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Apr 1, 2024 · formerly (1929–86): Walt Disney Productions. Date: 1923 - present. Ticker: DIS. Share price: $105.79 (mkt close, May. 10, 2024) Market cap: $192.88 bil. Annual revenue: $89.20 bil. Earnings per share (prev. year): $4.0. Sector: Trade & Services. Industry: Media Conglomerates. CEO: Robert A. Iger. Headquarters: Burbank. Recent News.
The Walt Disney Company is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney as Disney Brothers Studio ; it also operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt ...
- October 16, 1923; 99 years ago
- US$82.722 billion (2022)
- c. 220,000 (2022)
Jul 22, 2019 · Learn how Walt Disney and his brother Roy founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923, which became the Walt Disney Company, one of the largest media companies in the world. The studio produced Mickey Mouse, Snow White and other iconic films and media properties.
- 42 min
Oct 16, 2023 · October 16, 2023 8:00 AM EDT. T his Oct. 16 marks the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company. With over 200,000 employees and a market capitalization exceeding $150 billion, it is one...
- Go behind the scenes of the founding of the company and the creation of Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Disneyland, and more.
- Once Upon a Dream in Marceline
- It Was All Started By a Mouse
- The So-Called ‘Disney’s Folly’ That Changed the Entertainment World Forever
- The Happiest Place on Earth
- Images From the Opening of Disneyland and Beyond
- Taking Inspiration From the Past, With Some Help From Marvel and Star Wars
- Pixar's Movies: Worst to Best
- Marvel Phases 1-3: The MCU's Infinity Saga Ranked
By Adam Bankhurst
Updated: Feb 12, 2024 6:44 pm
Posted: Nov 3, 2023 3:00 pm
One hundred years ago, on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in the living room of their uncle Robert’s house. Some may say Walt could never have imagined that a small, four-page contract for six Alice Comedies would spawn a kingdom that includes over 1,200 movies and TV shows, a team of companies that includes Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, six Disney resorts across the world, and so much more, but Walt did.
He obviously didn’t know the exact details of what Disney would become, but as he once said when talking about the secret of making dreams come true, it’s all made possible “when you believe a thing, believe it all over, implicitly and unquestioningly.” And oh boy, did he and all the others who helped get Disney where it is today believe.
Looking back at Disney’s first 100 years, they’re filled with moments of magic, innovation, and stories that will forever live in our hearts, and it all began in that home on Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles. So let’s take a journey back in time, with the help of some Disney icons, for the story of how it all began.
Walt Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901, but one of his life's first and most important moments took place in the small town of Marceline, Missouri.
Walt and his family moved to Marceline when he was just four years old, and there they were neighbors of a doctor who was lovingly referred to as Doc Sherwood. This doctor had a prized horse named Rupert and, one day around 1909, he asked a young Walt Disney to draw a portrait of him and Rupert’s halter rope.
This drawing and the nickel he made from it was the first commission Walt ever earned and was, according to his brother Roy, the “highlight” of his life. That special moment and feeling Walt had would guide him throughout his life and pave the way for what we now know as The Walt Disney Company to be born. However, that road was anything but smooth.
Prior to founding Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt had a couple of failed attempts at starting his own companies, including one with legendary animator Ub Iwerks, who would go on to be the one to sketch Mickey Mouse for the first time.
These failures, as Walt himself would say later in his life, were important – even as they must have been heartbreaking for him.
“I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young,” Walt said, as presented in The Official Walt Disney Quote Book. “I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.”
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was the Mickey Mouse before there ever was a Mickey Mouse. He was the star of 26 silent cartoons made by Walt, Ub Iwerks, and rest of Disney between 1927 and 1928, and proved to be very popular for Disney. However, this happy-go-lucky rabbit quickly led to one of the darkest moments in the company’s history.
Walt contracted with Margaret Winkler’s husband, Charles Mintz, and Universal Pictures to distribute Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unfortunately, Walt didn’t realize that he didn’t own the rights to the character and he would soon lose not only Oswald to Universal and Mintz, but also most of his animators.
Mintz wanted Disney to take less money for the cartoons or to work for just a share of the profits, but Walt wouldn’t budge. He tried to negotiate with Mintz but ended up giving up the battle in early 1928. Following his defeat, with the loss of Oswald and nearly all of his animators to Universal, he then took one of the most important train rides of his life. As the legend goes, it was on that train that Mickey Mouse was born.
Walt loved to tell the story of how Mickey was inspired by a mouse that lived in his office back in Kansas City. But other versions of the story involve more help from Ub Iwerks and the pair not wanting to create another rabbit, while also trying to avoid the popularity of cat characters like Felix the Cat back then. Walt also publicly discussed how the creation of Mickey was influenced by one of the greatest actors and filmmakers in history.
“We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little,” Walt said of Mickey. “I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin – a little fellow trying to do the best he could.”
Becky Cline, the director of The Walt Disney Archives, says the truth about the creation of Mickey Mouse probably lies somewhere in the middle of all of these tales.
Today, we all know Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as Disney’s groundbreaking first feature film that paved the road to the studio’s future movie-making empire. However, Hollywood originally had a different two-word view of the film.
“All of Hollywood was calling Snow White ‘Disney's Folly’ prior to its release, and there were all sorts of excuses that various people made,” Goldberg explained. “Like, the color is going to hurt your eyes for 90 minutes. You won't be able to sustain drama for 90 minutes with a cartoon. And there was all this kind of pontificating about how it was going to fail, and it didn't. It didn't fail because of Walt and his crew's perseverance and sheer concentrated talent.”
Yes, Walt and 750 of his artists did what seemed impossible at the time: Over three years, with a budget of $1.4 million (roughly $30.5 million in 2023) and nearly two million individual paintings, they created what became Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Walt was a huge fan of fairy tales and fables, and many of his earlier projects were based on existing stories. Remember those Alice Comedies that started The Walt Disney Company? Those were based on 1865’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. So, when it became time to venture into the world of feature films, he chose to follow his love of those stories and go with an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White.
Why Snow White? When Walt was 15 and living in Kansas City, he saw a silent film adaptation of the German fairy tale from 1812 that starred Marguerite Clark and, according to Disney bographer Bob Thomas from The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder, it was the "most vivid memory of his moviegoing childhood."
And the Dwarfs! The titular seven dwarfs were actually fleshed out in greater detail than they were in the original story, as they didn’t have names that were linked to their personalities until Walt got a hold of them. This was emblematic of what the Disney team did with Snow White and other adaptations like it. They took the foundation of something that came before and infused it with heart, believable and deep characters, and expanded storytelling.
The story of Disneyland begins with a dream Walt had when he was sitting on a park bench in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park with his young daughters. We could explain to you how that moment happened, but why not let Walt tell you his side of the story?
“It came about when my daughters were very young, and Saturday was always Daddy’s day,” Walt said, as presented in The Official Walt Disney Quote Book. “I took them different places and as I’d sit while they rode the Merry-Go-Round and did all these things – sit on a bench, you know, eating peanuts – I felt that there should be something built where the parents and the children could have fun together. So that’s how Disneyland started.”
There were many skeptics of this idea, and many thought it was a great way to lose money. Even his wife, Lillian, had doubts that were born from her experience visiting other amusement parks.
“But why do you want to build an amusement park?” Lillian asked, as told in The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder. “They’re so dirty.”
Walt’s response? “I told her that was just the point – mine wouldn’t be.”
Every decision would make its guests feel like they were just that: guests. Disneyland’s employees aren’t simply called employees or workers; they are cast members. The places you don’t see at Disneyland are called backstage, meaning the parks themselves are the stage where these cast members have to perform to their highest ability.
Tom Fitzgerald, a Walt Disney Imagineering portfolio creative executive who has been with the company since 1979 and is best known for his role in reimagining Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Tours, Tower of Terror, and so many more, said Walt’s original mantra for designing the park still holds true today.
“We start with the story,” Fitzgerald tells IGN. “What's the story we want to tell? What is the role of the guest in that story? We still create storyboards to figure out how we tell the story. We still build physical models to understand how things are going to look and to evolve the design process. And I think that is still one of the differentiators between Imagineering and other groups… we start with, ‘How are we going to tell the story?’ versus, ‘What is the thing that we're building?’”
Many of these early Imagineers were people who had already worked at Disney. They helped create the opening lineup of Disneyland attractions that included Peter Pan’s Flight, Mad Tea Party, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Adventures, Jungle Cruise, and Mark Twain Riverboat.
As if creating Disneyland wasn’t revolutionary enough, Walt and his team also devised another plan to help raise money for the park. This step, which became Walt Disney’s Disneyland, would make Walt one of the first major film producers to venture into the world of television. CBS and NBC both turned down Disney, so he went with ABC to present a show that teased Disneyland and was also meant to get fans excited for its opening.
Opening day was on Sunday, July 17, 1955, and it was anything but smooth. Many of the attractions weren’t fully ready by then and, as the late Marty Sklar, former vice chairman and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, recalled in The Imagineering Story, “The director of the TV show said, ‘Well, what am I going to have to shoot on Sunday?’ And the art director said, ‘You’ll have plenty to shoot. We’re going to be pouring concrete.’”
The blacktop wasn’t fully dry and women’s high heels would get stuck in parts of it, counterfeit tickets caused crowds to be higher than planned, electrical fuses blew out on Mr. Toad’s Wild Road, the Tea Cups were falling apart, the Mark Twain boat was overloaded and was sinking, and many more problems plagued the opening. Still, despite the unfinished state, 22 television cameras broadcasted Disneyland’s opening to the world, and 83 million people watched from their homes.
In 2023, The Walt Disney Company may look a lot different than it did back in 1923, but the foundations and dreams that Walt built the studio on are very much the same.
“There have been so many innovations in Walt Disney's history, and Walt was always pushing the envelope and doing something that was wonderful in the world of storytelling with the newest technology,” Cline said. “He did that with Mickey Mouse and Snow White and he never looked back.
A century ago, Walt began bringing stories from fables and fairy tales to the big screen while also creating new worlds and universes. And today Disney is taking some of the most celebrated stories of this new generation and doing the same thanks to its relatively recent focus on acquisitions.
Disney now has access to that galaxy far, far away thanks to its purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012 ($4.05 billion), stories of the mightiest heroes and villains in the MCU after acquiring Marvel Entertainment in 2009 ($4 billion), a collection of toys and cars and houses with balloons since it bought a Steve Jobs-led Pixar in 2006 ($7.4 billion), mutants and Pandora’s finest from 21st Century Fox in 2019 ($71.3 billion), and more.
Yes, in 2023, Disney had access to Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the Avengers, Black Panther, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Captain Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Simpsons, Avatar, Family Guy, Deadpool, Die Hard, Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes, X-Files, The Muppets, Home Alone, Ice Age, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Bob’s Burgers, Futurama, King of the Hill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and countless others.
It’s mind-boggling to see all of those top-tier franchises and characters under one roof, and that doesn’t even include everything Disney has created internally. It’s also important to note that these acquisitions were for more than just these characters and stories, but also for the tools these companies have built over the years, like Pixar’s Academy Award-winning RenderMan software (which is now an industry standard for VFX and animation), Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, and many more.
As for the world of television, like Walt did with Walt Disney’s Disneyland, the company has continued to build its presence in that space. This can be seen with the creation of its own Disney Channel in 1983 and then the $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC in 1996. The biggest step, however, just may have been the creation of Disney+. Disney+ is now the gateway to everything Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and even National Geographic. The platform is also an avenue for Disney to tell even more stories from its biggest franchises outside of the theater, and it has seen such standout hits as Loki, WandaVision, The Mandalorian, and Andor.
However, there is still work to be done as not every show has been the runaway success the company has hoped for. Even Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the company needs to be “better at curating” franchise content that is “extraordinarily expensive.”
These comments echo one of Walt’s most important philosophies: that story and heart need to be at the center of everything. If that doesn’t work, as some would say was the case with a film like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it may be time to take a step back and really think about why these stories have been so captivating and popular in the past. In an effort to do so, Iger announced back in 2019 that Star Wars movies would be going on a “bit of a hiatus” following The Rise of Skywalker, and a recent delay has pushed the potential next Star Wars film to May 22, 2026.
While it may be disheartening for many (myself included!) that we have to wait that long, if that patience results in a film for the ages and begins a new golden era of Star Wars, it will all have been worth it.
One of the main reasons Disney has had the success it has over the past hundred years is because it wasn’t a factory that knocked out cookie-cutter project after cookie-cutter project as quickly as it could. It’s because it is a studio filled with incredibly talented individuals who come together as a team to create stories that matter and characters with heart that make us believe even the impossible can happen.
Tom Fitzgerald will help tell one final tale that perfectly encapsulates this feeling, and it involves a special turtle from Finding Nemo and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. The team at Disneyland installed a version of Turtle Talk with Crush at the hospital and, if you aren’t familiar with the experience, it sees a Disney cast member playing a digital version of the Finding Nemo character and interacting with an audience.
It’s a joy at the parks, but at the children’s hospital it just means that much more. Crush remembers these incredible kids, he asks them how their treatment is going, and he brightens up their day and allows them to forget about their battles, even for just a moment.
“For the kids, it's magic. To the kids, Crush is a friend,” Fitzgerald says. “These characters are real, these characters are alive, and these characters are friends. And that is so powerful, that you can touch a life. And I know for the people who do it on our side, it's equally as emotional as it is for the kids. That is the power of what we do to the nth degree.”
5 days ago · About. The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company. View More.
Walter Elias Disney ( / ˈdɪzni /; [2] December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons.
