- Title: USA/FRANCE: THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY WILL START ITS 100TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS
- Date: 16th November 2001
- Summary: MARNE-LA-VALLEE, FRANCE (FILE-DECEMBER 23, 1999) (REUTERS) SV/LV PROTESTS AT EURODISNEY (3 SHOTS) WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (FILE-SEPTEMBER 17, 1994) (REUTERS) SLV PULL IN SV/SV PROTESTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. AGAINST DISNEY'S PROPOSED AMERICAN HISTORY THEME PARK TO BE BUILT IN VIRGINIA (2 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 1st December 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, AND WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES AND MARNE-LA-VALLEE, FRANCE AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- City:
- Country: France
- Topics: Business,Entertainment,General
- Reuters ID: LVALN6D3REPL645E355BU4NOOJL
- Story Text: Mickey Mouse is set to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Disney magic, as a century has passed since the birth of the company's founding father Walt. From the the birth of a spindly rodent in the "Steamboat Willie" cartoon through the creation of an international media empire, the Walt Disney Company has continued to expand and acquire through both times of acclaim and adversity.
100 years have passed since Walt Disney was born and it seems his legacy will live on for hundreds of years more.
The Walt Disney Company will start its 100th anniversary celebrations on Wednesday (December 5), paying tribute to the man who started with a dream and, at his death in 1966, passed on a company that would become one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.
Amid a slew of television specials, theme park parades, and commemorative merchandise in honor of Walt's centennial, the company is doing anything but celebrating its bottom line.
Falling studio attendance and a ratings-poor ABC network have slashed the company's $920 million (USD) profit last year to a $158 million loss in 2001. Disney executives are pinning their hopes on their latest animation venture, "Monsters, Inc." which is performing well at the box office, and on some line-up changes at ABC. And after more than 4,000 layoffs and voluntary resignations this year, Disney "cast members," as they're called, are bracing for more. Spending has been cut by $1.8 billion this year and a cut of $500 million is already planned for 2002.
Walt could not have dreamed of numbers like that when he first put pencil to paper and sketched the scrawny rodent named Mickey. Before becoming an icon of the 20th century, Walt had meager beginnings as the son of a Missouri farmer.
The family business failed in 1910 and Walt's parents took the four children to Kansas City, though Walt only passed through on his way to Chicago, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. His training there spawned his first real cartoon drawings and in 1922, he launched his own studio, Laugh-O-Gram Films, which a year later went bankrupt after making just two seven-minute shorts.
Walk then went west to Hollywood and began producing animated shorts featuring a character called Mortimer Mouse, to be renamed Mickey later by his wife Lillian. The first few silent films were flops, but when sound came along and Walt added it to "Steamboat Willy," suddenly he had a hit. Four years later, Walt produced "Trees and Flowers," the first cartoon in color, and it won him his first of 48 Oscars.
Buoyed by his success, Walt decided to "bet the farm" on a full-length animated feature, "Snow White." He invested a staggering $1 million in the 1935 production and it paid off.
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" opened to acclaim in 1937.
"Pinnochio," "Fantasia," and "Bambi" followed, but all with very disappointing box office numbers. After World War II, Walt saw the need to diversify and in 1955, opened his dream project, Disneyland. The wild popularity of his Anaheim, California theme park led to the replication of the Disney magic in Orlando, Florida and, eventually, in Tokyo, Japan and Paris, France.
Walt conquered television, producing shows in 1954 and then launching "The Wonderful World of Color" in 1961, with Walt himself introducing each episode. But certainly not in his wildest imagination, would he ever have imagined his company would one day acquire the whole network on which his shows broadcast, ABC. Walt died on December 15, 1966 from a combination of exhaustion and cancer. Since his death, Walt's successors have taken their founder's vision to new heights.
The film studio remains the core of Disney's focus, with huge hits like "The Little Mermaid," "The Lion Kind, " and "Aladdin" fuelling the resurgence of the company's animation division in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Meanwhile, competition from other studios like Dreamworks has been significant -- Disney no longer has a monopoly on animation, as Dreamworks has proven with hits like "Shrek." Live action films like "The Sixth Sense" have gained critical and popular acclaim for the Disney studio, while this year's "Pearl Harbor" turned out to be somewhat of an embarrassment, coming in way under the box office numbers the studio had expected.
While DVD and video sales are strong, the studio division suffered a $121 million operation loss in the last quarter.
The closure of Disney's online property, Go.com, earlier this year, produced an $820 million loss. And ABC went from top in the ratings with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," to fourth in the network race when their once hit show slipped as low as 74th in the ratings. Disney's Chief Michael Eisner has been at the forefront of rebuilding California's tourism economy after the September 11 attacks significantly hurt park attendance.
But Eisner & Co. have so many other Disney holdings to concentrate on. The Mouse now owns a fleet of cruise ships, produces Broadway shows, has bought into the Internet, published more than a dozen magazines, and owns professional sports teams. With such range and international name recognition, Disney's current financial trouble will likely be only a footnote in the company's history books.
Children and adults from New York, to Tokyo, to Iceland love Mickey Mouse. Equally, the empire has its detractors -- the company is often faulted for spreading the worst of American culture to the far reaches of the globe. But when children and their parents pack the theme parks this week to watch the 100 Years of Magic parade, Walt's legacy will touch yet another generation of Mickey fans. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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