On this day in 1966, Cartoonist, film producer and master imagineer, Walt Disney died of acute circulatory collapse caused by lung cancer at age 65.
At the time, the LA Times noted that Disney, “..won 31 Academy Awards, and more than 900 other citations from presidents, kings and queens, world statesmen and neighborhood service clubs.”
His creative output was astonishing and his empire was growing, Disney World construction was under way in Florida, even as he was dying.
“There’s no magic to my formula,” he once said. “I just make what I like — good, human stories in which you can get with people and which prove that the better things of life can be as interesting as the sordid things.”
Since then, his successors have continued to create Disney Magic using the same thought process.
And, no, nobody put Walt’s body into cryo-freeze for later revival. That’s one of the urban legends that never seems to go away.
Today, the Walt Disney Company is worth $110 billion dollars.
