Disney Short Films

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Studio; it also operated under the names the Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before changing its name to the Walt Disney Company in 1986. Early on, the company established itself as a leader in the animation industry, with the creation of the widely popular character Mickey Mouse, who is the company's mascot, and the start of animated films.

After becoming a major success by the early 1940s, the company started to diversify into live-action films, television, and theme parks in the 1950s. Following Walt's death in 1966, the company's profits began to decline, especially in the animation division. Once Disney's shareholders voted in Michael Eisner as the head of the company in 1984, the studio began to see an overwhelming amount of success during a period called the Disney Renaissance. In 2005, under new CEO Bob Iger, the company started to expand and acquire other corporations. Bob Chapek became the head of Disney in 2020 after Iger's retirement. Iger would be reinstated as CEO after Chapek was ousted in 2022.

Since the 1980s, Disney has created and acquired corporate divisions in order to market more mature content than is typically associated with its flagship family-oriented brands. The company is known for its film studio division Walt Disney Studios, which includes Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, and Searchlight Pictures. Disney's other main business units include divisions in television, broadcasting, streaming media, theme park resorts, consumer products, publishing, and international operations. Through these various segments, Disney owns and operates the ABC broadcast network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, Freeform, FX, and National Geographic; publishing, merchandising, music, and theater divisions; direct-to-consumer streaming services such as Disney+, Star+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hotstar; and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, which includes several theme parks, resort hotels, and cruise lines around the world.

Disney is one of the biggest and most well-known companies in the world and has been ranked number 53 on the 2022 ''Fortune 500'' list of biggest companies in the United States by revenue. Since its founding, the company has won a total of 135 Academy Awards, with 26 awarded to Walt. The company has also been said to have produced some of the greatest films of all time as well as revolutionizing the theme park industry. Disney has been criticized for alleged plagiarism, depicting racial stereotypes in the past, and both including and lacking LGBT-related elements in its films. The company, which has been public since 1940, trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with ticker symbol DIS and has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1991. In August 2020, just under two-thirds of the stock was owned by large financial institutions.

History

1923–1934: Founding, Mickey Mouse, and ''Silly Symphonies''

At Laugh-O-Gram Studio, a film studio in Kansas City founded by Walt Disney and his friend and animator Ub Iwerks, Walt made a short film entitled '' Alice's Wonderland.'' It featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. In 1923, soon after the short was made, Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt, but the short later became a hit after New York film distributor Margaret J. Winkler purchased it. Walt signed a contract to create six ''Alice Comedies'' series, with an option for two further series of six episodes each. Before the signing, Walt decided to move to Hollywood to join his brother Roy O. Disney because Roy had tuberculosis. This allowed them to co-found the Disney Brothers Studio on October 16, the official start of the company, to produce the films. Walt later convinced Iwerks and Davis' family to move to Hollywood as well. In January 1926, the Disney studio on Hyperion Street was completed, and The Disney Brothers Studio's name was changed to Walt Disney Studio. After producing several Alice films for the next four years, Winkler handed the role of distributing films to her husband, Charles Mintz. In 1927, Mintz asked for a new series of films under Universal Pictures to be made. In response, Walt created his first series of fully animated films, featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Walt Disney Studio would create 26 films with Oswald in them.

In 1928, Walt wanted a larger fee for his films, but Mintz wanted to reduce the price. Soon after Walt found out that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald, Mintz threatened to produce the films without him if he did not take the reductions in payment. Walt declined, and Mintz signed four of the Walt Disney Studio's primary animators to start his own studio; Iwerks would be the only top animator to stay with the Studio. Because of the loss of Oswald, Walt and Iwerks replaced him with a mouse originally named Mortimer Mouse. The character's name would be changed after Walt's wife urged him to change it to Mickey Mouse, who is now the company's mascot. In May, the studio made two silent films, '' Plane Crazy'' and '' The Gallopin' Gaucho'', with the character as test screenings. Later, the studio created its first sound film and third short to the Mickey series '' Steamboat Willie.'' It was made with synchronized sound, creating the first post-produced sound cartoon. Pat Powers’ distribution company would distribute the film, and ''Steamboat Willie'' became an immediate hit, leading the way for the companies dominance in the animation industry. The sound was created using Powers’ Cinephone system, which used Lee de Forest's Phonofilm system. The company successfully re-released the two earlier films with synchronized sound in 1929.

After the release of ''Steamboat Willie'' at the Colony Theater in New York, Mickey Mouse became an immensely popular character. Disney would go on to make several cartoons featuring him and other characters. In August, Disney began the '' Silly Symphony'' series with Columbia Pictures signing on as the series' distributor, because Walt and Roy felt that they were not getting their share of the profits with Powers. Powers would then sign off Iwerks, who would later start his own studio. Carl Starling was said to have played a pivotal role in getting the series started and composed the music for the earlier films in the series, but would later leave the company after Iwerks did. In September, theater manager Harry Woodin requested permission to start a Mickey Mouse Club at his theater, the Fox Dome, to boost attendance. Walt agreed, but David E. Dow started the first ever club at Elsinore Theatre before Woodin could start his. It is unknown why Woodin did not create the first one, but on December 21, the first ever meeting for the club at Elsinore had around 1,200 children in attendance. The Mickey Mouse Clubs ended up spanning over 800 theaters across the country, with one million kids as members. On July 24, Joseph Conley, president of King Features Syndicate, mailed the Disney studio asking for them to make a Mickey Mouse comic strip. They started in November and sent samples of the strip to them, which were approved. On December 16, the Walt Disney Studios partnership was reorganized as a corporation with the name of Walt Disney Productions, Limited, with a merchandising division – Walt Disney Enterprises, and two subsidiaries – Disney Film Recording Company, Limited; and Liled Realty and Investment Company, for real estate holdings. Walt and his wife held 60 percent (6,000 shares) of the company and Roy owned 40 percent.

The comic strip '' Mickey Mouse'' debuted on January 13, 1930, in the '' New York Daily Mirror'' and by 1931, the strip was published in 60 newspapers in the U.S., as well as papers in twenty other countries. After finding out that coming out with merchandise for the characters would generate more revenue for the company, Walt met a man at a hotel in New York who asked him for the license to put Mickey Mouse on some writing tablets that he was manufacturing for $300. Walt agreed and Mickey became the first licensed character ever, beginning the start of Disney merchandising. In 1933, Walt asked a man who owned a Kansas City advertising firm named Kay Kamen to run Disney's merchandising. He agreed and was considered to completely transform Disney's merchandising. Within a year, Kamen had 40 licenses for Mickey and within two years, $35 million worth of sales were made. In 1934, Walt claimed that he made more money from the merchandising of Mickey than from the Mickey films. Later, as a part of Disney's merchandising push, the Waterbury Clock Company created a Mickey Mouse watch. It became so popular that it saved Waterbury from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. During a promotional event at Macy's, 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches sold in one day and within two years, 2.5 million watches were sold. As Mickey started to become more of the heroic type instead of a mischievous mouse, Disney needed another character that could produce gags. When Walt was listing to the radio, he heard the voice of Clarence Nash and invited him to the studio. After hearing his voice again, Walt wanted to use it for a talking duck named Donald Duck, who would be the studio's new gag character. Donald made his first appearance in 1934 in '' The Wise Little Hen.'' Though he did not become popular as fast as Mickey did, he got his own featured role in '' Donald and Pluto'' (1936) and eventually got his own series.

After a fallout with Colombia Pictures for the ''Silly Symphonies'', Walt signed a distribution contract with United Artist from 1932 to 1937 to distribute the series. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor through the end of 1935 to produce cartoons in color, beginning with '' Flowers and Trees'' (1932), which was part of the ''Silly Symphonies''. The film was the first ever full-color cartoon and won the Academy Award for the Best Cartoon later that year. In 1933, '' The Three Little Pigs'' became another popular ''Silly Symphonies'' and also won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon. The song from the film " Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", composed by Frank Churchill, who also wrote other ''Silly Symphonies'' songs, became popular throughout the 1930s and remained one of the most well-known Disney songs. Films from ''Silly Symphonies'' would go on to win the Best Cartoon award from 1931 to 1939, except for in 1938 when another Disney film ''Ferdinand the Bull'' won it.

1934–1949: The Golden Age of Animation, strike, and World War II

In 1934, Walt decided to make Disney's first ever feature-length animated film, '' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'' and told his animators by acting out the story. Roy tried to stop Walt from making it saying it would bankrupt the studio, and Hollywood called it "Disney's Folly", but Walt continued production on the film. Walt decided to go for a realistic approach to the film and created scenes from the film as if it were live action. During the process of making the film, they created the multiplane camera, which was pieces of glass with drawings on them set at different distances, to create an illusion of depth for the backgrounds. After United Artist attempted to attain future television rights to the Disney shorts, Walt signed a distribution contract with RKO Radio Pictures on March 2, 1936. They ended up exceeding their original budget for ''Snow White'' of $150,000 by ten times the amount at $1.5 million.

It took them three years to make, debuting on December 12, 1937. It became the highest-grossing film of all time up to that point at $8 million ; after several re-releases, the film would gross a total of $998,440,000 in the U.S. adjusted for inflation. After the profits of ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'', Disney financed the construction of a new studio complex of 51 acres (20.6 ha) in Burbank, California, which the company fully moved into in 1940. On April 2 of the same year, Disney had its initial public offering, with the common stock remaining with Walt and his family. Walt did not want to go public, but the company needed the money. Shortly before ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs release, work on their next films '' Pinocchio'' and ''Bambi'' began, with Bambi being postponed. Though ''Pinocchio'' would win the Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Score, along with being said to have made groundbreaking achievements in animation, it would end up doing poorly in the box office during its release on February 23, 1940, because its international releases were cut off due to World War II.

Disney's next film '' Fantasia'' was also a box-office bomb, but made great achievements by creating Fantasound, an early development surround sound, to produce the films' soundtrack, making it the first commercial film shown in stereo. In 1941, Disney would have a major setback when 300 of its 800 animators, led mainly by one of the companies top animators Art Babbit, would go on strike for five weeks for unionization, because of the amount of payment some of them were getting. Walt thought that the people on strike were secretly Communist and would end up firing many of the studios' animators, including some of its best ones. Roy would try to get the company's main distributors to invest in the film company, trying to secure more production funds for the studio which could no longer afford to offset production costs with employee layoffs, but was unsuccessful in getting anyone. During the premiere of '' The Reluctant Dragon,'' Disney's fourth film where Robert Benchley would tour the Disney Studio, protesters from the strike showed up; the film would fall $100,000 short of its production cost.

While negotiations were being made for the strike, Walt accepted an offer from the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make a goodwill trip, along with some of his animators, to South America, making sure Walt would be gone during the deal because he knew the results would not be in his favor. During the twelve weeks there, they would start plotting for films and were inspired by the music. As a result of the strike, the studio recognized the Screen Cartoonist's Guild after being compelled to by Federal mediators and loss several animators, leaving the company with only 694 employees. To recover from their financial losses, Disney would create their fifth animated film, '' Dumbo,'' in a rush with a lower budget. ''Dumbo'' performed successfully at the box office and would be a much needed financial gain for the company. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many of the companies animators would be drafted into the army. Later, 500 soldiers from the United States Army began to occupy the studio for eight months to protect a nearby Lockheed aircraft plant. While they were there, they would fix equipment in large soundstages and convert storage sheds into ammunition depots. On December 8, the Navy asked Walt to create propaganda films to gain support for the war. He agreed and signed a contract with them to create 20 war-related shorts for $90,000. Most of the company's employees got to work on the project and created films such as '' Victory Through Air Power'' and included some of the company's characters in several of the films.

In August, 1942, ''Bambi'' was finally released as Disney's sixth animated film and did not do well in the box office. In 1943, Disney would go on to make '' Saludos Amigos'' and '' The Three Caballeros'' after their visit to South America, but they would do poorly upon their releases. The two films were " package films", several short cartoons grouped together to make a feature film, which Disney would go on to make more of such as '' Make Mine Music'' (1946)'', Fun and Fancy Free'' (1947)'','' '' Melody Time'' (1948)'','' and ''The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad'' (1949) to try to recover from their financial losses. As less expensive to make, the studio started production on live-action films, with a mixture of animation, starting with '' Song of the South,'' which would later become Disney's most controversial film. Because the company was short on money, in 1944, they planned to re-release their feature films, which would create much needed revenue. In 1948, Disney began the nature documentary series, '' True-Life Adventures,'' which would run until 1960 and win eight Academy Awards. In 1949, while production on the animated film ''Cinderella'' was happening, the Walt Disney Music Company was founded in order to help with profits for merchandising, which the music from ''Cinderella'' was hoped to be a hit.

1950–1967: Live-action films, television, Disneyland, and Walt Disney's death

In 1950, Disney's first animated film in eight years ''Cinderella'' was released and was considered a return to form for Disney. It would be Disney's best box office success since ''Snow White,'' making a total of $8 million in its first year in the box office and costing $2.2 million to make. Walt had not been as involved as he was with the previous films because he was distracted with trains and made a trip to England to create Disney's first ever fully live-action film ''Treasure Island''. Because it was a success, he went back to England to produce '' The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men''. In 1950, the television industry began to grow, and Disney got in it on Christmas Day when NBC aired the company's first television production One Hour in Wonderland, which was a promotional program for Disney's next animated film '' Alice in Wonderland'' and sponsored by Coca-Cola. During his trip in England, ''Alice in Wonderland'' was released and came as disappointment to the company falling $1 million short of the production budget. Upon his return, Walt started thinking about an amusement park he wanted to build called Mickey Mouse Park, an eight-acre (3.2 ha) piece of land near the studio with attractions such as a steamboat ride, but business kept getting in the way and production for a third British film ''The Sword and the Rose'' began. Walt would only supervise over it, but it would be financed by a new subsidiary of Disney called Walt Disney British Films Limited.

Walt recalled that he first came up with the idea of an amusement park during one of his visits to Griffith Park with his daughters. He said that he watched them ride the carousel there and said that he thought there "should be... some kind of amusement enterprise built where the parents and the children could have fun together.” As Walt continued to think about Mickey Mouse Park, he changed the name to Disneylandia before changing it to its final name Disneyland. Because Roy was doubtful about the park, Walt would form a new privately owned company called Walt Disney Enterprise on December 16, 1952, to fund the park. Shortly after, its name would change to Walt Disney Incorporated before changing its name to WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) in November 1953. He hired a group of designers to work on the plans and those who worked on it became dubbed as " Imagineers". Ever since Walt came up with the idea of a park, he and his friends would visit parks in the U.S. and Europe to get ideas on how to build one. His plan to have the park built in Burbank near the studio quickly changed when he realized that 8 (3.2 ha) acres would not be enough land. He acquired 160 acres (65 ha) of orange groves in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County, at $6,200 per acre to build the park. As construction on the park began on July 12, 1954, Walt wanted it to be done by 1955, with storytelling attractions and areas, as well as being clean and perfect.

They designed the park to have guests enter into Main Street U.S.A., themed to resemble American small towns during the early 20th Century based largely off of Walt's hometown in Marceline, Missouri, and walk down the street into the central hub, from which different themed lands branched out. At the end of the street in the central hub, would be a 77 ft (23 m) tall Sleeping Beauty Castle inspired by the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany and based on the castle from the Disney film of the same name, which would be released four years later. The four original different themed lands of the park that branched out from the hub would consist of Frontierland, themed to the American Frontier of the 19th century; Adventureland, resembling a wild tropical jungle; Fantasyland, based on Disney's animated fairy tale films; and Tomorrowland, depicting views of the future, especially that of the Space Age. In total, by the time the park opened, it cost the company $17 million to construct.

In February 1953, Disney's next animated film '' Peter Pan'' was released and had been a success, but Walt wanted to figure out how to improve animation without raising the cost. When Disney wanted to create a feature with two short films, '' The Living Desert'', for the ''True-Life'' documentary, RKO's lawyer believed it would break the 1948 antitrust Supreme Court ruling if it sold as a package. Roy thought the company would do fine without RKO and the company created its own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution, named after the street where the studio was located, to distribute their own films from then on. In 1954, Disney's first American live action film '' 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' was released, which was one of the first films to use CinemaScope. From the early to mid-1950s, Walt began to devote less attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators the Nine Old Men, although he was always present at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating on other things such as television and Disneyland.

To get money to create the park, the company decided to promote it through a television series. After trying to get NBC and CBS to sign on, in 1954, ABC made a deal with Disney for an hour-long weekly series starting in October called ''Disneyland,'' an anthology series consisting of animated cartoons, live-action features, other materials from the studio's library, and would go through four segments of the four different areas of the amusement park. The series was a success and garnered over 50% of viewers in their time slot, along with increasing audiences and praise from critics. In August, Walt formed another company Disneyland, Inc. to finance the theme park, with Disney, himself, Western Publishing, which had been the publisher of Disney books for over twenty years, and ABC all holding stock in the company.

In October, with the success of ''Disneyland,'' ABC allowed Disney to produce another series '' The Mickey Mouse Club'', a variety show specifically for kids, showing things such as a daily Disney cartoon, a children's newsreel, and a talent show. It would consist of a host and talented kids and adults called "Mousketeers" and "Mooseketeers", respectively. After the first season, over 10 million children and half as many adults watched it every day, 2 million Mickey Mouse ears, which the cast wore, had sold, and the shows theme song " Mickey Mouse March", written by Jimmie Dodd one of the show's main host, had become a classic. On December 15, 1954, ''Disneyland'' aired an episode of the five-part miniseries '' Davy Crockett,'' which starred Fess Parker as Crockett. According to writer Neal Gabler, " tbecame an overnight national sensation", selling 10 million Crockett coonskin caps. The shows theme song " The Ballad of Davy Crockett" had spread throughout American pop culture as much as the ''Three Little Pig's "''Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf''"'' did, selling 10 million records''.'' The ''Los Angeles Times'' called it "the greatest merchandising fad the world had ever seen". In June 1955, Disney's 15th animated film, '' Lady and the Tramp,'' was released and did better in the box office than any other Disney films since ''Snow White''.

On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened with only Main Street completely done and the other lands offering some rides, coming to a total of 20 attractions. At the time, it cost $1 to get into the park and guests had to pay for each individual ride. They were ready for 11,000 guests, but around 28,000 people showed up, because of a rush of counterfeit tickets. The opening was aired on ABC with actors Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan, who were all friends of Walt, hosting it. It garnered over 90 million viewers, becoming the largest live broadcast to that date. The opening was so disastrous and rushed, it became dubbed as "Black Sunday" by the employees. Restaurants ran out of food, the Mark Twain Riverboat began to sink a little, several ride malfunctions occurred, and the drinking fountains were not working in the 100 °F. (38 °C) heat. Within its first week of being open, Disneyland had 161,657 guests show up, and by its first month of being open, the park had over 20,000 visitors each day. After its first year, 3.6 million people had visited the park, and after its second year 4 million more guests came, making it more popular than places such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. That year Disney had a gross total of $24.5 million compared to the $11 million the previous year.

Though Walt was more busy with the park than the films, the company would stay busy and produce an average of five releases per year throughout the 1950s and 60s. The animated films created were features such as ''Sleeping Beauty'' (1959), '' One Hundred and One Dalmatians'' (1961), and '' The Sword in the Stone'' (1963). While ''Sleeping Beauty'' was a financial loss for the company, and Disney's highest production costs for a film up to that point at $6 million, ''One Hundred and One Dalmatians'' introduced a new way of animating using the xerography process to electromagnetically transfer the drawings to animation cels. In 1956, the Sherman brothers, Robert and Richard, were asked to create the theme song for the television series ''Zorro''. Disney would later hire them as exclusive staff songwriters, which would be a ten-year association. They wrote many of the songs for Disney's films at the time and some for the theme parks, with several of them being hits. In the late 1950s, Disney would venture into the comedy genre with the live-action films '' The Shaggy Dog'' (1959), which became the highest grossing film in the U.S. and Canada for Disney at over $9 million, and ''The Absent Minded Professor'' (1961), both starring Fred MacMurray.

Disney also made several live-action films based on children's books including '' Pollyanna'' (1960) and '' Swiss Family Robinson'' (1960). Child actor Hayley Mills would star in ''Pollyanna'', where she would win the Academy Juvenile Award, and five other Disney films, including her dual role as the twins in ''The Parent Trap'' (1961). Another child actor Kevin Corcoran was a prominent figure in many of the live-action Disney films, first appearing in a serial for ''The Mickey Mouse Club,'' where he would play a boy named Moochie, a nickname that would stay with him. He worked alongside Mills in ''Pollyanna'' and starred in features such as '' Old Yeller'' (1957), '' Toby Tyler'' (1960), and ''Swiss Family Robinson''. In 1964, the live action/animation musical '' Mary Poppins'' was released and became the highest grossing film of the year. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews as Poppins and Best Song for the Sherman Brothers', who also won Best Score for the film, " Chim Chim Cher-ee".

Throughout the 1960s, Dean Jones, who was called "the figure who most represented Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s" by ''The Guardian'', starred in ten Disney films, which included '' That Darn Cat!'' (1965), '' The Ugly Dachshund'' (1966), and '' The Love Bug'' (1968) and its second sequel Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977). Disney's last child actor of the 1960s would be Kurt Russell, who had signed a ten-year contract with the company. He featured in films such as '' The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes'' (1969), '' The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit'' (1968) alongside Dean Jones, ''The Barefoot Executive'' (1971), and '' The Strongest Man in the World'' (1975).

In late 1959, Walt had an idea to build another park in Palm Beach, Florida, called the City of Tomorrow, a city that would be full of technological improvements. In 1964, the company chose land southwest of Orlando, Florida, as the area to build the park and quickly acquired 27,000 acres (10,927 ha) of land for it. On November 15, 1965, Walt, along with Roy and Florida's current governor at the time Haydon Burns, announced the plans for another park called Disney World, which included the Magic Kingdom—‌a larger and more elaborate version of Disneyland‍, with golf courses and resort hotels near it—‌and the City of Tomorrow, which would be at the heart of the park. By 1967, the company had made several expansions to Disneyland including a new area called New Orleans Square, which would be filled with mostly shops and would be based on the look of New Orleans, Louisiana