Title:
Disney Family Museum Honors Mickey's Father
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
For most people, the name Walt Disney is linked to
images of Mickey Mouse, Snow White and theme parks.
Last year, the Walt Disney Family Museum opened in
California. Richard Benefield is head of the museum.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: Well, this Museum is really about
the man, Walt Disney. Walt Disney, during his
lifetime, received 932 awards for his public service
to mankind as well as for his professional
achievements. And in this lobby area, we have 248.
Disney received 32 awards from Americas motion
picture industry. Benefield says they include a
special award for the film Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves.
The pictures and videos in the museum show the
private side of Walt Disney.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: This entire wall has drawings
that were done by Walt while he was in high school.
Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago. At the age of
20, he went to Hollywood.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: This wall here, he had just
started to do a prototype of something called The
Alice Comedies.
The Alice Comedies used images of a live-action girl
and an animated cat. Disneys big success came after
he finished an animated story about a mouse. He and
his wife Lilly decided on a name for the mouse while
going to Hollywood.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: And on that fateful trip from New
York to Hollywood, Walt came up with the idea of
using a mouse for his next cartoon character. And he
said to Lilly, What about Mickey Mouse? And, she
said, Thats good. I think that will do just fine.
And thats how Mickey Mouse was born in 1928 on a
train ride from New York to Hollywood.
This is the earliest known picture of Mickey Mouse.
Steamboat Willie was Disneys first film to combine
voice, music and animated images. He used beats from
a bouncing ball so that the sound would agree with
the images.
Yet Disneys life was not always happy.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: In 1940, Walt lost both of his
parents, and not shortly after that his company
experienced a very divisive strike. It was the early
days of the labor movement in the United States. He
was very hurt by the strike, which shut down
operations for quite a period of time.
But Disney recovered, and his company went on to
produce films like Peter Pan and 101 Dalmatians. He
also had the idea for theme parks that celebrated
the stars of his movies.
RICHARD BENEFIELD: This walk down the ramp in
general celebrates Walts love of trains, and how
that led him to really found Disneyland which, of
course, one of the first rides at Disneyland was a
train that ran all around the park.
Walt Disney died of lung cancer in 1966. He was 65
years old.
TV ANNOUNCER: "Walt Disney, the master of an
entertainment empire, the most complete and
influential showman of this generation, died.
Many people around the world mourned the man whose
creations brought happiness to their lives. Im Jim
Tedder.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
