The Birth of Mickey Mouse and the Walt Disney Studios

The Walt Disney Company is the largest entertainment company in the world. Name a type of entertainment and Disney has produced it--movies, television, music, video games, cruises and theme parks, like Disneyland and Disneyworld. The writers and artist who work for Disney have created some of the most memorable characters to ever hit the big and little screen--Buzz Lightyear, Donald Duck, Wall-E, Cinderella, Simba. And the list of characters continues to grows, However, the character that started it all, Mickey Mouse, might not even have been born at all if not for his creator's tenacity. That's right, the whole Disney empire could have fizzled before it even started.

The birthplace of Mickey Mouse should have been the happiest place on earth in 1928. It wasn’t.

The tiny animation studio in Silver Lake, California, was a hotbed of anger and distrust. Walt Disney had been blindsided by his distributor, Charles Mintz. Instead of negotiating a higher production fee for the studio’s successful Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts, Walt lost the rights, altogether. Mintz’s next slap in the face was covertly hiring away most of Walt’s animators. Contractually obligated to finish the last three Oswald shorts, Walt and a handful of loyalists used the time to create a new character.

On one side of the room, divided by a tall curtain, the mutinous crew of animators worked on Oswald, while on the other side, Ub Iwerks, frantically animated a new character named Mickey Mouse. A lot depended upon that small rodent—an animation studio, careers and pride. The mouse that would become an animation icon was the product of desperation and calculation as described by Neal Gabler in his 2006 biography Walt Disney: the Triumph of the American Imagination.

For a short time, Walt not only had a lucky rabbit’s foot, but he had the whole rabbit. In 1927, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was the star of a series of animated shorts for Universal and distributed by Charles Mintz and Margaret Winkler. The spunky and playful rabbit, created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, turned out to be a big hit with moviegoers. However, production costs soared as Walt strived to make each short better than the last. With Oswald’s success, Walt was sure Mintz would agree to pay for the higher production costs. He was wrong. After 26 black and white, silent Oswald cartoons, Walt, Ub and a handful of supporters were looking for a new character.

They found it with a mouse named Mortimer. Yes, Disney legend has it that Mickey started as a Mortimer. The legend also say Walt created his new star on the train ride back from New York after the Oswald debacle. The tale continues that Walt’s wife, Lillian, vetoed that name as too sissy sounding. Gabler says the legend may be highly exaggerated and the truth lies in hard work.

As that story tells it, Walt and his supporters were grasping for inspiration for their next animated star. A frog, cow and a horse didn’t make the cut, although the latter two became Disney characters Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow. Finally, while flipping through magazines, Walt came upon the idea of a mouse. “We simply thought a mouse would make a cute character to animate,” Gabler reports Lillian Disney as saying. Then the work began on a design. To some, Mickey Mouse looks like Oswald, but with round ears and a pointed nose.

In the end, it didn’t matter how Mickey came to be, because he had what Oswald didn’t – Walt Disney.

If there's one thing Walt knew, it was how to tell a story. These are some of the most beloved Disney classics and they continue delight audiences just like the first time.