Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966; aged 65), better known as Walt Disney, was an American animator, producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. In 1923, he and his brother Roy founded the Disney Brothers Studio, now known as The Walt Disney Company. During his four-decade career, he was involved in the creation of Mickey Mouse, a character that went on to become Disney's official mascot, and animated feature films from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) until The Jungle Book (1967).

Expanding further beyond animation, Disney has produced live-action films, beginning with ' (1950) until ' (1967). He also oversaw Disney-owned amusement parks, opening the first in Anaheim, California in 1955, and ventured into television, hosting ' and creating ', in order to fund the theme park.

Biography
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. He is the fourth son of Elias Disney, a peripatetic carpenter, farmer, and building contractor, and Flora Call, a former public school tecacher. He has three older brothers: Herbert, Raymond and Roy, and a younger sister, Ruth. In 1906, when Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. The family sold the farm in 1909 and in 1911, they moved to Kansas City, Missouri. In 1919, Walt returned to Kansas City, where he worked as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. At this point, he drew commercial illustrations for advertising, theater programs and catalogs and befriended fellow artist Ub Iwerks.

In January 1920, as Pesmen-Rubin's revenue declined after Christmas, Disney, aged 18, and Iwerks were laid off. They started their own business, the short-lived Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Failing to attract many customers, Disney and Iwerks agreed that Disney should leave temporarily to earn money at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, run by A. V. Cauger; the following month Iwerks, who was not able to run their business alone, also joined. The company produced commercials using the cutout animationtechnique. Disney became interested in animation, although he preferred drawn cartoons such as Mutt and Jeff and Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell. With the assistance of a borrowed book on animation and a camera, he began experimenting at home. He came to the conclusion that cel animation was more promising than the cutout method. Unable to persuade Cauger to try cel animation at the company, Disney opened a new business with a co-worker from the Film Ad Co, Fred Harman. Their main client was the local Newman Theater, and the short cartoons they produced were sold as "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Disney studied Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables as a model, and the first six "Laugh-O-Grams" were modernized fairy tales.

In May 1921, the success of the "Laugh-O-Grams" led to the establishment of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, for which he hired more animators, including Fred Harman's brother Hugh, Rudolf Ising and Iwerks. The Laugh-O-Grams cartoons did not provide enough income to keep the company solvent, so Disney started production of Alice's Wonderland‍—‌based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland‍—‌which combined live action with animation; he cast Virginia Davis in the title role. The result, a 12½-minute, one-reelfilm, was completed too late to save Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which went into bankruptcy in 1923.

Founding of The Walt Disney Company and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923 at 21 years old. Although New York was the center of the cartoon industry, he was attracted to Los Angeles because his brother Roy was convalescing from tuberculosis there, and he hoped to become a live-action film director. Disney's efforts to sell Alice's Wonderland were in vain until he heard from New York film distributor Margaret J. Winkler. She was losing the rights to both the Out of the Inkwell and Felix the Cat cartoons, and needed a new series. In October, they signed a contract for six Alice comedies, with an option for two further series of six episodes each. Disney and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers Studio‍—‌which later became The Walt Disney Company‍—‌to produce the films; they persuaded Davis and her family to relocate to Hollywood to continue production, with Davis on contract at $100 a month. In July 1924, Disney also hired Iwerks, persuading him to relocate to Hollywood from Kansas City. In 1926, the first official Walt Disney Studio was established at 2725 Hyperion Avenue; the building was demolished in 1940.

In January 1927, Mintz told Disney to create a cartoon character they could sell to Universal Pictures - Universal wanted to re-enter the cartoon business and needed a character of its own. Disney had Iwerks design a rabbit character, and when Universal approved the design, their publicity department named it Oswald.

In January 1928, Iwerks warned Walt that several of the animators at his studio were signing contracts with Winkler Pictures. George Winkler, one of the Winkler heads, had been talking with the animators during pick-up runs of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In the following month, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz. Mintz announced that not only did he want to reduce the fee he paid Disney per short, but that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, and Freleng under contract. Mintz' final deal was for Walt and Roy become his employees. Disney declined, and it resulted in his contract for the Oswald series not being renewed. Disney, Iwerks, and the few non-defecting animators secretly began work on a new mouse character during the production of the last contracted Oswald cartoons.

Mickey Mouse
As a replacement for Oswald, Disney and Iwerks developed a character that resembles a pet mouse. Initially named Mortimer Mouse, Lillian suggested the name Mickey Mouse, to which Walt agreed.

Mickey Mouse first appeared in May 1928 as a single test screening of the short Plane Crazy, but it, and the second feature, The Gallopin' Gaucho, failed to find a distributor. Following the 1927 sensation The Jazz Singer, Disney used synchronized sound on the third short, Steamboat Willie, to create the first post-produced sound cartoon. After the animation was complete, Disney signed a contract with the former executive of Universal Pictures, Pat Powers, to use the "Powers Cinephone" recording system; Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney's early sound cartoons, which soon became popular.

To improve the quality of the music, Disney hired the professional composer and arranger Carl Stalling, on whose suggestion the Silly Symphony series was developed, providing stories through the use of music; the first in the series, The Skeleton Dance (1929), was drawn and animated entirely by Iwerks. Also hired at this time were several artists, both local and from New York. Both the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series were successful, but Disney and his brother felt they were not receiving their rightful share of profits from Powers. In 1930, Disney tried to trim costs from the process by urging Iwerks to abandon the practice of animating every separate cel in favor of the more efficient technique of drawing key poses and letting assistants sketch the inbetween poses. Disney asked Powers for an increase in payments for the cartoons. Powers refused and signed Iwerks to work for him; Stalling resigned shortly afterwards, thinking that without Iwerks, the Disney Studio would close. Disney had a nervous breakdown in October 1931‍—‌which he blamed on the machinations of Powers and his own overwork‍—‌so he and Lillian took an extended holiday to Cuba and a cruise to Panama to recover.

With the loss of Powers as distributor, Disney studios signed a contract with Columbia Pictures to distribute the Mickey Mouse cartoons, which became increasingly popular, including internationally. Disney and his crew also introduced new cartoon stars like Pluto in 1930, Goofy in 1932 and Donald Duck in 1934. Always keen to embrace new technology and encouraged by his new contract with United Artists, Disney filmed Flowers and Trees (1932) in full-color three-strip Technicolor; he was also able to negotiate a deal giving him the sole right to use the three-strip process until August 31, 1935. All subsequent Silly Symphony cartoons were in color. Flowers and Trees was popular with audiences and won the inaugural Academy Award for best Short Subject (Cartoon) at the 1932 ceremony. Disney had been nominated for another film in that category, Mickey's Orphans, and received an Honorary Award "for the creation of Mickey Mouse".

In 1933, Disney produced The Three Little Pigs, a film described by the media historian Adrian Danks as "the most successful short animation of all time". The film won Disney another Academy Award in the Short Subject (Cartoon) category. The film's success led to a further increase in the studio's staff, which numbered nearly 200 by the end of the year. Disney realized the importance of telling emotionally gripping stories that would interest the audience, and he invested in a "story department" separate from the animators, with storyboard artists who would detail the plots of Disney's films.

Animated feature films
By 1934, Disney had become dissatisfied with producing formulaic cartoon shorts, and believed a feature-length cartoon would be more profitable. The studio began the four-year production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based on the fairy tale. When news leaked out about the project, many in the film industry predicted it would bankrupt the company; industry insiders nicknamed it "Disney's Folly". The film, which was the first animated feature made in full color and sound, cost $1.5 million to produce‍—‌three times over budget. To ensure the animation was as realistic as possible, Disney sent his animators on courses at the Chouinard Art Institute; he brought animals into the studio and hired actors so that the animators could study realistic movement. To portray the changing perspective of the background as a camera moved through a scene, Disney's animators developed a multiplane camera which allowed drawings on pieces of glass to be set at various distances from the camera, creating an illusion of depth. The glass could be moved to create the impression of a camera passing through the scene. The first work created on the camera‍—‌a Silly Symphony called The Old Mill (1937)‍—‌won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film because of its impressive visual power. Although Snow White had been largely finished by the time the multiplane camera had been completed, Disney ordered some scenes be re-drawn to use the new effects.

Snow White premiered in December 1937 to high praise from critics and audiences. The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and by May 1939 its total gross of $6.5 million made it the most successful sound film made to that date. Disney won another Honorary Academy Award, which consisted of one full-sized and seven miniature Oscar statuettes. The success of Snow White heralded one of the most productive eras for the studio; the Walt Disney Family Museum calls the following years "the 'Golden Age of Animation' ". With work on Snow White finished, the studio began producing Pinocchio in early 1938 and Fantasia in November of the same year. Both films were released in 1940, and neither performed well at the box office‍—‌partly because revenues from Europe had dropped following the start of World War II in 1939. The studio incurred a loss on both pictures and was deeply in debt by the end of February 1941.

In response to the financial crisis, Disney and his brother Roy started the company's first public stock offering in 1940, and implemented heavy salary cuts. The latter measure, and Disney's sometimes high-handed and insensitive manner of dealing with staff, led to a 1941 animators' strike which lasted five weeks. While a federal mediator from the National Labor Relations Board negotiated with the two sides, Disney accepted an offer from the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make a goodwill trip to South America, ensuring he was absent during a resolution he knew would be unfavorable to the studio. Due to the strike‍—‌and the financial state of the company‍—‌several animators left the studio, and Disney's relationship with other members of staff was permanently strained as a result. The strike temporarily interrupted the studio's next production, Dumbo (1941), which Disney produced in a simple and inexpensive manner; the film received a positive reaction from audiences and critics alike.

Other works and developments
Shortly after the release of Dumbo in October 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Disney formed the Walt Disney Training Films Unit within the company to produce instruction films for the military such as Four Methods of Flush Riveting and Aircraft Production Methods. Disney also met with Henry Morgenthau Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, and agreed to produce short Donald Duck cartoons to promote war bonds. Disney also produced several propaganda productions, including shorts such as Der Fuehrer's Face‍—‌which won an Academy Award‍—‌and the 1943 feature film Victory Through Air Power.

The military films generated only enough revenue to cover costs, and the feature film Bambi‍—‌which had been in production since 1937‍—‌underperformed on its release in April 1942, and lost $200,000 at the box office. On top of the low earnings from Pinocchio and Fantasia, the company had debts of $4 million with the Bank of America in 1944. At a meeting with Bank of America executives to discuss the future of the company, the bank's chairman and founder, Amadeo Giannini, told his executives, "I've been watching the Disneys' pictures quite closely because I knew we were lending them money far above the financial risk. ... They're good this year, they're good next year, and they're good the year after. ... You have to relax and give them time to market their product." Disney's production of short films decreased in the late 1940s, coinciding with increasing competition in the animation market from Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roy Disney, for financial reasons, suggested more combined animation and live-action productions. In 1948, Disney initiated a series of popular live-action nature films, titled True-Life Adventures, with Seal Island the first; the film won the Academy Award in the Best Short Subject (Two-Reel) category.

In early 1950, Disney produced Cinderella, his studio's first animated feature in eight years. It was popular with critics and theater audiences. Costing $2.2 million to produce, it earned nearly $8 million in its first year. Disney was less involved than he had been with previous pictures because of his involvement in his first entirely live-action feature, Treasure Island (1950), which was shot in Britain, as was The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952). Other all-live-action features followed, many of which had patriotic themes. He continued to produce full-length animated features too, including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). From the early to mid-1950s, Disney began to devote less attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators, the Nine Old Men, although he was always present at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating on other ventures. Around the same time, Disney established his own film distribution division Buena Vista, replacing his most recent distributor RKO Pictures.

For several years Disney had been considering building a theme park. When he visited Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters, he wanted to be in a clean, unspoiled park, where both children and their parents could have fun. He visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was heavily influenced by the cleanliness and layout of the park. In March 1952 he received zoning permission to build a theme park in Burbank, near the Disney studios. This site proved too small, and a larger plot in Anaheim, 35 miles (56 km) south of the studio, was purchased. To distance the project from the studio‍—‌which might attract the criticism of shareholders‍—‌Disney formed WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) and used his own money to fund a group of designers and animators to work on the plans; those involved became known as "Imagineers". After obtaining bank funding he invited other stockholders, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres‍—‌part of American Broadcasting Company (ABC)‍—‌and Western Printing and Lithographing Company. In mid-1954, Disney sent his Imagineers to every amusement park in the U.S. to analyze what worked and what pitfalls or problems there were in the various locations and incorporated their findings into his design. Construction work started in July 1954, and Disneyland opened in July 1955; the opening ceremony was broadcast on ABC, which reached 70 million viewers. The park was designed as a series of themed lands, linked by the central Main Street, U.S.A.‍—‌a replica of the main street in his hometown of Marceline. The connected themed areas were Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. The park also contained the narrow gauge Disneyland Railroad that linked the lands; around the outside of the park was a high berm to separate the park from the outside world. An editorial in The New York Times considered that Disney had "tastefully combined some of the pleasant things of yesterday with fantasy and dreams of tomorrow". Although there were early minor problems with the park, it was a success, and after a month's operation, Disneyland was receiving over 20,000 visitors a day; by the end of its first year, it attracted 3.6 million guests.

The money from ABC was contingent on Disney television programs. The studio had been involved in a successful television special on Christmas Day 1950 about the making of Alice in Wonderland. Roy believed the program added millions to the box office takings. In a March 1951 letter to shareholders, he wrote that "television can be a most powerful selling aid for us, as well as a source of revenue. It will probably be on this premise that we enter television when we do". In 1954, after the Disneyland funding had been agreed, ABC broadcast Walt Disney's Disneyland, an anthology consisting of animated cartoons, live-action features and other material from the studio's library. The show was successful in terms of ratings and profits, earning an audience share of over 50%. In April 1955, Newsweek called the series an "American institution". ABC was pleased with the ratings, leading to Disney's first daily television program, The Mickey Mouse Club, a variety show catering specifically to children. The program was accompanied by merchandising through various companies (Western Printing, for example, had been producing coloring books and comics for over 20 years, and produced several items connected to the show). One of the segments of Disneyland consisted of the five-part miniseries Davy Crockett which, according to Disney biographer Neal Gabler, "became an overnight sensation". The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", became internationally popular, and ten million records were sold. As a result, Disney formed his own record production and distribution entity, Disneyland Records.

As well as the construction of Disneyland, Disney worked on other projects away from the studio. He was consultant to the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow; Disney Studios' contribution was America the Beautiful, a 19-minute film in the 360-degree Circarama theater that was one of the most popular attractions. The following year he acted as the chairman of the Pageantry Committee for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, where he designed the opening, closing and medal ceremonies. He was one of twelve investors in the Celebrity Sports Center, which opened in 1960 in Glendale, Colorado; he and Roy bought out the others in 1962, making the Disney company the sole owner.

Despite the demands wrought by non-studio projects, Disney continued to work on film and television projects. In 1955, he was involved in "Man in Space", an episode of the Disneyland series, which was made in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun. Disney also oversaw aspects of the full-length features Lady and the Tramp (the first animated film in CinemaScope) in 1955, Sleeping Beauty (the first animated film in Technirama 70 mm film) in 1959, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (the first animated feature film to use Xerox cels) in 1961, and The Sword in the Stone in 1963.

In 1964, Disney produced Mary Poppins, based on the book series by P. L. Travers; he had been trying to acquire the rights to the story since the 1940s. It became the most successful Disney film of the 1960s, although Travers disliked the film intensely and regretted having sold the rights. The same year he also became involved in plans to expand the California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts), and had an architect draw up blueprints for a new building.

Disney provided four exhibits for the 1964 New York World's Fair, for which he obtained funding from selected corporate sponsors. For PepsiCo, who planned a tribute to UNICEF, Disney developed It's a Small World, a boat ride with audio-animatronic dolls depicting children of the world; Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln contained an animatronic Abraham Lincoln giving excerpts from his speeches; Carousel of Progress promoted the importance of electricity; and Ford's Magic Skyway portrayed the progress of mankind. Elements of all four exhibits‍—‌principally concepts and technology‍—‌were re-installed in Disneyland, although It's a Small World is the ride that most closely resembles the original.

During the early to mid-1960s, Disney developed plans for a ski resort in Mineral King, a glacial valley in California's Sierra Nevada. He hired experts such as the renowned Olympic ski coach and ski-area designer Willy Schaeffler. With income from Disneyland accounting for an increasing proportion of the studio's income, Disney continued to look for venues for other attractions. In 1963 he presented a project to create a theme park in downtown St. Louis, Missouri; he initially reached an agreement with the Civic Center Redevelopment Corp, which controlled the land, but the deal later collapsed over funding. In late 1965, he announced plans to develop another theme park to be called "Disney World" (now Walt Disney World), a few miles southwest of Orlando, Florida. Disney World was to include the "Magic Kingdom"‍—‌a larger and more elaborate version of Disneyland‍—‌plus golf courses and resort hotels. The heart of Disney World was to be the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (EPCOT), which he described as:"an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise."During 1966, Disney cultivated businesses willing to sponsor EPCOT. He received a story credit in the 1966 film Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. as Retlaw Yensid, his name spelt backwards. He increased his involvement in the studio's films, and was heavily involved in the story development of The Jungle Book, the live-action musical feature The Happiest Millionaire (both 1967) and the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968).

Death
Disney had been a heavy smoker since World War I. He did not use cigarettes with filters and had smoked a pipe as a young man. In early November 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was treated with cobalt therapy. On November 30, he felt unwell and was taken by ambulance from his home to St. Joseph Hospital where, on December 15, 1966, aged 65, he died of circulatory collapse caused by the cancer. His remains were cremated two days later and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Legacy
Walt Disney was a pioneer in character animation. He was one of the first people to move animation away from basic cartoons with just "impossible outlandish gags" and crudely drawn characters, and towards elevating the field into an art form with heartwarming stories and characters the audience could connect to on an emotional level. As noted above, this culminated in his creation of a separate story department where storyboard artists would specialize in story development. The personality displayed in the characters of his films as well as the great technological advancements they represented remain influential today. He was considered by many of his colleagues to be a master storyteller and the animation department did not fully recover from his death until the period from 1989 to 1999 which is now known as the Disney Renaissance. The most financially and critically successful films produced during this time include Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). In 1995, Walt Disney Pictures distributed Pixar's Toy Story, the first computer animated feature film. Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney claimed that Walt would have loved Toy Story and that it was "his kind of movie".

With the rise of computer animated films a stream of financially unsuccessful traditional hand-drawn animated features in the early years of the 2000s (decade) emerged. This led to the company's controversial decision to close the traditional animation department. The two satellite studios in Paris and Orlando were closed, and the main studio in Burbank was converted to a computer animation production facility, firing hundreds of people in the process. In 2004, Disney released what was announced as their final "traditionally animated" feature film, Home on the Range. However, since the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, and the resulting rise of John Lasseter to chief creative officer at Disney Animation, that position has changed with the largely successful 2009 film The Princess and the Frog. This marked Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn animation, as the studio hired back staff who had been laid-off in the past. Today, Disney produces both traditional and computer animation.

Today, Walt Disney's animation/motion picture studios and theme park have developed into a multi-billion dollar television, motion picture, vacation destination and media corporation that carries his name. The Walt Disney Company today owns, among other assets, four vacation resorts, nine theme parks, two water parks, thirty-two hotels (and counting), eight motion picture studios, six record labels, eleven cable television networks, and one terrestrial television network.

Reputation
Views of Disney and his work have changed over the decades, and there have been polarized opinions. Mark Langer, in the American Dictionary of National Biography, writes that "Earlier evaluations of Disney hailed him as a patriot, folk artist, and popularizer of culture. More recently, Disney has been regarded as a paradigm of American imperialism and intolerance, as well as a debaser of culture." Steven Watts wrote that some denounce Disney "as a cynical manipulator of cultural and commercial formulas", while PBS records that critics have censured his work because of its "smooth façade of sentimentality and stubborn optimism, its feel-good re-write of American history".

Disney has been accused of antisemitism for having given Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl a tour of his studio a month after Kristallnacht. Disney disavowed the tour three months later, saying he was unaware who she was when he received the invitation. None of Disney's employees—including the animator Art Babbitt, who disliked Disney intensely—ever accused him of making antisemitic slurs or taunts. The Walt Disney Family Museum acknowledges that ethnic stereotypes common to films of the 1930s were included in some early cartoons but also points out that Disney donated regularly to Jewish charities, was named "1955 Man of the Year" by the B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills, and his studio employed a number of Jews, some of whom were in influential positions. Gabler, the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concludes that the available evidence does not support accusations of antisemitism and that Disney was "not [anti-Semitic] in the conventional sense that we think of someone as being an anti-Semite". Gabler concludes that "though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not anti-Semitic, nevertheless, he willingly allied himself with people who were anti-Semitic [meaning some members of the MPAPAI], and that reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge it throughout his life." Disney distanced himself from the Motion Picture Alliance in the 1950s. According to Disney's daughter Diane Disney-Miller, her sister Sharon dated a Jewish boyfriend for a period of time, to which her father raised no objections and even reportedly said "Sharon, I think it's wonderful how these Jewish families have accepted you."

Disney has also been accused of other forms of racism because some of his productions released between the 1930s and 1950s contain racially insensitive material. The feature film Song of the South was criticized by contemporary film critics, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and others for its perpetuation of black stereotypes, but Disney later campaigned successfully for an Honorary Academy Award for its star, James Baskett, the first black actor so honored. Gabler argues that "Walt Disney was no racist. He never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white superiority. Like most white Americans of his generation, however, he was racially insensitive." Floyd Norman, the studio's first black animator who worked closely with Disney during the 1950s and 1960s, said, "Not once did I observe a hint of the racist behavior Walt Disney was often accused of after his death. His treatment of people‍—‌and by this I mean all people‍—‌can only be called exemplary."

Watts argues that many of Disney's post-World War II films "legislated a kind of cultural Marshall Plan. They nourished a genial cultural imperialism that magically overran the rest of the globe with the values, expectations, and goods of a prosperous middle-class United States." Film historian Jay P. Telotte acknowledges that many see Disney's studio as an "agent of manipulation and repression", although he observes that it has "labored throughout its history to link its name with notions of fun, family, and fantasy". John Tomlinson, in his study Cultural Imperialism, examines the work of Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, whose 1971 book Para leer al Pato Donald ( transl. How to Read Donald Duck) identifies that there are "imperialist ... values 'concealed' behind the innocent, wholesome façade of the world of Walt Disney"; this, they argue, is a powerful tool as "it presents itself as harmless fun for consumption by children." Tomlinson views their argument as flawed, as "they simply assume that reading American comics, seeing adverts, watching pictures of the affluent ... ['Yankee'] lifestyle has a direct pedagogic effect".

Disney has been portrayed numerous times in fictional works. H. G. Wells references Disney in his 1938 novel The Holy Terror, in which World Dictator Rud fears that Donald Duck is meant to lampoon the dictator. Disney was portrayed by Len Cariou in the 1995 made-for-TV film A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story, and by Tom Hanks in the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks. In 2001, the German author Peter Stephan Jungk published Der König von Amerika (trans: The King of America), a fictional work of Disney's later years that re-imagines him as a power-hungry racist. The composer Philip Glass later adapted the book into the opera The Perfect American (2013).

Several commentators have described Disney as a cultural icon. On Disney's death, journalism professor Ralph S. Izard comments that the values in Disney's films are those "considered valuable in American Christian society", which include "individualism, decency, ... love for our fellow man, fair play and toleration". Disney's obituary in The Times calls the films "wholesome, warm-hearted and entertaining ... of incomparable artistry and of touching beauty". Journalist Bosley Crowther argues that Disney's "achievement as a creator of entertainment for an almost unlimited public and as a highly ingenious merchandiser of his wares can rightly be compared to the most successful industrialists in history." Correspondent Alistair Cooke calls Disney a "folk-hero ... the Pied Piper of Hollywood", while Gabler considers Disney "reshaped the culture and the American consciousness". In the American Dictionary of National Biography, Langer writes:

"Disney remains the central figure in the history of animation. Through technological innovations and alliances with governments and corporations, he transformed a minor studio in a marginal form of communication into a multinational leisure industry giant. Despite his critics, his vision of a modern, corporate utopia as an extension of traditional American values has possibly gained greater currency in the years after his death."

In December 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a three-month special exhibit in honor of Disney titled "Inspiring Walt Disney".