Walt Disney Created His Most Famous Character In A Fit Of Rage

Walt Disney was on top of the world. At 26 the fiercely determined, relentlessly optimistic movie director, who still looked so young he wore a mustache and carried a pipe to appear sophisticated, had come to New York to celebrate his new movie series featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. He even brought along his wife, Lillian.

Walt was finally ready to cash in on the success he had been seeking his entire life, but unbeknownst to him, he was about to receive the biggest blow of his career.

The way he responded led to a defining moment in American popular culture and created a signature lesson for entrepreneurs: How you handle defeat is even more important than how you handle success.

What you do in the face of fear will ultimately determine whether you surmount that fear. Succumb, you'll always stay small. Overcome, you give yourself the chance to go big.

Walter Elias Disney was a classic entrepreneur. His father, an itinerant carpenter and cabinetmaker, was a teetotaling disciplinarian. He staunchly disapproved when his fourth child showed an interest in drawing. "Walter, you're going to make a career of that, are you?" he said.

Walter certainly tried. After a stint in France during World War I, Walt was repeatedly rebuffed as a newspaper illustrator and went to work at an ad company, where he met a fellow illustrator, Ub Iwerks. The neophytes quickly left to form their own art studio. It failed in a month. They turned to animation, making cartoons in a backyard shed. That company went broke in a year.

During those years Walt learned resilience, what it meant "to take advantage of opportunity." When his brother Roy moved to Los Angeles, Walt followed. He had just forty dollars in his pocket. He sent a proposal to Margaret Winkler, a film distributor in New York, to make a series of short films about Alice in Wonderland and a new creation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Winkler gave him funding, and Walt naively gave her control of the rights. Walt, his brother, and Iwerks hired a team of animators.

When "Ozzie" scored with audiences, Walt traveled to New York to meet Winkler's new husband, Charles Mintz. Walt intended to ask for higher profits; instead he got a nasty surprise. Mintz had secretly hired away Disney's team of animators. Mintz offered Walt a pay cut and demanded full ownership of Oswald.

Lillian was terrified; Roy urged him to settle. But Walt marched into Mintz's office, shoved the new contract in his face, and said, "Here. You can have the little bastard!"

On the long train ride home, Walt brooded. "He was like a raging lion on that train," Lillian said. He had no contract, no income, no employees. Worse, he had no cartoon character. With cats, dogs, bears, rabbits, and every other lovable animal taken, there was nothing left.

"About the only thing that hadn't been featured," he thought, "was the mouse."

So he began sketching on train stationery, and by the time they reached Kansas City, he had created a mouse with red velvet pants and two pearly buttons. Walt reportedly wanted to call it Mortimer, but Lillian hated the name.

"Too sissy," she said. What did she think of Mickey, an Irish name, an outsider's name? "It's better than Mortimer," she said.

One of the most epic creations in the history of popular culture grew out of a combination of fear and desperation.

Mickey Mouse was conceived in a moment of chaos. As Walt summed up his own personality, "I function better when things are going badly than when they're smooth as whipped cream."