As the company he founded celebrates its 100th anniversary, today is the 122nd birthday of Walt Disney himself, who was born on December 5, 1901. To celebrate him, we asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Forefront to tell us facts we didn't know about the man who changed entertainment forever.
He dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to enlist in the U.S. Army and fight in World War I. After the army refused to enlist him, he forged an identity card that would allow him to meet the age requirements for enlistment in the Red Cross, and served as an ambulance driver for the organization in France.
His business career began with a series of failures. After working in an art studio, he founded an unsuccessful art company with a colleague, and then a studio of animated short films, which, despite their success, collapsed due to Disney's lack of financial management experience that led him to sink into debt. All this happened in his native Kansas, causing him to leave it for Hollywood.
One of Disney's first original characters, Oswald Rabbit, was "kidnapped" from him – meaning he lost the rights to it, due to the fact that he created it for Universal, and when they refused to raise his salary he lost his job and the character he created. It wasn't until 2006, after 78 years, that his company bought the rights to the character from Universal.
Disney not only created the legendary Mickey-Mouse character – he was also the voice of the company for about 30 years, from its premiere in 1928, immediately after Universal's departure, until 1959. Even after that, he continued to provide guidance to animators and informants who worked on the character. By the way, the name Mickey was actually conceived by Disney's wife, Lily, who claimed that the original name – Mortimer Mouse – was too official.
As we know, Disney is one of the fathers of the animated film industry – and he was recognized for it in his lifetime. He holds the record with 59 Oscar nominations and 22 wins. But the number of statuettes he received was greater than the number of wins – because when he won an Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was the first animated feature film, it was decided to symbolically award him eight statues – a regular Oscar statuette and seven smaller ones.
Legendary producer Walt Disney, photo: GettyImages
Beyond the movies themselves, Disney was a technological innovator, constantly looking for and finding new ways to create entertainment. He has amassed about 100 technological patents in his lifetime, ranging from new animation methods to the ticketing system in his parks. Today, his company holds more than 6,000 patents and sells rights to use them to companies such as Microsoft, Sony and Samsung.
The idea for Disneyland arose when Walt watched his children enjoy themselves dizzy, and thought about creating an amusement park where both children and adults could have fun. At first he looked for a place to build the park in California, where he lived, but after experiencing frustration in dealing with the state legislature, he went looking for a suitable place in the other end of the country, in Florida. He found such a place near Orlando – but eventually founded Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Eventually, a park opened in Florida, under the name Disney World – but this happened in 1971, 5 years after his death.
For years, it has been claimed that Disney hated Jews because he met Nazi director Riefenstahl after Kristallnacht, who later praised him for his "disavowal" of Jews. Meryl Streep also reported that he hated Jews – but on the other hand, he employed many Jewish animators in his studio. Therefore, we will never know what Disney really thought about the Jews. What we do know he hated was airplanes. Although his life forced him to fly more than once, Disney was afraid to fly—and loved trains. When he moved to Hollywood, he built a tiny steam train in his garden, and the most important thing for him in building Disneyland and Disney World was that they be surrounded by trains. He himself tried to travel as much as possible by train and as little as possible by airplane.
Disney was a heavy smoker, smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day throughout his life. As a result, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1966 and died within a few months, on December 15, 10 days after his 66th birthday. His last words were "Kurt Russell" – the name of a young 15-year-old actor who had the privilege of working with Disney and even developing a close relationship with him. However, it is not known why Disney named him in his final moments. Contrary to rumors, Disney's body was not frozen in the hope that his company would develop technology to resurrect it, but was burned as is customary abroad.
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