Throughout the earlier years, Mickey's design bore heavy resemblance to Oswald, save for the ears, nose, and tail.[43][44][45] Ub Iwerks designed Mickey's body out of circles in order to make the character simple to animate. Disney employees John Hench and Marc Davis believed that this design was part of Mickey's success as it made him more dynamic and appealing to audiences.
Mickey's circular design is most noticeable in his ears. In animation in the 1940s, Mickey's ears were animated in a more realistic perspective. Later, they were drawn to always appear circular no matter which way Mickey was facing. This made Mickey easily recognizable to audiences and made his ears an unofficial personal trademark. The circular rule later created a dilemma for toy creators who had to recreate a three-dimensional Mickey.
In 1938, animator Fred Moore redesigned Mickey's body away from its circular design to a pear-shaped design. Colleague Ward Kimball praised Moore for being the first animator to break from Mickey's "rubber hose, round circle" design. Although Moore himself was nervous at first about changing Mickey, Walt Disney liked the new design and told Moore "that's the way I want Mickey to be drawn from now on."
Each of Mickey's hands has only three fingers and a thumb. Disney said that this was both an artistic and financial decision, explaining "Artistically five digits are too many for a mouse. His hand would look like a bunch of bananas. Financially, not having an extra finger in each of 45,000 drawings that make up a six and one-half minute short has saved the Studio millions." In the film The Opry House (1929), Mickey was first given white gloves as a way of contrasting his naturally black hands against his black body. The use of white gloves would prove to be an influential design for cartoon characters, particularly with later Disney characters, but also with non-Disney characters such as Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, and Mario.
Mickey's eyes, as drawn in Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, were large and white with black outlines. In Steamboat Willie, the bottom portion of the black outlines was removed, although the upper edges still contrasted with his head. Mickey's eyes were later re-imagined as only consisting of the small black dots which were originally his pupils, while what were the upper edges of his eyes became a hairline. This is evident only when Mickey blinks. Fred Moore later redesigned the eyes to be small white eyes with pupils and gave his face a Caucasian skin tone instead of plain white. This new Mickey first appeared in 1938 on the cover of a party program, and in animation the following year with the release of The Pointer.[46] Mickey is sometimes given eyebrows as seen in The Simple Things (1953) and in the comic strip, although he does not have eyebrows in his most recent appearances.
Some of Mickey's early appearance, particularly the gloves, and facial characteristics, evolved from blackface caricatures used in minstrel shows.[47][48][49][50][51]
Besides Mickey's gloves and shoes, he typically wears only a pair of shorts with two large buttons in the front. Before Mickey was seen regularly in color animation, Mickey's shorts were either red or a dull blue-green. With the advent of Mickey's color films, the shorts were always red. When Mickey is not wearing his red shorts, he is often still wearing red clothing such as a red bandmaster coat (The Band Concert, The Mickey Mouse Club), red overalls (Clock Cleaners, Boat Builders), a red cloak (Fantasia, Fun and Fancy Free), a red coat (Squatter's Rights, Mickey's Christmas Carol), or a red shirt (Mickey Down Under, The Simple Things)." (wikipedia.org)
"The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Walt Disney or simply Disney (/ˈdɪzni/),[3] (common metonym: House of Mouse, referring to the company's mascot Mickey Mouse)[4] is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.
Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio; it also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before officially changing its name to The Walt Disney Company in 1986. The company established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and theme parks.
Since the 1980s, Disney has created and acquired corporate divisions in order to market more mature content than is typically associated with its flagship family-oriented brands. The company is known for its film studio division, Walt Disney Studios, which includes Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, and Blue Sky Studios. Disney's other main divisions are Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, Disney Media Networks, and Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, Freeform, FX, National Geographic network, and A&E Networks; publishing, merchandising, music, and theater divisions; and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, a group of 14 theme parks around the world.[5][6]
The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1991. Cartoon character Mickey Mouse, created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, is one of the world's most recognizable characters,[7] and serves as the company's official mascot....
In 1954, Walt Disney used his Disneyland series to unveil what would become Disneyland, an idea conceived out of a desire for a place where parents and children could both have fun at the same time. On July 18, 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland to the general public. On July 17, 1955, Disneyland was previewed with a live television broadcast hosted by Robert Cummings, Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan. After a shaky start, Disneyland continued to grow and attract visitors from across the country and around the world. A major expansion in 1959 included the addition of America's first monorail system. For the 1964 New York World's Fair, Disney prepared four separate attractions for various sponsors, each of which would find its way to Disneyland in one form or another. During this time, Walt Disney was also secretly scouting out new sites for a second Disney theme park. In November 1965, "Disney World" was announced, with plans for theme parks, hotels, and even a model city on thousands of acres of land purchased outside of Orlando, Florida.[19]
Disney continued to focus its talents on television throughout the 1950s. Its weekday afternoon children's television program The Mickey Mouse Club, featuring its roster of young "Mouseketeers", premiered in 1955 to great success, as did the Davy Crockett miniseries, starring Fess Parker and broadcast on the Disneyland anthology show.[9] Two years later, the Zorro series would prove just as popular, running for two seasons on ABC.[20] Despite such success, Walt Disney Productions invested little into television ventures in the 1960s,[citation needed] with the exception of the long-running anthology series, later known as The Wonderful World of Disney.[9]
Disney's film studios stayed busy as well, averaging five or six releases per year during this period. While the production of shorts slowed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s, the studio released a number of popular animated features, like Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), which introduced a new xerography process to transfer the drawings to animation cels.[21] Disney's live-action releases were spread across a number of genres, including historical fiction (Johnny Tremain, 1957), adaptations of children's books (Pollyanna, 1960) and modern-day comedies (The Shaggy Dog, 1959). Disney's most successful film of the 1960s was a live action/animated musical adaptation of Mary Poppins, which was one of the all-time highest-grossing movies[9] and received five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews and Best Song for Robert B. Sherman & Richard M. Sherman for "Chim Chim Cher-ee".[22] The theme park design and architectural group became so integral to the Disney studio's operations that the studio bought it on February 5, 1965, along with the WED Enterprises name....
On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of complications relating to lung cancer,[9] and Roy Disney took over as chairman, CEO, and president of the company. One of his first acts was to rename Disney World as "Walt Disney World" in honor of his brother and his vision.[27] In 1967, the last two films Walt actively supervised were released, the animated feature The Jungle Book[9] and the musical The Happiest Millionaire.[28] The studio released a number of comedies in the late 1960s, including The Love Bug (1969's highest-grossing film)[9] and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), which starred another young Disney discovery, Kurt Russell. The 1970s opened with the release of Disney's first "post-Walt" animated feature, The Aristocats, followed by a return to fantasy musicals in 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.[9] Blackbeard's Ghost was another successful film during this period.[9] On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened to the public, with Roy Disney dedicating the facility in person later that month. On December 20, 1971, Roy Disney died of a stroke. He left the company under control of Donn Tatum, Card Walker, and Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller, each trained by Walt and Roy....
In 1991, hotels, home video distribution, and Disney merchandising became 28% of total company revenues while international revenues contributed 22% of total revenues. The company committed its studios in the first quarter of 1991 to produce 25 films in 1992. However, 1991 saw net income drop by 23% and had no growth for the year, but saw the release of Beauty and the Beast, winner of two Academy Awards and top-grossing film in the genre. Disney next moved into publishing with Hyperion Books and adult music with Hollywood Records while Walt Disney Imagineering was laying off 400 employees.[9] Disney also broadened its adult offerings in film when then-Disney Studio Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg acquired Miramax Films in 1993. That same year Disney created the NHL team the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, named after the 1992 hit film of the same name. Disney purchased a minority stake in the Anaheim Angels baseball team around the same time.[9]
Wells was killed in a helicopter crash in 1994.[9] Shortly thereafter, Katzenberg resigned and formed DreamWorks SKG because Eisner would not appoint Katzenberg to Wells' now-available post (Katzenberg had also sued over the terms of his contract).[9] Instead, Eisner recruited his friend Michael Ovitz, one of the founders of the Creative Artists Agency, to be President, with minimal involvement from Disney's board of directors (which at the time included Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier, Hilton Hotels Corporation CEO Stephen Bollenbach, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Yale dean Robert A. M. Stern, and Eisner's predecessors Raymond Watson and Card Walker). Ovitz lasted only 14 months and left Disney in December 1996 via a "no fault termination" with a severance package of $38 million in cash and 3 million stock options worth roughly $100 million at the time of Ovitz's departure. The Ovitz episode engendered a long-running derivative suit, which finally concluded in June 2006, almost 10 years later. Chancellor William B. Chandler III of the Delaware Court of Chancery, despite describing Eisner's behavior as falling "far short of what shareholders expect and demand from those entrusted with a fiduciary position..." found in favor of Eisner and the rest of the Disney board because they had not violated the letter of the law (namely, the duty of care owed by a corporation's officers and board to its shareholders).[38] Eisner later said, in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, that he regretted letting Ovitz go.[39]
In 1994, Eisner attempted to purchase NBC from General Electric (GE), but the deal failed due to GE wanting to keep 51% ownership of the network. Disney acquired many other media sources during the decade, including a merger with Capital Cities/ABC in 1995 which brought broadcast network ABC and its assets, including the A&E Television Networks and ESPN networks, into the Disney fold.[9] Eisner felt that the purchase of ABC was an important investment to keep Disney surviving and allowing it to compete with international multimedia conglomerates.[40] Disney lost a $10.4 million lawsuit in September 1997 to Marsu B.V. over Disney's failure to produce as contracted 13 half-hour Marsupilami cartoon shows. Instead, Disney felt other internal "hot properties" deserved the company's attention.[41]
Disney, which had taken control of the Anaheim Angels in 1996, purchased a majority stake in the team in 1998. That same year, Disney began a move into the internet field with the purchase of Starwave and 43% of Infoseek. In 1999, Disney purchased the remaining shares of Infoseek and launched the Go Network portal in January. Disney also launched its cruise line with the christening of Disney Magic and a sister ship, Disney Wonder.[9] The Katzenberg case dragged on as his contract included a portion of the film revenue from ancillary markets forever. Katzenberg had offered $100 million to settle the case, but Eisner felt the original claim amount of about half a billion too much, but then the ancillary market clause was found. Disney lawyers tried to indicate a decline situation which reveal some of the problems in the company. ABC had declining rating and increasing costs while the film segment had two film failures. While neither party revealed the settlement amount, it is estimated at $200 million.[9]
Eisner's controlling style inhibited efficiency and progress according to some critics, while other industry experts indicated that "age compression" theory led to a decline in the company's target market due to youth copying teenage behavior earlier.[9] The year 2000 brought an increase in revenue of 9% and net income of 39% with ABC and ESPN leading the way and Parks and Resorts marking its sixth consecutive year of growth. However, the September 11 attacks led to a decline in vacation travel and the early 2000s recession led to a decrease in ABC revenue. Plus, Eisner had the company make an expensive purchase of Fox Family Worldwide. The year 2001 was one of cost cutting, laying off 4,000 employees, Disney parks operations decreased, slashing annual live-action film investment, and minimizing Internet operations. While 2002 revenue had a small decrease from 2001 with the cost cutting, net income rose to $1.2 billion with two creative film releases. In 2003, Disney became the first studio to record over $3 billion in worldwide box office receipts.[9] Eisner did not want the board to renominate Roy E. Disney, the son of Disney co-founder Roy O. Disney, as a board director citing his age of 72 as a required retirement age. Stanley Gold responded by resigning from the board and requesting the other board members oust Eisner.[9] On November 30, 2003, Disney resigned from his positions as the company's vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation,[ChWDC 8] accusing Eisner of micromanagement, failures with the ABC television network, timidity in the theme park business, turning The Walt Disney Company into a "rapacious, soul-less" company, and refusing to establish a clear succession plan, as well as a string of box office film flops starting in the year 2000.
On August 9, 2002, Disney said it was expressing great interest in buying Universal Studios whose parent company Vivendi started a bidding war after inheriting $17.9 billion in debt by its purchase of the famed major film studio from Seagram for $34 billion.[42] In addition, Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure was struggling to deal with catastrophically low attendance since the park's opening in 1999, and the September 11 attacks in 2001 caused a dip of Universal Parks and Resorts' tourism attendance worldwide. As a result, Vivendi lacked the interest in investing in the Universal parks more meaningfully and may have been one of the reasons for selling off Universal.[43] Analysts speculated that Universal would have to be available at a bargain price to justify such a deal. "Owning more theme parks could make Disney even more cyclical because that's a cyclical business," said Katherine Styponias of Prudential Securities.[42] Despite this, Disney didn't succeed in pursuing a takeover for various reasons, owing to its stock price at a 52-week-low, the hostility from Vivendi shareholders, and the likelihood of the Disney/Universal deal being blocked on anti-trust grounds (e.g. less innovation in theme parks, higher prices for hotel rooms, growing power of box office market share, etc.).[43]
On May 15, 2003, Disney sold their stake in the Anaheim Angels baseball team to Arte Moreno. Disney purchased the rights to The Muppets and the Bear in the Big Blue House franchises from The Jim Henson Company on February 17, 2004.[44] The two brands were placed under control of the Muppets Holding Company, LLC, a unit of Disney Consumer Products.[45] In 2004, Pixar Animation Studios began looking for another distributor after its 12-year contract with Disney ended, due to its strained relationship over issues of control and money with Eisner. Also that year, Comcast Corporation made an unsolicited $54 billion bid to acquire Disney. A couple of high budget films flopped at the box office. With these difficulties and with some board directors dissatisfied, Eisner ceded the board chairmanship.[9]
On March 3, 2004, at Disney's annual shareholders' meeting, a surprising 45% of Disney's shareholders, predominantly rallied by former board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, withheld their proxies to re-elect Eisner to the board. Disney's board then gave the chairmanship position to Mitchell. However, the board did not immediately remove Eisner as chief executive.[ChWDC 9] In 2005, Disney sold the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team to Henry and Susan Samueli.[9] On March 13, 2005, Robert A. Iger was announced as Eisner successor as CEO. On September 30, Eisner resigned both as an executive and as a member of the Board of Directors." (wikipedia.org)
"Disneyland Park, originally Disneyland, is the first of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, opened on July 17, 1955. It is the only theme park designed and built to completion under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. It was originally the only attraction on the property; its official name was changed to Disneyland Park to distinguish it from the expanding complex in the 1990s.
Walt Disney came up with the concept of Disneyland after visiting various amusement parks with his daughters in the 1930s and 1940s. He initially envisioned building a tourist attraction adjacent to his studios in Burbank to entertain fans who wished to visit; however, he soon realized that the proposed site was too small. After hiring a consultant to help him determine an appropriate site for his project, Disney bought a 160-acre (65 ha) site near Anaheim in 1953. Construction began in 1954 and the park was unveiled during a special televised press event on the ABC Television Network on July 17, 1955.
Since its opening, Disneyland has undergone expansions and major renovations, including the addition of New Orleans Square in 1966, Bear Country (now Critter Country) in 1972, and Mickey's Toontown in 1993. Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is due to open in 2019.[2] Opened in 2001, Disney California Adventure Park was built on the site of Disneyland's original parking lot.
Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with 708 million visits since it opened (as of December 2017). In 2017, the park had approximately 18.3 million visits, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind only Magic Kingdom.[3] According to a March 2005 Disney report, 65,700 jobs are supported by the Disneyland Resort, including about 20,000 direct Disney employees and 3,800 third-party employees (independent contractors or their employees).[4] Disney Announced "Project Stardust" in 2019, which includes major structural renovations to the park to account for higher attendance numbers.[5] Major renovations include widening Main Street, U.S.A. and changing the color scheme and forced perspective of Sleeping Beauty Castle....
In the late 1990s, work began to expand the one-park, one-hotel property. Disneyland Park, the Disneyland Hotel, the site of the original parking lot, and acquired surrounding properties were earmarked to become part of the Disneyland Resort. At that time, the property saw the addition of the Disney California Adventure theme park, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex named Downtown Disney, a remodeled Disneyland Hotel, the construction of Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, and the acquisition and re-branding of the Pan Pacific Hotel as Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel. The park was renamed "Disneyland Park" to distinguish it from the larger complex under construction. Because the existing parking lot (south of Disneyland) was repurposed by these projects, the six-level, 10,250-space Mickey and Friends parking structure was constructed in the northwest corner. Upon completion in 2000, it was the largest parking structure in the United States.[29]
The park's management team during the mid-1990s was a source of controversy among fans and employees. In an effort to boost profits, various changes were begun by then-executives Cynthia Harriss and Paul Pressler. While their initiatives provided a short-term increase in shareholder returns, they drew widespread criticism for their lack of foresight. The retail backgrounds of Harriss and Pressler led to a gradual shift in Disneyland's focus from attractions to merchandising. Outside consultants McKinsey & Company were brought in to help streamline operations, resulting in many changes and cutbacks. After nearly a decade of deferred maintenance, the original park was showing signs of neglect. Fans of the park decried the perceived decline in customer value and park quality and rallied for the dismissal of the management team." (wikipedia.org)
"Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, or plexiglass as well as by the trade names Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, Lucite, and Perspex among several others (see below), is a transparent thermoplastic often used in sheet form as a lightweight or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. The same material can be used as a casting resin, in inks and coatings, and has many other uses.
Although not a type of familiar silica-based glass, the substance, like many thermoplastics, is often technically classified as a type of glass (in that it is a non-crystalline vitreous substance) hence its occasional historical designation as acrylic glass. Chemically, it is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate. The material was developed in 1928 in several different laboratories by many chemists, such as William Chalmers, Otto Röhm, and Walter Bauer, and was first brought to market in 1933 by German Röhm & Haas AG (as of January 2019 part of Evonik Industries) and its partner and former U.S. affiliate Rohm and Haas Company under the trademark Plexiglas.[5]
PMMA is an economical alternative to polycarbonate (PC) when tensile strength, flexural strength, transparency, polishability, and UV tolerance are more important than impact strength, chemical resistance and heat resistance.[6] Additionally, PMMA does not contain the potentially harmful bisphenol-A subunits found in polycarbonate. It is often preferred because of its moderate properties, easy handling and processing, and low cost. Non-modified PMMA behaves in a brittle manner when under load, especially under an impact force, and is more prone to scratching than conventional inorganic glass, but modified PMMA is sometimes able to achieve high scratch and impact resistance." (wikipedia.org)
"Plastic is material consisting of any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic compounds that are malleable and so can be molded into solid objects.
Plasticity is the general property of all materials which can deform irreversibly without breaking but, in the class of moldable polymers, this occurs to such a degree that their actual name derives from this specific ability.
Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass and often contain other substances. They are usually synthetic, most commonly derived from petrochemicals, however, an array of variants are made from renewable materials such as polylactic acid from corn or cellulosics from cotton linters.[2]
Due to their low cost, ease of manufacture, versatility, and imperviousness to water, plastics are used in a multitude of products of different scale, including paper clips and spacecraft. They have prevailed over traditional materials, such as wood, stone, horn and bone, leather, metal, glass, and ceramic, in some products previously left to natural materials.
In developed economies, about a third of plastic is used in packaging and roughly the same in buildings in applications such as piping, plumbing or vinyl siding.[3] Other uses include automobiles (up to 20% plastic[3]), furniture, and toys.[3] In the developing world, the applications of plastic may differ—42% of India's consumption is used in packaging.[3]
Plastics have many uses in the medical field as well, with the introduction of polymer implants and other medical devices derived at least partially from plastic. The field of plastic surgery is not named for use of plastic materials, but rather the meaning of the word plasticity, with regard to the reshaping of flesh.
The world's first fully synthetic plastic was bakelite, invented in New York in 1907 by Leo Baekeland[4] who coined the term 'plastics'.[5] Many chemists have contributed to the materials science of plastics, including Nobel laureate Hermann Staudinger who has been called "the father of polymer chemistry" and Herman Mark, known as "the father of polymer physics".[6]
The success and dominance of plastics starting in the early 20th century led to environmental concerns regarding its slow decomposition rate after being discarded as trash due to its composition of large molecules. Toward the end of the century, one approach to this problem was met with wide efforts toward recycling." (wikipedia.org)