5 Things You Didn’t Know About Walt Disney

“When you think of Walt Disney, you tend to think of a benevolent, kind person free of edges of any kind. There was much more to him than that.”

The name Disney – everybody knows it. That’s partly thanks to a slew of recent hits like Frozen, or even earlier hits that defined a generation, like Beauty and the Beast, and Mulan. However, all of this couldn’t have been possible without the innovation that came from Disney’s founder, Walt Disney.

As more and more years have passed, and the people who actually knew Walt personally have grown thinner, Walt has become almost something of a legendary person. You see his statue at Disneyland, but you don’t really know him.

Well, when it comes to Walt Disney, there’s a lot to know. In fact, notes about his life fill entire tombs of thousands of pages, and he’s hailed as one of America’s greatest innovators – pretty impressive for a nation known for its inventiveness.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the famous Walt Disney

Disney Failed a Lot

Just about anybody who has had great success has also experienced great failure. JK Rowling famously hit rock bottom, unemployed and a single mom before her books went on to become the best selling of all time.

Walt was no exception. In fact, he knew failure before he ever knew success. His first company, founded when he was little more than a kid, would eventually go bankrupt. Not much later, his first character, the predecessor to Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Rabbit, would be stolen by a hostile producer who was smart enough to garner the rights from right under Walt’s nose.

However, Walt didn’t give up. He came up with another, far more popular cartoon character, one who would essentially become a symbol for America.

Disney Invented the Feature Length Cartoon

Fans of animation today have a plethora of options to choose from to meet their animation fancy. We have everything from more traditionally drawn, Japanese Anime to more recent CG animation like the Pixar films.

However, this wasn’t the case in the early 20th century. In fact, back then cartoon were restricted to short gags. Disney the visionary, however, saw the potential in cartoons to be more than simple gags. He dreamed of a feature length film, something that had never been done before, that would tell an immersive and gripping story. That film was Snow White, and the world has never been the same since its release.

Animation’s Commercial Viability Came into Question Even while Walt was At Disney’s Helm

Following the stellar success of Snow White, Disney began work on further creative films, taking big risks on things like Bambi and Pinocchio. Despite being known as classics today, these films were not commercially successful upon their release due to the outbreak of WWII. In fact, for the duration of the war, Disney’s films continued to lose money, which meant the studio struggled to survive even after revolutionizing animation.

To make ends meet, Walt Disney Studios took on government contracts. For the entirety of the war, in fact, the government was Disney’s biggest backer, paying them to make propaganda and training films for the war effort.

Disney was Obsessed with Trains

Following the seeming failure of animation, Walt became disillusioned with his old passion and sought desperately for a new one. He got involved with model trains. At first, it started out as a hobby – a way to decompress from the problems and tribulations of the studio. It eventually grew into a full blow obsession, with Walt building a full model train that he and his family could ride around his property.

Although many found Disney’s train obsession and lack of interest in the films being produced by his studio to be a little strange, what they didn’t realize was that the thing with the trains was slowly building into something much, much bigger. It was an obsession that would eventually morph into the creation of Disneyland.

Disney Was Tough on His Employees

When you think of Walt Disney, the creator of beloved cartoon classics largely at Children, and inventor of Disneyland, the epitome of the family friendly vacation destination, you tend to think of a benevolent, kind person free of edges of any kind. Indeed, this was how he portrayed himself to the public – the Walt Disney image that he adopted sometime after the second World War.

However, there was much more to Walt Disney than that. Walt was an artist, and an intense perfectionist. He was often hard on those that worked for him, pushing them to excel, and becoming angry, even irate, over work related issues.

In fact, some of Disney’s less perfect characteristics, and his obliviousness to much of what was going on at his studio, led in part to wide spread strike – something which would ultimately spoil the utopian-like animation studio and turn Walt Disney Studios into much more of a corporate place.

However, despite Walt’s imperfections (we all have them), his many positive characteristics, his devotion to his family, his ability to be a friend when needed, and his unyielding vision, far outweigh his temper.