Live-Action, Decline, Animation

Table of Contents

Josh D’Amaro

Meg Whitman

Michael Eisner

Live-action films and later decline

inDisney Company

Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins and Dick Van Dyke as Bert stand together in colorful costumes, surrounded by animated lambs in a live-action animation scene from Mary Poppins.

Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins (1964), directed by Robert Stevenson.

The Disney Company continued to flourish during the 1950s and ’60s. It produced hit television shows such as The Mickey Mouse Club, Zorro, and Walt Disney Presents, which, under various titles (such as Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color and The Wonderful World of Disney) and despite periodic hiatuses, continued to be released into the 21st century. Animated features such as Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1965) were still produced, and well-received live-action vehicles included 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Old Yeller (1957), Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and The Incredible Journey (1963). Disney’s live-action film Mary Poppins (1964) was heralded as the studio’s greatest achievement in more than 20 years. The film won five Academy Awards, including a best actress Oscar for Julie Andrews, and was nominated in eight additional categories.

Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom in Disney World, Orlando, Florida, with blue spires and stone towers surrounded by trees and a moat.

Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World Resort, near Orlando, Florida.

Spaceship Earth at Epcot, Walt Disney World Resort, near Orlando, Florida.

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Walt Disney was never a rich man by Hollywood standards, largely because he valued perfection more than profits. “I don’t make movies to make money,” he is often credited with saying, “I make money so I can make more movies.” The company was in financial disarray when he died on December 15, 1966, but enterprises he had planned before his death assured the company’s future.

In 1965 he purchased 43 acres of barren land in central Florida for his most ambitious project, the Walt Disney World Resort. Roy Disney assumed supervision of the project, and the park opened in 1971 to great success; in 1982 the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or Epcot Center, was incorporated into the park and immediately became one of its main attractions. Epcot was the last project Walt Disney himself envisioned during his lifetime, and by the turn of the 21st century, it was attracting more than 10 million visitors annually.

During the 1970s and ’80s the company realized its greatest profits from the distribution of old films and from Disney World, which had become one of the world’s leading tourist destinations. Top animators such as Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, and John Pomeroy left the company in 1977, and Disney’s subsequent efforts, such as the animated feature The Fox and the Hound (1981), failed, in the eyes of many, to capture what they thought of as the magic of the studio’s glory days.

Return to prominence

Johnny Depp as Ed Wood sits in a director's chair holding a megaphone, with a vintage film camera and cameraman behind him, in a black-and-white scene from the film Ed Wood.

Johnny Depp in Ed Wood (1994), directed by Tim Burton.

Ron Miller, Disney’s son-in-law, is credited with initiating the company’s resurgence. In the early 1980s Miller broadened the company’s product line and founded Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary devoted to producing films for adult audiences. Touchstone produced some of the most financially and critically successful films of the 1980s and ’90s, including Splash (1984), The Color of Money (1986), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Father of the Bride (1991), Ed Wood (1994), and The Horse Whisperer (1998). In order to maintain its image as a purveyor of family entertainment, Disney did not use its name on Touchstone productions.

Matt Damon (left) and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting (1997).

Courtesy of Miramax Films

During a bitter board of directors dispute in 1984, Michael Eisner wrested power from Miller and, as chairman of the board and company CEO, began a further expansion of the Disney empire. The company added two more film subsidiaries with the establishment in 1989 of Hollywood Pictures (devoted to producing films for teenagers and young adults) and with the acquisition of Miramax Films in 1993 (producer of films such as Pulp Fiction [1994], Good Will Hunting [1997], and Shakespeare in Love [1998]). In 2010 Disney sold Miramax to an investor group.

Woody and Buzz Lightyear appear to fly above a bedroom floor surrounded by other Toy Story characters, including Bo Peep, Mr. Potato Head, Rex, and green army men.

Publicity still from Toy Story (1995), the first computer-animated feature film.

The 1990s were a hugely successful decade for the Disney Company. The revival was heralded by the release of The Little Mermaid (1989), an animated feature regarded as Disney’s best such effort in more than 40 years. More animated blockbusters followed, including Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Fantasia 2000 (1999).

The company had experimented with computerized animation for the live-action feature Tron (1982) and realized the technology’s potential with the enormously successful Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999), films that Disney jointly developed and produced with Pixar Animation Studios. Live-action features also found success, especially 101 Dalmatians (1996), a remake of Disney’s own 1961 animated feature.