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Walt Disney:

Background: Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901. While still in school, Walt met Walter Pfeiffer who introduced him to the world of motion pictures. He became a cartoonist for the school newspaper, drawing patriotic topics and at the time focusing on WWI. He dropped out of high school to join the army, but he was too young and got rejected. Lying about his age, Walt joined the Red Cross. By 1919 Walt decided to become a newspaper artist rather than an actor. But soon he realized that no one would hire him. After getting a job with the help from his brother, Walt met Ubbe Iwerks and they started their own commercial company called “Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists.” The company didn’t last long, and both went to work for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. Here Walt became interested in animation and decided to open his own animation business. His cartoons became very popular in the Kansas City area. He got his own studio, which was called Laugh-O-Gram, but the studio became loaded with debt and was soon closed. After this Walt decided to move the Hollywood California, the movie industry capital. Here he started the Disney Brothers’ Studio.

Problems they overcame: After overcoming struggles in Kansas, Walt found struggle in Hollywood as well, but he also found success. The loss of owning a cartoon character called Oswald left Walt longing to create a better character. Thus was born Mickey Mouse. In 1932 Walt received an Academy Award for creating Mickey. After Mickey, Walt grew into making full-length animated movies such as Snow White which became a huge success. From here, Walt only continued to grow. He became a pioneer in character animation, drawing characters that the audience could connect to. Walt built the Disneyland amusement park in California in 1955. After the park in California became a success he began working on another amusement park that would be in Florida; however, he passed away 5 years before the park was opened in 1971. Even after Walt died, his success still strived. His studio is now called the Walt Disney Company. Today the Walt Disney Company is huge, gaining around $36 billion dollars a year. The Company “owns five vacation resorts, eleven theme parks, two water parks, thirty-nine hotels, eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network.” Before he died he was living out his dream and the American Dream, both of which continued long after he was gone.

"Walt Disney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2012. .