| Full Real Name | Walt Disney |
| Profession | Film Producer |
| Date Of Birth | December 5th, 1901 |
| Age | 65 (When he died) |
| Died | 1966-12-15 |
| Birthday | December 5th |
| Year Of Birth | 1901 |
Walt Disney was an American producer, a director, a screenwriter, a voice actor, an enterprising artist, an entertainer, and an international filmmaker. He is best admired for being one of the world’s most famous film producers behind Walt Disney Productions.
How much is Walt Disney Worth?
| Net Worth | $1 Billion |
| Source Of Income | Film Producer |
At the time of his death, Disney’s different assets were $100 million–$150 million in 1966, equal to $750 million––$1.1 billion today. He alone had a stake of $600 million in the Disney production company. When he died, he left his wife and children with a family trust in 45% of his estate, while his sister, his nieces, and his nephews in 10%. The rest accounted for 45 percent. CalArts, a private art school, received most of the money from that charity.
Walt Disney Family:
| Father | Elias Disney |
| Mother | Flora Disney |
Walter Elias Disney, the son of Elias and Flora Disney, was born in Chicago’s Hermosa district on December 5, 1901. He had four siblings, Raymond, Roy, and a sister, Ruth. When Disney was four years old, the family moved to an affordable state Missouri, and he became interested in drawing at the time. One of his earliest projects was to draw a retired neighborhood doctor’s horse.
Walt Disney Education:
| College | Kansas City Art Institute, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts |
| High School | Benton Grammar School, McKinley High School |
In 1911 the Disneys moved to Missouri, Kansas City. Disney met Walter Pfeiffer, a colleague who introduced him to the vaudeville and movie world while attending the Benton Grammar School. During this period, Disney was also present at the Kansas City Art Institute on Saturday. The Disney family moved back to Chicago again in 1917. Disney attend McKinley High School and was a cartoonist to the school paper and inquired at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Disney and friend and artist Ub Iwerks have taken on work at the Kansas City Film Ad Company at the beginning of his career.
Animation Career Of Walt Disney:
In July 1923, Disney was transferred to Hollywood. His previous company Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt, but he produced a film based on the story of “Alice’s Adventures on Wonderland,” a short movie combining live-action with entertainment. In October 1923, he succeeded in signing a contract for six “Alice” comedies with film dealer Margaret J. Winkler in New York. Disney formed the Disney Brothers Studio to produce the films (later renamed The Walt Disney Company).
Disney developed and first appeared in May 1928, along with the iconic Mickey Mouse feature. Disney has pioneered in sound cartoons as they are produced in a post-production way and entered into a deal with Cinephone as the distributor of this popular cartoon character, later signing a distribution contract for the Mickey Mouse cartoons with Columbia Pictures.
Unhappy with the format of his short cartoons, Disney began producing his first full-length animation feature at his studio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film was produced for four years and took $1.5 million but was premiered by critics and audiences in December 1937 to be highly praised.
It had grown 6.5 million dollars by May 1939. The studio released animated films such as Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1943), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia, which are commonly called “The Golden Age of the Animation” (1940). Those movies did not do as expected, and Disney owed $4 million in debts to the Bank of America in 1944. In the 1950s, the teenage movie Cinderella, a commercial and critical success, and other films, like Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan, came back to animated features (1953).
Starting in the mid-1950s, Disney began to focus more on activities other than animated shows. Disney began to focus on developing a theme park in California, inspired by Tivoli Gardens’ layout in Copenhagen, Denmark. He founded WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering). He spent his own money funding a team of engineers and animators to plan the parking lot built on the plot of land that was bought in Anaheim, California. The tourist spot Disneyland was opened to great success officially in July 1955. The park received about 20,000 visitors a day and welcomed 3.6 million guests by the end of only one month.
Having two stars, one for his work on motion pictures and the next for his TV work, he was invited to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 1960. Posthumously, in 1986, he was also brought to the Television Hall of Fame and in December 2006 to the California Hall of Fame. Disney kept working on various animation, film, resort, and park projects until his death. He had contributed to a total of 81 feature films.
Personal Life Of Walt Disney:
| Spouse Name | Lillian Bound |
| No Of Children | 2 |
| Marital Status | married |
In July 1925, Walt Disney married Lillian Bound, the ink artist, and they had two girls. Until his death in 1966, they were married. A mere ten days following his 65th birthday, Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966.
How Did Walt Disney Get So Rich?
After producing more than 100 films in his life, Disney was financially pretty good, despite a few flops here and there. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was before all experiments, as an animated feature film was unheard of at the time. But it worked well, and in 1937 the film grew nearly 1.5 million dollars. This may not appear to be much cash now, but inflation-adjusted $1.5 million today would be $270 million. This inspired Disney to move forward fully and produce tonnes of animated features over the years.
Disney’s estate now amounts to billions, as the empire has focused on existing properties outside classically animated shows or films. Disney now owns another animated studio, Pixar, that has made mainstream animation generated by computers and published classic movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Up, and many more. It is rare if an animated movie in Pixar doesn’t make more than $1 billion. The Star Wars and Marvel franchises also belong to Disney, and even though they are not always critical, most of them are massive financial achievements. The Avengers: Endgame is the largest gross film of all time, as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While he passed away 50 years ago, the theme park he built in Disneyland is the world’s most visited holiday place and receives an average of 52 million visitors a year. With its headquarters in Florida, the state population itself is almost three times as high.
Summing-Up
Though not every time he started his career, it was fun. Walt Disney overcame his anxieties, improved his skills, and took expert business decisions to become the most influential animator on the planet. Disney had worth over one billion dollars at the time of his death in 1966, and its company now stands at over 130 billion dollars. The amusement parks he has built have become the home of all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, a franchise for Star Wars, and have acquired Fox. With the arrival of the Disney+ streaming service, a lot of fun is on hand for millions of viewers.
