs with real actors. He also produced movies about wild animals in their
natural surroundings. Real or imaginary, all his programs had similar ideas. In
most of them, innocence, loyalty and family love were threatened by evil forces.
Sad things sometimes happened. But there were always funny incidents and
creatures. In the end, good always won over evil. Disney won thirty-two
Academy Awards for his movies and for scientific and technical inventions in
filmmaking.

In nineteen fifty-five, Walt Disney opened an entertainment park not far from
Hollywood, California. He called it "Disneyland." He wanted it to be the happiest
place on Earth. Disneyland recreated imaginary places from Disney movies. It
also recreated real places -- as Disney imagined them. For example, one area
looked like a nineteenth century town in the American West. Another looked like
the world of the future.
Disneyland also had exciting rides. Children could fly on an elephant. Or spin in a
teacup. Or climb a mountain. Or float on a jungle river. And -- best of all --
children got to meet Mickey Mouse himself. Actors dressed as Mickey and all the
Disney cartoon creatures walked around the park shaking hands.

Some critics said Disneyland was just a huge money machine. They said it cost so
much money that many families could not go. And they said it did not represent
the best of American culture. But most visitors loved it. They came from near and
far to see it. Presidents of the United States. Leaders of other countries. And
families from around the world.

Disneyland was so successful that Disney developed plans for a second

entertainment and educational park to be built in Florida. The project, Walt Disney
World, opened in Florida in nineteen seventy-one, after Disney's death.

The man who started it all, Walt Disney, died in nineteen sixty-six. But the
company he began continues to help people escape the problems of life through its
movies and entertainment parks