Walt Disney
This genius of popular entertainment was born in Chicago in 1901, but grew up on a farm in Missouri. In 1920, he moved to Kansas City where he learned how to make simple cartoon advertisements under the pioneer animator Ub Iwerks. Just three years later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he opened his own animation studio.
Disney produced two unsuccessful series before creating the mega-popular Mickey Mouse. In 1928, he introduced the loveable mouse in the first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Disney's Flowers and Trees (1932) cartoon was the first made completely in Technicolor. From 1929 to 1939, he introduced several more classic Disney characters, inclduing Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Bambi.
Disney later branched out into live actor films, producing Treasure Island (1950), Davy Crockett (1955), and Mary Poppins (1964). In 1955, he opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, an amusement park that featured many of his studio's creations. Disney World in Orlando, Florida, followed in 1971.
Greatly honored in his lifetime, Walt Disney died in 1966. His legacy - dozens of entertaining cartoon characters - continues, even sixty years later, to be some of the most popular figures in the world of toys and games.
