专八人文知识需知的美国名人--华特·迪士尼

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--华特·迪士尼

　　英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广，考生们需要平时多积累小常识，这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余，新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

　　华特·迪士尼(Walter Elias Disney 1901.12.5.—1966.12.15)美国著名动画大师、企业家、导演、制片人、编剧、配音演员、卡通设计者，举世闻名的迪士尼公司创始人。一位备受美国人民热爱和怀念的长者。他和他的职员一起创造了许许多多著名、受世人欢迎的卡通角色，包括那个被无数人喜爱的经典卡通形象、华特·迪士尼的好友——米老鼠。

　　华特·迪士尼的很多作品让他成为全球著名的人，包括他创造了《白雪公主》、《木偶奇遇记》等很多知名的电影，还有米老鼠等动画角色，也是他，让迪士尼乐园成为可能，开创了主题乐园这种形式，而且他在电视节目《迪士尼奇妙世界》(原来还叫Disneyland)的主持也让无数美国人民无法忘怀。他获得了48个奥斯卡奖提名和7个艾美奖。华特·迪士尼是世界上获得奥斯卡奖最多的人。华特有2个女儿Diane DisneyAnd Sharon Disney(Sharon是领养的)。

　　Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American filmproducer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, internationalicon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the20th century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions,Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation heco-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues ofapproximately U.S. $35 billion.

　　Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as aninnovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created a number of the world'smost famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, a character for which Disney himself wasthe original voice. He has won 26 Academy Awards out of 59 nominations, including a record fourin one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual. He also won sevenEmmy Awards. He is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks inthe United States, as well as the international resorts in Japan, France, and China.

　　Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, in 1967 construction began on Walt DisneyWorld Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney opened & dedicated The Magic Kingdom onOctober 1, 1971. Epcot followed on October 1, 1982, Disney's Hollywood Studios formerly knownas Disney MGM Studios on May 1, 1989, and Disney's Animal Kingdom on April 22, 1998. Theresort also includes hotels, restaurants, golf courses, water parks, campsites, sports & auto racingcomplex, a wedding pavilion, and other shopping & entertainment complexes, making the WaltDisney World Resort in Florida the number one vacation destination in the world.

　　Laugh-O-Gram Studio

　　Presented as "Newman Laugh-O-Grams", Disney's cartoons became widely popular in the KansasCity area. Through their success, Disney was able to acquire his own studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram, and hire a vast number of additional animators, including Fred Harman's brother HughHarman, Rudolf Ising, and his close friend Ubbe Iwerks. Unfortunately, with all his high employeesalaries unable to make up for studio profits, Walt was unable to successfully manage money. As aresult, the studio became loaded with debtand wound up bankrupt. Disney then set his sights onestablishing a studio in the movie industry's capital city, Hollywood, California.

　　Hollywood

　　Disney and his brother pooled their money to set up a cartoon studio in Hollywood. Needing tofind a distributor for his new Alice Comedies — which he started making while in Kansas City, butnever got to distribute — Disney sent an unfinished print to New York distributor Margaret Winkler,who promptly wrote back to him. She was keen on a distribution deal with Disney for more live-action/animated shorts based upon Alice's Wonderland.

　　Alice Comedies

　　Virginia Davis (the live-action star of Alice’s Wonderland) and her family were relocated at Disney'srequest from Kansas City to Hollywood, as were Iwerks and his family. This was the beginning ofthe Disney Brothers' Studio. It was located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district, wherethe studio remained until 1939. In 1925, Disney hired a young woman named Lillian Bounds to inkand paint celluloid. After a brief period of dating her, the two got married the same year.

　　The new series, Alice Comedies, was reasonably successful, and featured both Dawn O'Day andMargie Gay as Alice. Lois Hardwick also briefly assumed the role of Alice. By the time the seriesended in 1927, the focus was more on the animated characters, in particular a cat named Juliuswho resembled Felix the Cat, rather than the live-action Alice.

　　Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

　　By 1927, Charles B. Mintz had married Margaret Winkler and assumed control of her business, andordered a new all-animated series to be put into production for distribution through UniversalPictures. The new series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was an almost instant success, and thecharacter, Oswald — drawn and created by Iwerks — became a popular figure. The Disney studioexpanded, and Walt hired back Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng fromKansas City.

　　In February 1928, Disney went to New York to negotiate a higher fee per short from Mintz. Disneywas shocked when Mintz announced that not only he wanted to reduce the fee he paid Disney pershort but also that he had most of his main animators, including Harman, Ising, Maxwell, andFreleng (notably, except Iwerks, who refused to leave Disney) under contract and would start hisown studio if Disney did not accept the reduced production budgets. Universal, not Disney, ownedthe Oswald trademark, and could make the films without Disney. Disney declined Mintz's offer andlost most of his animation staff.

　　With most of his staff gone Disney now found himself on his own again. It took Disney's company78 years to get back the rights to the Oswald character. The Walt Disney Company reacquired therights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC Universal in 2006, through a trade for longtime ABCsports commentator Al Michaels.

　　Mickey Mouse

　　After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney felt the need to develop a new character to replace him.He based the character on a mouse he had adopted as a pet while working in a Kansas City studio.Ub Iwerks reworked on the sketches made by Disney so that it was easier to animate it. However,Mickey's voice and personality was provided by Disney. In the words of a Disney employee, "Ubdesigned Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul." Besides Oswald and Mickey, asimilar mouse-character is seen in Alice Comedies which featured a mouse named Ike the Mouse,and the first Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks, which showed a Mickey Mouse look-alikeplaying fiddle. The initial films were animated by Iwerks, his name was prominently featured on thetitle cards. The mouse was originally named "Mortimer", but later christened "Mickey Mouse" byLillian Disney who thought that the name Mortimer did not fit. Mortimer later became the name ofMickey's rival for Minnie, who was taller than his renowned adversary and had a Brooklyn accent.

　　The first animated short with Mickey in it was titled, Plane Crazy, which was, like all of Disney'sprevious works, a silent film. After failing to find a distributor for Plane Crazy or its follow-up, TheGallopin' Gaucho, Disney created a Mickey cartoon with sound called Steamboat Willie. Abusinessman named Pat Powers provided Disney with both distribution and Cinephone, a sound-synchronization process. Steamboat Willie became an instant success, and Plane Crazy, TheGalloping Gaucho, and all future Mickey cartoons were released with soundtracks. Disney himselfprovided the vocal effects for the earliest cartoons and performed as the voice of Mickey Mouseuntil 1946. After the release of Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney would continue to successfully usesound in all of his future cartoons, and Cinephone became the new distributor for Disney's earlysound cartoons as well. Mickey soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's most popular cartooncharacter. By 1930, Felix, now in sound, had faded from the screen, as his sound cartoons failedto gain attention. Mickey's popularity would now skyrocket in the early 1930s.

　　Silly Symphonies

　　Following the footsteps of Mickey Mouse series, a series of musical shorts titled, Silly Symphonieswas released in 1929. The first of these was titled The Skeleton Dance and was entirely drawn andanimated by Iwerks, who was also responsible for drawing the majority of cartoons released byDisney in 1928 and 1929. Although both series were successful, the Disney studio was not seeingits rightful share of profits from Pat Powers, and in 1930, Disney signed a new distribution deal withColumbia Pictures. The original basis of the cartoons were musical novelty, and Carl Stalling wrotethe score for the first Silly Symphony cartoons as well.

　　Iwerks was soon lured by Powers into opening his own studio with an exclusive contract. Later,Carl Stalling would also leave Disney to join Iwerks' new studio.Iwerks launched his Flip the Frogseries with first voice cartoon in color, "Fiddlesticks," filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Iwerks alsocreated two other series of cartoons, the Willie Whopper and the Comicolor. In 1936, Iwerks shuthis studio to work on various projects dealing with animation technology. He would return toDisney in 1940 and, would go on to pioneer a number of film processes and specialized animationtechnologies in the studio's research and development department.

　　By 1932, Mickey Mouse had become quite a popular cinema character, but Silly Symphonies wasnot as successful. The same year also saw competition for Disney grow worse as Max Fleischer'sflapper cartoon character, Betty Boop, would gain more popularity among theater audiences.Fleischer was considered to be Disney's main rival in the 1930s,and was also the father of RichardFleischer, whom Disney would later hire to direct his 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures dropped the distribution of Disney cartoons and was replaced byUnited Artists. In late 1932, Herbert Kalmus, who had just completed work on the first three-striptechnicolor camera,approached Walt and convinced him to redo Flowers and Trees, which wasoriginally done in black and white, with three-strip Technicolor. Flowers and Trees would go on tobe a phenomenal success and would also win the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject:Cartoons for 1932. After Flowers and Trees was released, all future Silly Symphony cartoons weredone in color as well. Disney was also able to negotiate a two-year deal with Technicolor, giving himthe sole right to use three-strip Technicolor, which would also eventually be extended to five yearsas well. Through Silly Symphonies, Disney would also create his most successful cartoon short of alltime, The Three Little Pigs, in 1933. The cartoon ran in theaters for many months, and alsofeatured the hit song that became the anthem of the Great Depression, "Who's Afraid of the BigBad Wolf".

　　First Academy Award

　　In 1932, Disney received a special Academy Award for the creation of "Mickey Mouse", whoseseries was made into color in 1935 and soon launched spin-off series for supporting characterssuch as Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto; Pluto and Donald would immediately get their individualcartoons in 1937,and Goofy would get solo cartoons in 1939 as well. Of all of Mickey's partners,Donald Duck—who first teamed with Mickey in the 1934 cartoon, Orphan's Benefit—was arguablythe most popular, and went on to become Disney's second most successful cartoon character ofall time.

　　Disneyland grand opening

　　Walt Disney giving the opening day speech July 17, 1955.Disneyland officially opened July 17, 1955. Among the thousands of people who came out for the opening were Ronald Reagan, BobCummings and Art Linkletter, who shared cohosting duties, as well as the mayor of Anaheim. Waltgave the following opening day speech:

　　“ To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fondmemories of the past ... and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America ...with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. ”

　　Plans for Disney World and EPCOT

　　Disney World was to include a larger, more elaborate version of Disneyland which was to be calledthe Magic Kingdom. It would also feature a number of golf courses and resort hotels. The heart ofDisney World, however, was to be the Experimental Prototype City (or Community) of Tomorrow,or EPCOT for short.

　　Mineral King Ski Resort

　　Walt Disney had plans for a ski resort in Mineral King for a while, called Walt Disney Ski Resort.During the early to mid 1960s, Disney brought in experts like the renowned Olympic ski coach andski-area designer Willy Schaeffler, who helped plan a visitor village, ski runs and ski lifts among theseveral bowls surrounding the valley. Plans finally moved into action in the mid 1960s, but Waltdied before the actual work had started. Disney's death and the actions from preservationistsmade sure the resort was never built.

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