The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Founded on October 16, 1923, as an animation studio by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Oliver Disney as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Disney operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before adopting its current name in 1986. In 1928, Disney established itself as a leader in the animation industry with the short film Steamboat Willie. The film used synchronized sound to become the first post-produced sound cartoon, and popularized Mickey Mouse, who became Disney's mascot and corporate icon.
After becoming a success by the early 1940s, Disney diversified into live-action films, television, and theme parks in the 1950s. However, following Walt Disney's death in 1966, the company's profits, especially in the animation sector, began to decline. In 1984, Disney's shareholders voted Michael Eisner as CEO, who led a reversal of the company's decline through a combination of international theme park expansion and the highly successful Disney Renaissance period of animation from 1989 to 1999. In 2005, under the new CEO Bob Iger, the company continued to expand into a major entertainment conglomerate with the acquisitions of Pixar in 2006, Marvel Entertainment in 2009, Lucasfilm in 2012, and 21st Century Fox in 2019. In 2020, Bob Chapek became the head of Disney after Iger's retirement. However, Chapek was ousted in 2022 and Iger was reinstated as CEO.
Disney operates the largest television and film studio in Hollywood. Walt Disney Studios includes Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, and Searchlight Pictures. Disney's other main business units include divisions operating the ABC television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, Freeform, FX, and National Geographic; publishing, merchandising, music, and theater divisions; direct-to-consumer streaming services such as Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hotstar; and Disney Experiences, which includes several theme parks, resort hotels, and cruise lines around the world.
Disney is one of the biggest and best-known companies in the world. Often regarded as one of the most influential entertainment brands in history, Disney is credited with revolutionising the animation industry. In 2023, it was ranked 87th on the 2023 Forbes Global 2000, and 48th on the Fortune 500 list of biggest companies in the United States by revenue. Since its founding, the company has won 135 Academy Awards, 26 of which were awarded to Walt. The company has produced films which have been featured on many lists of the greatest films of all time and is one of the key players on the development of the theme park industry. The company has been public since 1940 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange and has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1991. In August 2020, about two-thirds of the stock was owned by large financial institutions. The company celebrated its 100th anniversary on October 16, 2023.
History
1921–1934: Founding, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse, and ''Silly Symphonies''
In 1921, American animators Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks founded Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. Iwerks and Disney went on to create short films at the studio. The final one, in 1923, was entitled Alice's Wonderland and depicted child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. While Laugh-O-Gram's shorts were popular in Kansas City, the studio went bankrupt in 1923 and Disney moved to Los Angeles, to join his brother Roy O. Disney, who was recovering from tuberculosis. Shortly after Walt's move, New York film distributor Margaret J. Winkler purchased Alice's Wonderland, which began to gain popularity. Disney signed a contract with Winkler for $1,500 to create six series of Alice Comedies, with an option for two more six-episode series. Walt and Roy Disney founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio on October 16, 1923, to produce the films. In January 1926, the Disney's moved into a new studio on Hyperion Street and the studio's name was changed to Walt Disney Studio.After producing Alice films over the next 4 years, Winkler handed the role of distributing the studio's shorts to her husband, Charles Mintz. In 1927, Mintz asked for a new series, and Disney created his first series of fully animated shorts, starring a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The series was produced by Winkler Pictures and distributed by Universal Pictures. The Walt Disney Studios completed 26 Oswald shorts.
In 1928, Disney and Mintz entered into a contract dispute, with Disney asking for a larger fee, while Mintz sought to reduce the price. Disney discovered Universal Pictures owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald, and Mintz threatened to produce the shorts without him if he did not accept the reduction in payment. Disney declined and Mintz signed 4 of Walt Disney Studio's primary animators to start his own studio; Iwerks was the only top animator to remain with the Disney brothers. Disney and Iwerks replaced Oswald with a mouse character originally named Mortimer Mouse, before Disney's wife urged him to change the name to Mickey Mouse. In May 1928, Mickey Mouse debuted in test screenings of the shorts Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho. Later that year, the studio produced Steamboat Willie, its first sound film and third short in the Mickey Mouse series, which was made using synchronized sound, becoming the first post-produced sound cartoon. The sound was created using Powers' Cinephone system, which used Lee de Forest's Phonofilm system. Pat Powers' company distributed Steamboat Willie, which was an immediate hit. In 1929, the company successfully re-released the two earlier films with synchronized sound.
After the release of Steamboat Willie at the Colony Theater in New York, Mickey Mouse became an immensely popular character. Disney Brothers Studio made several cartoons featuring Mickey and other characters. In August 1929, the company began making the Silly Symphony series with Columbia Pictures as the distributor, because the Disney brothers felt they were not receiving their share of profits from Powers. Powers ended his contract with Iwerks, who later started his own studio. Carl W. Stalling played an important role in starting the series, and composed the music for early films but left the company after Iwerks' departure. In September, theater manager Harry Woodin requested permission to start a Mickey Mouse Club at his theater the Fox Dome to boost attendance. Disney agreed, but David E. Dow started the first-such club at Elsinore Theatre before Woodin could start his. On December 21, the first meeting at Elsinore Theatre was attended by around 1,200 children. On July 24, 1930, Joseph Conley, president of King Features Syndicate, wrote to the Disney studio and asked the company to produce a Mickey Mouse comic strip; production started in November and samples were sent to King Features. On December 16, 1930, the Walt Disney Studios partnership was reorganized as a corporation with the name Walt Disney Productions, Limited, which had a merchandising division named Walt Disney Enterprises, and subsidiaries called Disney Film Recording Company, Limited and Liled Realty and Investment Company; the latter of which managed real estate holdings. Walt Disney and his wife held 60% of the company, and Roy Disney owned 40%.
The comic strip Mickey Mouse debuted on January 13, 1930, in New York Daily Mirror and by 1931, the strip was published in 60 newspapers in the US, and in 20 other countries. After realizing releasing merchandise based on the characters would generate more revenue, a man in New York offered Disney $300 for license to put Mickey Mouse on writing tablets he was manufacturing. Disney accepted and Mickey Mouse became the first licensed character. In 1933, Disney asked Kay Kamen, the owner of a Kansas City advertising firm, to run Disney's merchandising; Kamen agreed and transformed Disney's merchandising. Within a year, Kamen had 40 licenses for Mickey Mouse and within two years, had made $35 million worth of sales. In 1934, Disney said he made more money from the merchandising of Mickey Mouse than from the character's films.
The Waterbury Clock Company created a Mickey Mouse watch, which became so popular it saved the company from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. During a promotional event at Macy's, 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches sold in one day; and within two years, two-and-a-half million watches were sold. As Mickey Mouse become a heroic character rather than a mischievous one, Disney needed another character that could produce gags. Disney invited radio presenter Clarence Nash to the animation studio; Disney wanted to use Nash to play Donald Duck, a talking duck that would be the studio's new gag character. Donald Duck made his first appearance in 1934 in The Wise Little Hen. Though he did not become popular as quickly as Mickey had, Donald Duck had a featured role in Donald and Pluto and was given his own series.
After a disagreement with Columbia Pictures about the Silly Symphony cartoons, Disney signed a distribution contract with United Artists from 1932 to 1937 to distribute them. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor to produce cartoons in color until the end of 1935, beginning with the Silly Symphony short Flowers and Trees. The film was the first full-color cartoon and won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon. In 1933, The Three Little Pigs, another popular Silly Symphony short, was released and also won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon. The song from the film "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", which was composed by Frank Churchill—who wrote other Silly Symphonies songs—became popular and remained so throughout the 1930s, and became one of the best-known Disney songs. Other Silly Symphonies films won the Best Cartoon award from 1931 to 1939, except for 1938, when another Disney film, Ferdinand the Bull, won it.