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Walt Disney Concisus Genus Walt Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. One of the most influential and innovative figures in 20th century entertainment, he co-founded Walt Disney Productions and became a world-renowned motion picture producer. He received 64 Academy Award nominations and won twenty-six, including a record four in one year. He holds the record for an individual with the most awards and nominations. He also won seven Emmy Awards. He and his staff created some of the world's most famous characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse. Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago in 1901. As a toddler, the family moved to a farm in Missouri. Walt became interested in art at a young age, selling his drawings to neighbors to earn spending money. During his grammar school years, the family moved to Kansas City where he attended Saturday classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. When Disney was a teenager the family returned to Chicago, where he studied art and photography at McKinley High School and took night classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Disney left high school at the age of 16, hoping to fight in WWI. Too young to enlist, he lied about his age and joined the Red Cross. After a short stint as an ambulance driver in France, Disney returned to Kansas City where he met commercial artist Ub Iwerks. Disney and Iwerks started their own animation studio, which went bankrupt in the early 1920s. In 1923 Disney moved to Hollywood. He, his brother Roy, and Iwerks began producing short animated films. In 1928, he created a mouse called Mortimer, whose name soon changed to Mickey. Mickey stared in the first cartoon featuring synchronized sound, Steamboat Willie, with Disney providing the voice. In 1929 Disney began making the Silly Symphony cartoon series, and the studio soon became a pioneer in color animation. He produced the first full-length animated feature in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This highly acclaimed movie was followed by other successful feature-length films, including Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), and Bambi (1942). By the 1950s Walt Disney Productions had become one of the major producers of live-action and animated films for theaters and television. Disney animated features of this period included Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). The studio also made live-action movies. The film Mary Poppins (1964) innovatively combined live action with animation. Disney television shows of this era included Davy Crockett, The Mickey Mouse Club, and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. The company expanded into other areas, such as publishing children’s books and comics. In 1955, it opened Disneyland, an amusement park in Anaheim, California. After Disney’s death in 1966, the company expanded this concept opening Disney World in Orlando, followed by theme parks in Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong.