It was around this time that they also created animated cartoon series known as Laugh-O-Grams as well as a pilot film combining animation and live action known as Alice in Cartoonland.
Unfortunately, though, the young producers were cheated by a New York film distributor and had to file for bankruptcy in 1923. Like Walt always said, though, “it is kind of fun to do the impossible.”
So, he decided to pursue his dreams full-throttle and made the cross-country move to California. There, Walt and his brother-turned-business manager, Roy, reopened a studio in Hollywood and saw immense success.
By 1927, Walt created his most famous character ever, Mickey– a joyful and mischievous mouse. Mickey’s popularity quickly skyrocketed, and Walt realized that the general public had an affinity for fantasy characters with human-like personalities.
This prompted him to create characters such as Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy, while also working on other legendary projects such as The Three Little Pigs.
But, nothing could have prepared Walt for the fame that would come after he began working on feature-length films.
His first, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which premiered in 1937, was a hit among film critics, adults, and children across the nation.
Up to that point, animation’s validity had also been questioned when used for longer-length films. Nonetheless, Walt proved the naysayers wrong and solidified animation as a high-value film category.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he created many of the legendary films Disney fans still love today, including Seal Island (1948), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953).
Still, Walt Disney was a man known to never sit still. And in the early 1950s, he conceptualized the idea for a world-class amusement park known as Disneyland.
According to The Henry Ford Museum, Walt claimed his two daughters sparked the idea. He had been watching them having a blast on the carousel at Griffith Park in L.A., and began to wonder what a friendly, clean, and safe place for families to have fun might look like.