interesting facts about Walt Disney (for school project)

[simba928]

For a social studies project, we have to do a poster about a famous person of the 1920s. I of course picked Walt Disney. We have to fill a poster board with pictures that represent this person.
Do you know any interesting or little known facts about Walt?
We also have to pick one word to describe this person. I was thinking something like "creative", "imaginative", or "determined". What do you think?
Thanks in advance!!!

 

[MsDisney23]

Inspiring! Walt filed for Bankrupcie not once, but twice! Walt started out doing drawing's for a local dentist! Walt never said Good Bye to any of his staff, he always said I will see you tomorrow! Oh I could go on and on! good luck with the project. I would suggest that you buy some books on Walt!

 

[oogieboogie]

Off all the jobs he ever did, one job he NEVER did was be a store clerk. How did I know that? Because that was the question that tripped me up at WWTBAMPI last week and made me lose the chance at a cruise!

 

[Twigs]

http://www.justdisney.com/walt_disney/biography/long_bio.html

The above link has a lot of info on Walt Disney. The link is for the biography page, if you click on the home page there is a lot more places to look for info. Good Luck!

 

[CajunDixie]

If it helps at all I have a book I purchased in Epcot years ago titled "Walt Disney Famous Quotes."
There are quotes listed under several ideas such as Children, culture, courage, deadlines, dreams, education, faith, fear, freedom, ideas, laughter, luck, money, optimism, rewards, sense of humor, sequls, success, teamwork, WDW, women, work, worry and more I didn't list.

Example quotes from Walt: Women "Women are the best judges of anything we turn out. Their taste is very important. They are the theater-goers, they are the ones who drag men in. If the women like it, to heck with the men"

Worry "Why worry? If you've done the very best you can, worrying won't make it any better. I worry about many things, but not about water over the dam."

Diligience "The way to get started is to quit talking and beging doing."

 

[simba928]

Thanks all! Those are all very interesting! Keep the tidbits of info coming! I have on quick question... Wasn't Walt's first job a newspaper delivery boy?

Oh I could go on and on! good luck with the project. I would suggest that you buy some books on Walt!

MsDisney: I would buy some books, but this is a fairly small project. It is due on Friday and there really aren't many requirements on it other than use as few words as possible and leave as little background on the poster board blank.

 

[PrincessCLM]

I had to do a similiar project in HS - something about writing a paper on someone, something, or some date that changed the world and we each were given a different time period. Mine happened to fall on Mickey's birthday, which is what I chose to write about. My teacher was absolutely impressed and loved it. Unfortunately that was many years ago and I can't find the paper!
Good luck with yours

 

[swilphil]

There are lots of books on Walt Disney at library. You could also look up some biographies of him on the internet. Your teacher might want to know what your sources are, and I don't think "swilphil" from the DIS Board is going to cut it.

 

[WDWHound]

Walt built a miniture Steam Train (the Lilly Belle) that ran around his property. He even had to dig a a rather long tunnel because his wife Lillian did not want the train passing through her flower garden. Though it was small (1/8 scale), the engine was a working live steam engine. Walt was incredilbly talented and built much of the Lilly Belle himself by hand. He used to love giving people rides around his property on it until a child was burned in an accidental derailing. He almost never ran it after that. Here is a picture of a reproduction of the Lilly Belle.

 

[WDWHound]

Walt never said Good Bye to any of his staff, he always said I will see you tomorrow!

An addendum to this. It is true that Walt never said goodbye. The only time I know of him using that word was in the last few days of his life. Walt was suffering from the later stages of lung cancer when he went into the studio late one night to look around. While there, he visisted with his old friend Marc Davis, who in turn showed him pictures of an attraction he was working on for a Disney Ski Resort (the ski resort never happened, but you may have seen the attraction, it became the Country Bear Jamboree). As Walt was leaving, he turned to his friend and said "Goodbye, Marc". Thats when Marc Davis knew he would never see Walt Disney agiain.

Unbeknownst to his staff, Walt was to be admitted to the hospital the next day. He died soon after that.

 

[Deb in IA]

A lot of people know this one, but I'll post it here just in case:

Walt's first animated animal was NOT Mickey. It was Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit. Well, he wasn't lucky for Walt. Seems the rights to Oswald were taken by the studio Walt was working for at the time. On a train trip with Lillian, his wife, Walt came up with another animated creature, a mouse named . . . .Mortimer. Lillian didn't like the name, and suggested "Mickey" instead.

Mickey Mouse, of course, became a huge hit, and Walt, having learned his lesson, was famously protective of the rights of any of his creations after that.

 

[Deb in IA]

Oh, and Walt was the original "voice" of Mickey, after sound was added to his movies.

 

[WDWHound]

I thought of one more, its pretty well known but it might be useful. Walt was an Aumulance driver in World War 1.

 

[Sparx]

you know those names on the windows of the shops on Main St USA, well the only one that faces the castle is walts!

 

[simba928]

Thanks for the help yall! Keep the info coming!!! Also, are there any websites that have a lot of pictures of Walt or anything that represents him?

 

[Cindy B]

Let this student do his own work! Especially if works needs to be cited, our postings are not going to help this student!

In this day and age, there are tons of computer resources out there and web pages available. Back in the day , we had no Internet. A three word search (non google) gets tons of info.

If we help these students like these, we are enabling them!

 

[simba928]

Cindy B: We do not need a works cited page. I am doing all the work for this project by myself. I just thought it would be nice to have some little known information in there to make it a bit more interesting being that there will be one person from every class that is doing Walt Disney. I asked for your help so that I could get some pictures to represent important things that Walt did throughout his life. For example, I am going to try and find a picture of Walt's window on Main Street. I am finding the pictures, which is what this project is, a collection of pictures representing this person's life. Noone on here is handing me the pictures. They are simply telling me facts about Walt that I may or may not have found had I purely used the internet or the books in the library.