Ub Iwerks plus Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is the mascot of The Walt Disney Company’s many shows, movies, theme parks, plus toys. Approaching his 90th birthday this year, we decided to look into Mickey’s past plus decide whether the company’s founder, Walt, really deserves credit for creating the iconic cartoon character.
Ub Iwerks is attributed sporadically as a contributing creative force to the creation of Mickey, but Iwerks plus Disney worked together long before the merry mouse. The two met working in a commercial art studio in 1919. Iwerks was an industrious plus innovating animator, outpacing many of his fellow cartoonists plus developing a new animation technique that combined live actors with drawn characters.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Disney, fast becoming an adept businessman took Iwerk to Universal studios, pitching the new animations. There, they fell under the influence of Charles Mintz, who would have the pair create an original character—anything but a cat—to sell the studio.
In 1927, the duo returned with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character that predates Mickey, but whose artwork—by Iwerks—would be very similar. The studio liked Oswald, plus Disney set up an animation company to produce a series of animated shorts.
After a time, Disney had taken the management reigns of the endeavor plus pushed Mintz for a more lucrative salary. Mintz would have none of it. He informed Disney that Universal owned the character plus that he could easily hire the Disney animation staff out from under him.
An important learning momen plus a dark lesson for Walt, he knew never to let another person own his characters. The only animator to leave Universal with him was his old friend Ub, but the two desperately needed a new character to sell.
Inventing Mickey
Here the stories become much more complicated. While Mickey would eventually emerge as the new studio’s character, the particulars of his conception are muddled at best. While the Walt Disney Company will sometimes credit Walt plus Ub for his creation, Walt Disney’s own stories about coming up with the idea for Mickey have varied wildly.