How Walt Disney Bounced Back After Losing Almost Everything

When we think of Disney’s characters, Mickey Mouse usually is the first one that comes to mind because it is widely known as the most successful character in the animation business.

However, most people have forgotten an even older Disney’s character called “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”, a silent cartoon star that debuted in the 1920s. And behind this mystery little rabbit, there was a spectacular story of how an entrepreneur creatively solved a huge crisis in life.

In Disney’s early days, it had to rely on film distributors and bigger studios to promote their films because it was still a tiny little startup. Without much bargaining power, distributors and studios were kind of like Disney’s customers controlling almost everything from characters to profit sharing details.

In 1927, Disney was working with Universal Pictures and a distributor called Winkler Pictures on a new cartoon series. And Universal wanted the main character to be a rabbit.

So Walt Disney had Ub Iweks, his best animator and long time friend, to produce a new rabbit character called “Oswald”.

This lucky rabbit turned out to be a great success. Because of the film’s increasing popularity, Walt tried to convince Charles Mintz, owner of the Winkler Pictures, to pay them a higher fee plus a share of the profits. But Charles refused to do so.

Besides that, at contract-renewal time in 1928, Charles shocked Walt by offering him a pay cut instead. With the new contract, he told Walt:

“Take it, or I’ll ruin you. I already have your key artists signed up.”

Even worse, Charles wanted to take way not only Walt’s animators but also his most successful character at that time. It turned out that in the fine print of their last contract, it stated that the legal ownership of the Lucky Rabbit had been assigned to Universal Pictures, a fact that Walt didn’t know until he heard the bad news.

Charles gave Walt Disney two choices: either turned his studio into a subsidiary of the Winkler Pictures or started the company all over again.

Unsurprisingly, Walt refused to surrender and chose the second option.

After losing your company’s only cartoon character and nearly all of your staff, whom you regard as friends, most people will feel disheartened no matter how optimistic you are. For Walt, he was discouraged, but not defeated. He later telephoned Roy, his brother and business partner, with an amazing calm to deliver the bitter disappointment:

“Keep your chin up, Roy. We’ll have the last laugh, and that’s the best laugh of all.”

At that moment, Walt Disney had lost almost everything and had to face an uncertain future. However, he didn’t try to sue Charles, or get a job, or waste time to complain. He knew he had to bounce back and respond with his limitless imagination. He believed he could turn the situation around because he still had Ub Iwerks and a head full of creative ideas.

During the train ride from New York, where Charles was based in, to Los Angeles, he pondered a replacement for Oswald and created an entertainment legend — Mickey Mouse, named by his wife, Lillian and drawn by Ub.

To further set Mickey apart from Oswald, Walt knew that he couldn’t just replicate the things he did in the past. He decided to make Mickey talk.

At a time full of silent movies and cartoons, a talking mouse film would be a sensation and revolution which opened up a whole new world for the industry. And that’s what he wanted to do. Walt envisioned a cartoon in which music, sound effects and dialogue worked in sync with moving pictures to produce a powerful visual and sound effect on the audience.

Eventually, the creative film premiered on November 18, 1928 and after the first showing, the audience gave Mickey Mouse a standing ovation.

Just eight months after Oswald got stolen, Walt was at the top of the cartoon industry and more money was pouring into his company than he had ever seen before.

And the rest is history.

When facing with crisis at your startup, will you respond destructively or creatively? That’s up to you. With creativity and imagination, you can create your own “Mickey Mouse” as well.

Source: How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life

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