Walt Disney: His first studio went bankrupt, then he lost his star character
His Kansas City studio went bankrupt in 1923. Five years later he lost the rights to his popular rabbit cartoon, and started again with a mouse.
Commercial art
Walt Disney was born in Chicago in 1901 and grew up partly in Missouri, where he delivered newspapers before school. After the First World War he worked in commercial art in Kansas City, drawing adverts and learning early animation.
Laugh-O-Gram goes under
In 1922 he set up Laugh-O-Gram Films in Kansas City, making short cartoons. The money ran out and the studio filed for bankruptcy in 1923. He left for Los Angeles with very little and started again with his brother Roy.
Losing Oswald
By 1927 the brothers had a hit, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. In 1928 Disney found that the rights belonged to the distributor, who had also hired away most of his animators. He went back to work and, with Ub Iwerks, created Mickey Mouse.
What came of it
Steamboat Willie, with synchronised sound, opened in November 1928. After that he made sure he owned what his studio created.
He learned the hard way to read the contract and know who owns your work. Losing a job or a client is painful; losing it twice for the same reason is avoidable.
The myth: The popular line that a newspaper editor fired him for lacking imagination has no reliable source we could find. The bankruptcy and the loss of Oswald are the documented setbacks.
Where the facts come from: The Walt Disney Family Museum, San Francisco, online history; Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006).
