he's been deemed a dreamer a global game changer a vibrant visionary a stellar storyteller but most of all he was a hard-working faithful father attempting to entertain and educate his kids and have some fun as well we will demystify the man the myth the legend the one and only walt disney on today's f y i welcome to for your info english you got it hello hello hello amigos and welcome to this another exciting edition of fyi for your english and the other day i was taking a look at the episodes and guys this is our 41st episode that's right we have looked at 41 different topics so far and i'd love to hear your feedback i'd love to hear about the ones you liked the most and other things that you would like to hear more about in the future i don't know if you could tell by my voice but i'm so excited about this week's topic and i gotta say something yesterday or yesterday last week's topic was pizza and believe me there are few things i love on this planet more than pizza but uh disney is high up on the totem pole i've got to say as somebody who worked at disney i worked as a disney employee as somebody who grew up watching disney flicks well this person and his organization i think it's so much more than an organization it has created some of the greatest memories childhood memories for all of us it doesn't matter where you live in the world walt disney is far reaching and today as we'll see later in the in the episode this guy and his empire is now probably the largest entertainment conglomerate in the whole world but it all started with one guy one humble guy well i don't know if he was humble umilde but he did have humble beginnings comientos umildes but before we look at his past let's take a look at the intro because i always like to put some good vocabulary that i'd like to teach you in the intro as well so i said he's been deemed a dreamer now to deem somebody something is considered see what i did there deemed dreamer he's been deemed a dreamer i originally had called but then i said wait i gotta do my double alliteration here what am i crazy he's been deemed a dreamer a global game changer now a game changer is somebody who changes the rules and changes the way we play forever and i think even people who aren't big fans of disney won't argue that one this guy was a game changer he was also a vibrant visionary a visionary as umbisionario and vibrant con mucha vida mucho color i think you say the word bibrante in spanish then i said he was a stellar storyteller stellers estelar and storyteller is como suena un narador a storyteller agent and in the end that's really what he was before you could call him a businessman before you could call him anything else he was a storyteller and he told his story through his illustrations but then if you really start to uncover who this guy was walt disney he was really just simply a hard-working a hard-working faithful field right a faithful father who was attempting we can say attempting or trying to entertain and educate his kids and have some fun as well so i've got to be honest with you when i started you know putting this episode together i said well that's kind of my goal too with my daughter and with my students i want to entertain you i want to educate you and i want us to all have some fun along the way so indirectly this episode it was indirectly inspired by mr walt disney himself then i said we will demystify the man the myth the legend and those are three things that we often say together the man the myth the legend the one and only ellunico walt disney so as i said uh he comes from humble beginnings he was born in chicago on december 5th 1901 although some people will say that he was born in mohakar and we're going to take a look at that in the bonus part of the show we're going to see why some people say that walt disney was born in mojacar spain that's right in almeria where my father is from now he is the fourth of five children el cuarto de cinco ninos he didn't stay in chicago his parents moved around so uh really he grew up in an area called marceline missouri marceline missouri and this was on a farm and they moved there when he was four years old now marceline missouri is a really important part of this story because it was such an idyllic hometown that a lot of the ideas he had for disney came from there such as main street which is one of the main areas in disney world and disneyland was inspired by the main street in marceline missouri also this is where he started drawing he started to see the neighbors horses and he started replicating them and drawing them and the neighbor noticed he said wait a second this kid's got some talent this kid has got a gift undone they uh they started to help him and teach him and encourage him alentarle to keep drawing but as i said his father and his family moved around quite a bit i mean remember this this is a very american thing we'll go wherever the work is so if there's no more work in your home state well you will up and move the family to another state because you're looking for opportunity just like walt disney's father was so they had difficulty making ends meet the academes in marceline so they moved to kansas city and this is where disney's father elias disney purchased to purchase his comprad a newspaper route and for the next six years walt disney helped his father run that newspaper route and and make all the different deliveries so disney's first job we could say was a paper boy but he worked so hard he worked after school he worked on weekends he really wanted to make his father's business work and at that age walt disney already had that work ethic that you need to make it and a work ethic is this idea of i have to work it doesn't matter if i don't feel well it doesn't matter if i have a hangover i have to do my job so he had what we call work ethic from an early age in fact he worked so hard on this paper route that he had to drop out of high school now to drop out as dejar el instituto he dropped out of high school so many people don't know that he is what we call a dropout walt disney was a high school dropout he didn't finish high school at 16 he decided that he had to run his father's business he was more interested in that and then well he realized he also had another duty that he felt and that was to serve his country and he felt like he wanted to do his part there was just one problem our little friend walt wasn't of age he wasn't of legal age so he couldn't join the armed forces but that wasn't a problem for little walt because walt said well you know what i'll just forge a document so he forged to forge us for falsificar he forged his birth certificate so that it said that he was 17 years old instead of 16 years old and because of this he was able to join the red cross ambulance corps and he helped people all throughout the war he was even in france for a period but technically he wasn't supposed to be there he was underage so there we see as well some of his qualities coming out already he seemed to be very sly astuto he also seemed like a go-getter and a go-getter is somebody who's driven somebody who is motivated and that is walt disney but don't think that our friend walt disney had an easy way to the top in fact he failed many times and it reminds me of that expression if at first you don't succeed try try try again right or pick yourself up dust yourself off and start again right so that's what happens if you fail it doesn't mean you're a failure it means you just haven't hit with the right formula yet so young walt in 1922 opened up a film studio which was called laphogram and well it struggled financially and it closed down in 1923 so his first company didn't even last a year nisi kira duro unanio imagine if walt had given up we wouldn't be doing this podcast right now we wouldn't be talking about mickey and donald and pixar and everything else that disney has become so there's a good lesson we can learn as well from walt don't give up never give up so even though he shut down that studio because it was struggling financially that same year in 1923 he moved out west he moved to hollywood and he formed disney brothers studio and this is where he worked with his brother roy disney and his poor brother was a an ailing man a very sick man he suffered from by the theo the tuberculosis and so walt almost felt like not only did he want to work with his brother but he wanted to motivate it he wanted to keep him busy uh so he wasn't thinking about his sickness and and the pain that he was going through so for walt it was really really important that his brother be on board now it's interesting too the the relationship that these siblings had remember siblings they si no que demos brothers or sisters we say siblings and even though aunt even though roy was the older brother it seemed like disney was kind of calling the shots it seemed like he was running the show at least creatively speaking now it's clear that roy was running the financials he was running the the business end that disney liked but he was more interested in the creative side and so this this new studio disney brothers studio out in hollywood they started producing various shorts uh animated cartoons and really they were experimenting with new technology and trying to work on this form of entertainment that was a fledgling form of entertainment fledgling is quite new and finally in 1927 disney created a character that was a booming success this character was huge and i'm not talking about mickey mouse i'm talking about oswald the lucky rabbit and in 1927 he created oswald the lucky rabbit he did it with another distributor so uh in the end that led to problems and what problems did it lead to well after the success of this character oswald the lucky rabbit walt disney went over to his boss to the company that was paying him to make this character and he said guys i want to raise quiero un incremento and not only did this guy his last name i remember was mints and this guy said mince he goes oh no no we're not going to give you a raise in fact i'm going to pay you less now and that's what he did he offered to pay him less and walt disney obviously was not having it he goes no way and you know what happened he took the character and legally he could because walt disney didn't protect himself he didn't register that character as a trademark so the other guy according to the contract owned that character so right there he lost his first successful character all because of a contract dispute and to add insult to injury to add insult to injuries to make a bad situation worse well aside from stealing his character as if that wasn't enough he also poached many of walt's workers and to poaches and he successfully stole a lot of disney's greatest illustrators and his first big idea oswald the lucky rabbit so then what would have to happen well there's a never a perfect expression like this one he had to go back to the drawing board and never said better because that's what he used a drawing board so disney had to go back to the drawing board but this time he learned a lesson this next character he would create would be his he would own the character he would not give the rights of that character to anyone and that character's name was mortimer mouse huh mortimer mouse who the heck is that mortimer sounds like an 80 year old man's name mortimer mouse well that was mickey's original name walt disney designed him supposedly for the first time on a train and we'll talk about that a little bit later disney has always had a fashion excuse me a fascination with trains and we'll see it in his parks we'll see it at his house and all throughout his life so the way the story goes is that he designed this on a train came up with this mouse and he showed his wife and he said look honey i just designed my new character his name is mortimer mouse and his wife said what are you nuts questions mortimer what kind of name is that that's not a really cute name so then she and thankfully she was there to intervene and she said what about mickey i think that would be a bitter a better name and well he agreed thankfully with his wife and mickey mouse was born hi you folks it's great to see you and well that wasn't the first time we saw him in a cartoon but that was supposedly the day that mickey first saw the light of day even if it was just on a piece of paper going cross-country on a train mickey mouse made his official debut in 1928 in a short film titled steamboat willie and that was one of the first cartoons ever to use synchronized sound effects and there was another thing you know he was a pioneer walt disney he wasn't afraid to take risks in fact i don't remember the amount of time but he purchased the rights to purchase escomprad to use technicolor exclusively and technicolor was something new so what did he do he basically made sure that for two or three years i don't remember exactly that his competition couldn't create cartoons in technicolor it's genius but what happens when you work too hard what happens when you burn the candle at both ends in english to burn the candle at both ends well of course he got worn out and in 1931 walt disney this hard-working visionary who really hadn't stopped since he did that paper route with his dad had a nervous breakdown there was just so much stress happening in his life and he was working too hard and as as we saw he is has proved already uh that he was a workaholic so uh his doctors recommended that he take a break and leave the studio for a while and disconnect and he did he he listened to the doctors and he ended up going on a multi-week vacation around south america where technically he wasn't working but if you guys know disney he was always jotting down ideas another thing about our friend walt disney is that he was a perfectionist he was known for being pretty strict with his employees he was a stickler but i guess you know i can understand that personality he expected the best from himself so he expected the best from his team so when he was trying to find somebody to do the voice over work for mickey to give mickey a voice or como de timos to voice mickey directamente como verbo he couldn't find anybody who did it exactly how he wanted it so he was very meticulous he was very demanding we're learning a lot of adjectives here talking about walt disney and so who ended up voicing the character walt disney himself well he said if i can't find somebody to do it i'm gonna have to do it myself nobody can do it exactly how i want it done because a lot of people were doing a falsetto voice but he said it's not falsetto you guys aren't getting it and so he ended up doing the character's voice or como dijimo santes como verbo voicing that character until 1947 when he was too busy to keep doing it so he had to hire somebody as much as he was a perfectionist and wanted to do it himself he just didn't have time and if you look at walt disney pictures of him videos of him uh even him speaking i think and this is my opinion and but i'm i'm so sure of it and i i really feel strongly about this i feel like mickey mouse is walt disney's alter ego do you guys agree what do you think of that so the more responsibility he was taking on well the fewer things he could do as far as animating and voicing the characters in fact a lot of people said that disney rarely especially in his later days animated his own movies he hired well he's a smart guy he hired the best animators in the business and he got them to work for him and you're thinking so he wasn't an illustrator well yes he was but he realized that there were people that were better than him at illustrating and he hired them and one of those people and disney would not be possible as we know it none of the characters nothing without a guy named ub iworks okay an ub i works this guy is basically disney's right-hand man there are even stories going around on the internet saying that he was the one who created walt uh excuse me not walt disney he was the one that created mickey mouse again disney wasn't going to let that happen again so even if ub iworks created mickey mouse disney was sure that he was going to be the one to have the rights to it so what did disney do if he wasn't illustrating and he stopped voicing uh mickey well he was running the show javando and what i realized from researching this is one of his most popular things that he did and i think his his biggest asset to the company was his storytelling ability the way he could sit there with all his animators and scene by scene go through the story doing all the different voices so he wasn't he didn't even direct them but he kind of was the creative director the artistic director he knew what he wanted and he would try and explain that or transmit that to his workers then i also told you that he had a love affair with trains and he'd been fascinated with trains since he was a little kid in kansas city he even worked on the railroads when he was there he had a brief stint uh briefcentes periodo muy corto selling newspapers and snacks on trains and our friend was so fascinated by trains that he had a train in his house in hollywood in his backyard and i think it went through the house and it was a pretty big train i mean it wasn't full scale it was like a model train but i think it was like 1 8 scale or one fourth scale but even so if you go to disney world or you go to disneyland any of his parks you'll see that there are trains everywhere so this man aside from creating his most famous character on a train also had his own train set at his house a big train set that he could ride on now this is another thing we forgot to say about disney he is a big kid he is somebody whose inner child is alive and kicking so we've talked a lot about uh the different characters some of the cartoons some of the businesses but we didn't talk about his theme parks in 1955 july 17 1955 disneyland was opened it was opening day and i'm sure you guys have heard this before but it was a disaster it did not go smoothly at all there were counterfeit tickets counterfeits are fake tickets uh so there was an overcapacity there were too many attendees assistentes some of the rides were broken parts of the park were unfinished there was a gas leak some of the pavement was still wet i mean everything that could go wrong did go wrong but despite that it was huge it was an immediate success just one month after the park opened it hosted half a million visitors and disneyland which is still there in california is still a huge success now i have to be honest with you i've never been to disneyland but i have been to disney world and in fact i worked at disney world in orlando florida and i'll tell you all about that so disneyland yeah it was the first one but disney world is the mother of all theme parks and i'll tell you all about it and the crazy thing about walt disney world in orlando florida walt oversaw the construction they even purchased lots under fake companies so the price wouldn't go up i mean walt really wanted to do this and he wanted to make a mega park but he never lived to see walt disney world finished it's just my opinion but i think he would be very proud of what his legacy has left behind and speaking of overseeing to supervisa you say in spanish the last film that walt disney personally oversaw was the jungle book which i'm sure you all know that it's the bear necessities and well during the making of that movie walt passed away due to lung cancer this was in 1966 and well anybody who knew walt especially his employees they said that he was a heavy smoker and finally it caught up with him oh and while we're talking about the jungle book did you guys get that pun it's the bear necessities now it's a bear that sings that song right unoso but of the bear necessities so you see there's disney playing with puns as he always liked to do and we're gonna wrap up in a little bit vamos a cabar et i just want to invite you guys if you haven't discovered the bonus content we always have bonus content on every episode and you guys can find out so much more for example today we're going to look at this myth is walt disney really frozen was walt disney really from mohawk we're going to find out all these secrets and much more in fact i'll even tell you about a secret apartment located in disneyland and i'll tell you all about my personal experiences working at this mega theme park if you guys want access to the bonus content consider becoming a patron remember you can get extra audio you can get pdfs with all the vocabulary and expressions in every episode and even classes with me on a weekly and monthly basis if you want more information or simply want to support the show and all the work i do stop by patreon.com slash alberto alonso that said i'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons out there thank you so much to all of you there are over 90 of us somos masque shout out to my super duper students roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and lolas and don't forget about my interstellar students carmen diego pilar and diana thank you thank you thank you this show would not be possible without you and we're gonna wrap up now talking about some of the success that disney had well not him directly but his company so i guess if he were alive he would be basking in this success as well well right now walt disney is still the winner of the most oscars that's right he has the record for the most oscars of anybody out there he has won or received a total of 26 academy awards that is the record a lot of people will debate this number two because they're saying wait he won an academy award for this movie but he was dead already well guess what i guess he learned his lesson about owning the characters that thing that happened that fiasco with oswald the rabbit was never going to happen again in fact he owned these characters well past his death and his brother roy disney and other disney family members who kept the company going have kept the rights to these characters which as we know nowadays that's where all the money comes from licensing so there's our friend walt disney ahead of his time and i gotta say something if he were alive right now he would be rolling over in his grave at how amazing it's gone for his little company that started with his brother in hollywood and now well as i said at the beginning of the show it is one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the world the word disney is synonymous with entertainment they own abc entertainment abc news espn vice lucas film 20th century fox marvel hulu national geographic global networks and the list goes on so i think if we can take anything from this episode it's maybe a little lesson in persistence in the fact that if you have a dream like walt disney don't give up on that dream work hard and hopefully one day you will achieve those dreams thank you so much to all of you for joining us remember if you want more stuff in the bonus part we'll see you there it's been a pleasure having you on this episode of fyi you