Walt Disney got his start in Kansas City, where, beginning in 1922, he produced animated advertisements and small vignettes for a local movie house. “Newman's Laugh-O-Grams” (named after the theater where they were shown) soon grew to be full-length (four to seven minutes) animated shorts. The people who worked with Disney on this series included Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Isadore "Friz" Freleng, all of whom would later achieve fame in animation. Very few of the cartoons in this series survive today.In 1923, Disney moved to Hollywood, taking his crew with him, and started producing shorts for national distribution. His first series there was the "Alice" Comedies, about a live-action little girl's adventures with animated cartoon characters. Only Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series is better remembered as an early example of mixing live action with animation. For financing, and getting the Alice series into theaters, Disney teamed up with distributor M.J. (Margaret) Winkler.
Disney produced Alice shorts at an average rate of about one every three weeks from 1923-27. After a few dozen, however, they grew stale, and were replaced in 1927 by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Oswald was a big hit, but the cost to produce his cartoons rose sharply — driven largely by Disney's constant efforts to improve his studio's output. In 1928, Disney asked Charles Mintz (Winkler's husband, who was by then running her business) for a budget increase, but Mintz had what he thought was a better idea. Disney must accept a cut in his budget, or Mintz would assign Oswald (which the distributor legally controlled) to another studio — and he'd already secured agreements from most of Disney's key employees to man it.
Disney let Oswald go, and returned to a studio that consisted only of himself, his brother Roy, and Ub Iwerks, vowing never again to let anyone else own his work.
According to the official legend, Mickey Mouse was the result of a brilliant burst of inspiration, which struck Walt Disney during the train ride from New York to Los Angeles -- having left New York in a huff after he'd just seen his popular character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, hijacked by his distributor and farmed out to another animation outfit. By the time he arrived in Hollywood, he was ready to roll with Oswald's replacement. A more realistic story might be that he and key staff members, particularly Ub Iwerks, labored long hours to craft a gag vehicle incorporating various characteristics they'd seen work in popular cartoons — particularly Felix the Cat, who functioned as a template for many characters of the time whose design varied mainly in their ears.
Whether Mickey was more a result of inspiration or perspiration, he first appeared in Plane Crazy (1928) — and for the very first time, a Disney series failed to become an instant hit. He had trouble getting distributors interested in a character that looked more-or-less like Oswald with round ears.
However, very soon, Mickey eclipsed Oswald. (The latter was the subject of a series of second-rate cartoons by animation director/producer Walter Lantz, who is more famous for his work on Woody Woodpecker, and is virtually forgotten today.)
When movies started talking, Disney couldn't wait to bring the new technology to cartoons. Steamboat Willie (1928) was the first synchronized sound cartoon, and from then on, there was no stopping The Mouse. (Though it wasn't, as commonly thought, the first sound cartoon altogether — that honor went to a 1924 Max Fleischer "Song Cartune".) Mickey acquired supporting characters, including a girlfriend, Minnie; an arch-enemy, Pegleg Pete; a bunch of pals such as Horace Horsecollar and Goofy; and a dog, Pluto. He switched to color with The Band Concert (1935), and never looked back. Mickey was launched as a comic strip star by King Features Syndicate, in 1930. Within a few weeks, Floyd Gottfredson, the plotter and artist who would make Mickey his life's work, took it over. There followed a long series of well-remembered stories, including "Blaggard Castle" (1933) (scripted by Webb Smith), "The Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch" (1934) (scripted by Ted Osborne), "The Seven Ghosts" (1936) (scripted by Osborne) and "The Phantom Blot" (1939) (scripted by Merrill de Maris). This era ended in the 1950s, as the strip switched to a gag-a-day format. Gottfredson retired in 1975 and died in 1986. Today, comic book stories about Mickey are written and drawn by dozens of people, and are published all over the world.
