HE's Roy Olive Disney

Roy Olive Disney (June 24, 1893–December 20, 1971) was, with his younger brother Walt Disney, co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company. Roy served as the company's chief executive officer (1929–1971)-though title name wasn't given until 1968-, president (1945–1971), and chairman (1966–1971).

Roy was born to Elias Disney and the former Flora Call in Chicago, Illinois. He married Edna Francis in April 1925, and from this marriage he is the father of Roy Edward Disney, who was born on January 10, 1930.

While Walt was the creative man, Roy was the one who made sure the company was financially stable; Roy and Walt both founded Disney Studios as brothers, but Walt would buy out most of Roy's share in 1929 and, unlike Max and Dave Fleischer of rival Fleischer Studios, was not a producer. After Walt Disney's death, Roy made sure that Disney World would be completed and renamed it Walt Disney World in order to make sure that no one would forget his brother. After Walt Disney World opened in October 1971, Roy Disney finally retired. He died from a stroke at home two months later, aged 78.

A statue of Roy O. Disney, seated on a park bench beside Minnie Mouse, is located in Town Square at the Magic Kingdom

R you know Disneyland ?

Disneyland is a theme park that is located at 1313 South Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, California, USA. It opened on July 17, 1955. The park is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. Currently the park has been visited by more than 515 million guests since it opened to the public, including presidents, royalty, and other heads of state.

When the park initially opened, it consisted of five themed areas:

* Main Street, U.S.A., an early 20th century Midwest town

* Adventureland, featuring jungle adventures

* Frontierland, illustrating western frontier

* Fantasyland, bringing fantasy into a reality

* Tomorrowland, looking into the future.

Three additional areas were added to these original park areas later:

* New Orleans Square, based on 19th century New Orleans

* Mickey's Toontown, themed on the Toontown seen in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit

* Critter Country, themed both to the South in the 19th century and to forests of the Pacific Northwest.

An elevated berm supports a three-foot (narrow) gauge railroad which circumnavigates the park. Disneyland features rides and attractions designed to appeal to all ages.

In 1998 Disneyland was renamed Disneyland Park in order to distinguish it from the larger Disneyland Resort complex. Today, there are three other parks which share the Disneyland name, Disneyland Resort Paris in Paris, France, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in Hong Kong, China, and Tokyo Disneyland in Tokyo, Japan. These resorts are in addition to Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, whose Disneyland-like park is called the Magic Kingdom.

Dedication

“ To all who come to this happy place - welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America... with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. Thank you. ”

— Walter E. Disney, July 17, 1955 4:43pm

The dedication of all Disneyland parks worldwide begin with the phrase "To all who come to this happy place - welcome."

The Walt Disney Studios (Burbank)

The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, United States, serve as the international headquarters for media conglomerate The Walt Disney Company.

Disney staff began the move from the old Disney studio at Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake on December 24, 1939. Designed primarily by Kem Weber under the supervision of Walt Disney and his brother Roy, the Burbank Disney Studio buildings are the only studios to survive from the Golden Age of filming. The Walt Disney Company is the last remaining Big Ten company to remain independent from a mother company. The Studios are also the only major film/animation studio not to run backlot tours.

The Walt Disney Studios was originally designed around the animation process, with the large animation building in the center of the campus, and adjacent buildings for the story department, the music department, the ink-and-paint departments, and the other various functions of the studio. Both above-ground walkways and tunnels connected the buildings, and the campus also included a movie theatre and a number of soundstages. The Disney feature The Reluctant Dragon, starring Robert Benchley, served as a tour of the then-new studio, which was also frequently seen and toured on the various Walt Disney television programs.

In the late 1940s, the studio began regular work on live-action features, as they needed the money. Though their first films were shot in England, the necessity to build live-action facilities still arose. Lacking the capital to do it themselves, Jack Webb offered to put up some of the money to build live-action stages in exchange for their use (Webb used it to shoot much of the Dragnet TV series). During this time, back lots were also built and remained standing at the studios until the management change of the mid-1980s.

In 1986, after the corporate restructuring of Walt Disney Productions into The Walt Disney Company, the buildings were remodeled to accommodate more live-action production space and administrative offices. The Studios are now made up of multiple office and administration buildings and ten soundstages. The primary building is the commanding Team Disney Burbank building, completed in 1990 and designed by Michael Graves. The Team Disney Burbank building contains the office of President and CEO Robert A. Iger, as well as the boardroom for the Board of Directors. It also houses offices for members of Senior Management, such as Andy Bird, head of Walt Disney International, Jay Rasulo, Chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts and Dick Cook, Chairman of Walt Disney Studio Entertainment. The building is sometimes called the "Seven Dwarfs Building"; it has a stunning fascia of the seven dwarfs holding up the roof of the building, an homage to the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which provided Walt Disney with the revenue to purchase the Burbank lot.

On January 23, 2006, in honor of Michael Eisner's 21-year leadership of the company, the Team Disney building, was rededicated as Team Disney - The Michael D. Eisner Building.

During the restructuring, the animation facilities were spun off to officially create Walt Disney Feature Animation as a subsidiary of the company, and its operations were moved to the Air Way warehouse in Glendale. In 1995, a new Feature Animation building was completed, across the street from the main lot. The new studio is a colorful piece of architecture, adorned by a giant Sorcerer's Hat, which once housed of the office of Roy E. Disney, former head of WDFA.

More recently, after Disney's purchase of ABC, a new headquarters for the television network was constructed across Riverside Drive next to the Feature Animation Building. The ABC building was designed by Aldo Rossi and is connected to the lot by a blue serpentine bridge that crosses over Riverside Drive. The ABC building also houses the offices of other subsidiaries such as Touchstone Television and Buena Vista International.

Philosphy of LIFE

Is The Walt Disney Company ?

The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers, Walt and Roy Disney as a small animation studio, it has become one of the biggest Hollywood studios, and owner of eleven theme parks and several television networks, including the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

Disney's corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located in California at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank).

The company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had revenues of $34.3 billion in 2006.

HE's Walter Elias Disney

Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Walt became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $30 billion.

Walt Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He received twenty-two Academy Awards and forty-eight nominations during his lifetime, holding the record for the individual with the most awards and the most nominations. Disney has also won seven Emmy Awards. Disney and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse. He is also well-known as the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, France, Japan and China.

Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, a few years prior to the opening of his Walt Disney World dream project in Orlando, Florida.

The Biography of a Mouse .....

" .......this all began with a mouse......"

The Biography of a Mouse


MICKEY MOUSE,Walt Disney's most famous character, made his screen debut on November 18, 1928, as star of the first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Since his debut, Mickey Mouse has become an international personality whose success laid the financial foundation upon which Walt Disney built his creative organization. Besides being the personification of everything Disney, Mickey Mouse has become one of the most universal symbols of the Twentieth Century.

Mickey Mouse was born in Walt Disney's imagination early in 1928 on a train ride from New York to Los Angeles. Walt was returning with his wife from a business meeting at which his cartoon creation, Oswald the Rabbit, had been wrestled from him by his financial backers. Only 26 at the time and with an active cartoon studio in Hollywood, Walt had gone east to arrange for a new contract and more money to improve the quality of his Oswald pictures. The moneymen declined, and since the character was copyrighted under their name, they took control of it. " . . . So I was all alone and had nothing," Walt recalled later. " Mrs. Disney and I were coming back from New York on the train and I had to have something I could tell them. I've lost Oswald so, I had this mouse in the back of my head because a mouse is sort of a sympathetic character in spite of the fact that everybody's frightened of a mouse including myself" Walt spent the return train ride conjuring up a little mouse in red velvet pants and named him " Mortimer," but by the time the train screeched into the terminal station in Los Angeles, the new dream mouse had been rechristened. Walt's wife, Lillian, thought the name " Mortimer" was too pompous and suggested " Mickey." A star was born!

Upon returning to his studio, Walt and his head animator, Ub Iwerks, immediately began work on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy. The enthusiasm with which his small staff completed the project faded when no distributor wanted to buy the film. Refusing to give in, Walt forged into production on another silent Mickey Mouse cartoon, Gallopin'Gaucho. However, late in 1927, Warner Brothers ushered in the talkies with The Jazz Singer, staffing Al Jolson. This soon signaled the end of silent films so, in 1928, Walt dropped everything to begin a third Mickey Mouse cartoon, this one in sound: Steamboat Willie.

To record the sound track, Walt had to take his film to New York, since no one on the West Coast was equipped to do it. Walt sank everything he had into the film. When finally completed, Walt screened it for the New York exhibitors. The manager at the Colony Theatre liked the eager young producer and decided to take a chance on his film. Steamboat Willie scored an overwhelming success, and Walt soon became the talk of the nation. Buoyed by the artistic and popular success of Steamboat Willie, Disney added sound to the first two cartoons and was able to offer exhibitors a package of three shorts. As with all of Mickey Mouse's pictures through World War II, Walt himself supplied the voice. Then in 1946, when Walt became too busy to continue, Jim Macdonald, veteran Disney sound and vocal effects man, tookover. ( Jim Macdonald continued to provide the voice of Mickey Mouse for nearly thirty years, until he retired in 1974. Following his retirement, Wayne Allwine was selected to perform the voice of Mickey Mouse. Wayne has provided Mickey Mouse's vocal characterizations in his most recent screen appearances ).

Mickey Mouse's skyrocket to fame didn't take long. His cartoons became so popular that people would first ask ticket takers if they were " running a Mickey" before they would purchase admission. Soon, theaters were displaying posters that read " Mickey Mouse playing today!" It was not uncommon for patrons to sit through a feature twice to see him again. The thirties was Mickey Mouse's golden age 87 cartoon shorts starring the multi-talented mouse were produced by Walt Disney during that decade. He played everything from fireman to giant killer, cowboy to inventor, detective to plumber. Technically and artistically Mickey Mouse cartoons were far superior to other contemporary cartoons and gave life to an entire family of animated characters: Minnie Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Goofy, Pluto, Donald Duck, Peg-Leg Pete, and many others.

The artistic success of the animators was honored in 1932 when an Oscar was presented to Walt Disney for the creation of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse's popularity spawned a Mickey Mouse Club in 1929 which met every Saturday for an afternoon of cartoons and games in local theaters. The several million Mouse Clubbers had a secret handshake, special member greeting, code of behavior, and even a special club song, " Minnie's Yoo Hoo" . The peak of Mickey Mouse's golden decade was his starring role as the Sorcerer's Apprentice in the feature Fantasia (1940), a major artistic innovation. It interpreted music in colors, shapes, movement, and story. The animation techniques were years ahead of their time and have never been matched. Fantasia also introduced stereophonic sound to theaters, an element not employed by other studios until more than a decade later.

With the advent of World War II, the Disney Studio suspended nearly all commercial activity and concentrated on aiding the war effort with training films, goodwill tours, and designing of posters and armed forces insignia. Mickey Mouse played his part by appearing on insignia and posters urging national security and the purchase of war bonds. And, incredibly, the password of the Allied forces on D-Day, June 6,1944, was " Mickey Mouse." Following the war, Mickey Mouse returned to making cartoons and appeared in his second feature, Fun and Fancv Free (1947), in which he co-starred with Goofy and Donald Duck in a new version of " Jack and the Beanstalk," titled appropriately " Mickey and the Beanstalk."

Through the forties and early fifties, Mickey Mouse made fewer cartoons, giving ground to Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto, who were more flexible as characters. Mickey Mouse's evolution into a Disney symbol made it increasingly more difficult to create story situations for him. If he lost his temper or did anything sneaky, fans would write in insisting that Mickey Mouse just wouldn't do that. After the success of the Disneyland television show in 1954, Disney agreed the next year to create an afternoon program for ABC. He gave them The Mickey Mouse Club, which became the most successful children's show ever. In 1977, The New Mickey Mouse Club, featuring 12 new Mouseketeers, debuted on television, and a third generation of Mouseketeers hit the airwaves in 1989 when The Mickey Mouse Club debuted as a series on The Disney Channel with shows airing on weekday afternoons.

Mickey Mouse moved to Disneyland in 1955 to become chief host of the theme park, welcoming millions of visitors annually, shaking hands, posing for pictures, and leading the big parades on national holidays. In 1971, he helped open the Walt Disney World Resort in 1983 he donned a kimono for the dedication of Tokyo Disneyland and in 1992, he sported a beret for the opening of what is now called Disneyland Paris. His other activities include public appearance tours around the world for The Walt Disney Company.

Mickey Mouse has been saluted at three of the Disney theme parks by having " lands" created in his honor. Mickey's Birthdayland (now Mickey's Starland) opened on November 18, 1988, in the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World to honor Mickey Mouse on his 60th birthday. Mickey's Toontown opened in 1993 in Disneyland, then in 1996 at Tokyo Disneyland and now serves as home to Mickey Mouse and all of his cartoon friends.

After all these years, the cultists are beginning to understand why the Mickey Mouse of the thirties was so popular. He was a little guy born out of the depression who satirized people's foibles and taught them to laugh. Most importantly, he was a character who dreamed big, and his dreams were universal.

One of the finest tributes to Mickey Mouse was given by Walt Disney himself when, on his first television show as he surveyed Disneyland, Walt said, " I hope we never lose sight of one fact... that this was all started by a Mouse."
This article is ©The Walt Disney Company, and the full text appears on Disney's Site at http://disney.go.com/inside/mickey75/about_mickey.html

The Mickey Mouse Club ?

The Mickey Mouse Club was a long-running American variety television show that began in 1955, produced by Walt Disney Productions and televised by the American Broadcasting Company, featuring a regular but ever-changing cast of teenage performers. The Mickey Mouse Club was created by Walt Disney. The series has been revived, reformatted and reimagined several times since its initial 1955-1959 run on ABC. The original series has been repackaged and rerun several times over the decades.

by TMT