Walt Disney was born on December 5th, 1901, in Chicago to Elias and Flora Disney, an Irish-Canadian and a German-American. This prepared him for a lifetime of mixing a variety of cultures into his stories. He was a practical visionary who kept trying to make his ideas come to life, even though it took time. Many of his first ideas were flops, but he reworked and rewrote them until critics were satisfied. “Steamboat Willie,” the cartoon that made Disney famous, is assumed to be the first Mickey Mouse movie made, but it’s actually the third. The first two shorts were washouts, with audiences and critics feeling bored and unentertained, so we forgot about them. He also was a very hands-on guy. He personally voiced Mickey Mouse for 17 years and was very involved with movie-making. His personal dream was to create a theme park that parents would enjoy as much as the kids and that had a family-oriented atmosphere. Disneyland was the first of its kind, providing a magical place for kids to see their dreams come to life. Even though he died 10 days after his 65th birthday, he was working till the end to create new parks and stories. The mission of The Walt Disney Company is “to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling,” and Walt Disney managed to do just that.
