Wolter Disney : biography

“Fantasia”

Wolt Disney’s “Fantasia” (1940) aroused discrepant opinions, it was made on the script of Joe Grant and Dick Hewmar and under the musical guidance of Edvard Plumb. The idea of this film appeared during the work on “Naive symphonies”, where the plot was tightly connected with music. “Fantasia” was a bold experiment with the sound, color and picture, it was an attempt to reproduce music in lines and colors, subordinate picture to music. For example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s toccata and fugue were represented as abstract forms, and music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” was accompanied with the dance of mushrooms, against the background of Igor Stravinsky’s “Celebration of Spring” a colorful story of world’s creation unfolded.

Dumbo and Bambi

Full-length films of Wolt Disney are often called family films. Particularly, it is concerned a film “Dumbo” (1941) – a musical story on motifs of Helen Eberson and Harold’s book about a little circus elephant, who learnt how to fly. Dynamic adventures, wonderful plastique of drawn characters brought enormous popularity to this film. Scenes of the parade of pink elephants and fantasies of the little elephant, who had drunken champaigne from the tun, became famous.

A young deer from the film “Bambi” (1942) earned not only little viewers’, but also their parents’ sympathy.

Cinderella and other cartoons

In 1950 Disney created an animated version of a story about a modest girl who became a bride of a handsome prince with the help of а a kind fairy. Directors of the film “Cinderella” were Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Lasky and Clyde Jeronimi. One of the most noteworthy scenes of this cartoon is the one, where mice, which were pushing a large pumpkin, became splendid fast horses harnessed in a carriage, and the one, where the kind fairy made a ball dress from Cinderella’s rags. This film was awarded with “Golden bear” on the Berlin International Film Festival, and Cinderella appeared on T-shirts, bedclothes and handkerchiefs in many countries all over the world.

The directors, who created “Cinderella”, made another full-length cartoon “Peter Pan” in 1953, which was made on motifs of the sir James Barry’s book. Then other famous films, such as “Lady and the Tramp” (1955), “Sleeping beauty”(1959) and “One hundred and one dalmatinians”, followed and became a classic of animation films.

Producer activity

In 1948 Wolt Disney began to make his famous series of colour educational films, mainly about nature – particularly, films “Live desert” (1953) and “Disappearing prairie” (1954), which director was James Elgar. These films became very popular, they revealed little known sides of animals’ and plants’ life and aroused a desire to protect nature.

At that time they started to make playing adventure films, which were created for young viewers – “Treasure island” (1950) on the story of Robert Lewis Stivenson (the director was Bairon Haskin), “Robin Hood” (1952) (the director was Ken Annakin), and also musical cinema-fantasy “Mary Poppins” (1964), which was awarded with five “Oscars” (the director was Robert Stivenson). Disney was a producer of all these films, he watched shooting’s process and made a bif influence on artistic side of films.

Death

On the 15th of December in 1966 Disney died in Los-Angeles because of lung cancer. After his death a company, which had his name, made a strategic decision to refuse making advertisements of cigarettes in its films.

After Disney’s death the cinema studio continued to make animated and playing films for children of every age. In 1968 Disney was posthumously awarded with USA highest award the Golden Medal of Congress.

The is a wide spread version about Disney’s freezing in a cryogenic cell, because the animator hoped that in far future humanity would find the way of human’s unfreezing.

Unrealized projects

Disney planned to make a cartoon “Destino” with Salvador Dali, but this project wasn’t realized.

Director’s style

Since the creation of “Willie the steam boat” music began to have an important role in disney’s films. Sound in his cartoons wasn’t only a background for dialogues, it became their important part and created harmony of the whole animated work.

Disney’s artists always thoroughly studied habits of live prototypes of animals before drawing them. That’s why all movements on the screen looked very verisimilar.

Disney’s “Fantasia” for the first time had stereo sound. Everybody noted high quality of musical accompaniment, which was performed by Philadelphia symphonic orchestra under guidance of Leopold Stokovsky.

Disney was one of the first film directors which started to use cameras with trichromatic tape “Technicolor”.

Wolt Disney made a system of animators’ awarding on his studio, then it was accepted on other studios, including “Soyuzmultfilm”. An artist-animator, who suggested a trick for the director, got a small remuneration.

Private life

In July of 1925 Wolt Disney married a secretary of his studio Lilian Bounds (1899-1997). In 1933 they had a daughter Diane Marie (the couple had been trying to have a child for eight years, two previous pregnancies were ended with miscarriages which hurt Wolt and Lilian). They didn’t have possibilities to give birth for the second child and adopted a little girl, named her Sharon Mae Disney (1963-1993).

Diane Marie Disney is a mother of seven children, an author of popular biography of Wolt Disney, an organizer of several projects, connected with his name, one of the administrators “The Walt Disney Company”, a fonder of the museum of Wolt Disney in San-Fransisco (it was opened in October of 2009). According to Diane’s words, Wolt Disney was an exemplary family man, he devoted all his spare time to family, often walked with daughters and during one of such walks he decided to make the place which would be interesting for children and adults. Afterwards such place was called Disneyland.