Walt Disney. What does the name bring to mind for you? For millions of people across the world the Disney name is synonymous with children’s entertainment and theme parks. However, many people fail to remember that despite it all, Walt Disney was once a person before the name became synonymous with a major corporation. The Disney family wants to change all that by opening a new museum to tell the human side of the story of Wal Disney.
The family contends that Walt Disney’s actual life and accomplishments have been overshadowed by the corporate giant that shares his name. The Walt Disney Family Foundation, an organization started nearly twenty years ago, will open the doors at the Walt Disney Museum on October 1, 2009.
The Walt Disney company films a slate of movies and releases them as Disney DVDs each year and as such, the Disney empire as has never been larger. But do the people know anything about the man, Walt Disney. Who today knows much about this man, Walt Disney, and the things that moved and drove him to become an animation pioneer and one of the founders of Hollywood.
Through exhibits, the Walt Disney museum will replay the key moments in Walt Disney’s life, starting with his birth in Chicago and continuing through his childhood years in St. Louis. The museum will also chronicle his move to Los Angeles in the 1920s where Walt Disney’s personal career began to emerge as his Mickey Mouse cartoon gained popularity.
The Walt Dinsey museum will feature many relics from Walt Disney’s past. Among the priceless artifacts that will be on exhibit include primitive animation sketches, bytes of film, rough drafts of movie scripts, and several of Walt Disney’s Academy Awards, including the one presented to him by the Academy for his first full length animated feature, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Also included will be a mock up of the theme park, later dubbed Disney land, as first imagined by Walt Disney. This theme park’s early designs ended up being quite different from the Walt Disney land that one can visit today. The museum will feature a working model of the train which ran around the Dinsey estate.
After passing away in 1966, Walt Disney left a legacy that has lived on without him. Among his biggest hits were “Sleeping Beauty,” “Fantasia,”
and “Cinderella.”
