Mouse Tale

Mouse Tale. . , Believe it or not, everyone’s favorite mouse may have been conceived right here in Kansas City. Mickey Mouse’s creator, Walt Disney, spent much of his youth in our city after moving here from his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri. But his career path to the Magic Kingdom was hardly a smooth one., At age 17, he was rejected for an artist’s position at The Kansas City Star. Later, he was laid off from his job at a local commercial art studio. Finally, after landing a job at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Walt Disney discovered his great love for animation., He borrowed a company camera and, with his family garage serving as his studio, Disney began creating animated shorts and then selling them to a local movie house, the Newman Theatre. He called the shorts, “Newman Laugh-O-grams.” Soon, local investors helped back Disney in his own business which he named Laugh-O-gram Films., The story goes that a friendly mouse often begged for food at the studio, and later in Disney’s career, the memory of that mouse came back to him. The little beggar was reborn as Mickey Mouse, first seen in the cartoon “Steamboat Willie.” In mid-1923, Disney closed Laugh-O-gram Films, due to distribution problems. Then, with dreams in hand, Walt Disney packed a cardboard suitcase and headed for what he hoped would be greener pastures in Hollywood, California. But, then, that’s a whole other mouse tale.