Читать книгу Understanding Disney - Janet Wasko - Страница 14

Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago in 1901, the fourth son in a family of five children.¹² Struggling to gain financial security, his father moved the family from Chicago to a farm in Missouri (1906), to Kansas City (1910), and then back to Chicago (1917). Later in his life, Disney often referred to his memories of the farm and rural life in Marceline, Missouri. But the irony, pointed out by some biographers, is that the family lived in Marceline only a few years; thus Disney’s rural roots were relatively shallow. Nevertheless, Disney “idealized and romanticized” these memories, which provided the basis for his attachment to small-town America and its values.

When the family moved to Kansas City, Walt and his older brother, Roy, apparently suffered from long hours of hard work delivering newspapers for their father’s new business and were also reportedly subjected to some physical abuse from their straitlaced father. Roy served as an ally and protector of the younger Walt but, upon reaching maturity, left the family as two other older brothers had done previously. Thus, despite his fondness for warm, happy families, Walt Disney’s own family life lacked these qualities. His biographers note that he developed a “creative and lighthearted personality,” an inclination towards commercial activities, an intense desire to succeed, a strong rejection of organized religion, and a loathing of poverty, as well as faith in practical education and experience.¹³

Disney left home when he was 16 years old, falsifying his age so that he could join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. Even though World War I had virtually ended, he served as a driver and performed other duties in various locations in France. When he returned to the United States in 1919, he pursued his interest in drawing at a commercial art firm in Kansas City, rather than finishing high school. After dabbling with animation for a few years, he formed his own company, Laugh-O-Gram Films, in 1922, and started producing the Alice’s Wonderland series, which combined animation with live action. It was also the beginning of his collaboration with the talented artist Ub Iwerks, who joined the Disney enterprise and became an important part of Disney’s future success.

Walt joined his brother Roy in Los Angeles in 1923, as an official history distributed by the Disney company explains, “with a lot of hopes but little else.” After failing to gain employment with one of the film studios, Disney started where he had left off in Kansas City by reviving the Alice series. After a New York company agreed to distribute the cartoons, Walt convinced Roy to become his business manager, and the Disney company was officially formed on October 16, 1923. Although at first the company was called the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, it soon became the Walt Disney Studio, reflecting the roles that the two brothers would play throughout the history of the company – Walt as the primary, “creative” force, who received the public attention and acclaim, and Roy, who worked behind the scenes, handling finances and tending to the organization.¹⁴

While the studio produced 56 Alice shorts, another animated series based on a character called Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, was created in 1927 for Universal Pictures. However, after brief success with ten Oswald shorts in 1927 and 16 in 1928, the Disney brothers discovered that the rights to the character were actually owned by Universal. In addition, the majority of his animators had been lured away from the Disney company to work for the New York distributor. This story is an oft-repeated one in the Disney legend, as it was said to have taught Walt an important lesson: never lose control of your creations. Any number of events in Walt’s life and in the Disney histories are explained by this one story.