Everyone knows Mickey Mouse, but the story of his creation has become shrouded in legend. In this video, I tell the entire story of the creation of Mickey Mouse, from how Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks came up with the character, to his first starring role in Steamboat Willie, and all of the obstacles Walt and the team faced in getting him there. I utilized multiple sources of information for this video, which are listed below, and I did my best to be as complete and accurate as possible.

Note on information sources:
The sources of information I used in my research process for this video are listed below. There were a very small number of instances in which one source would contain information that conflicted with other sources. To determine which source I would use for any particular piece of information, I picked whichever one agreed with the most others, or whichever had the most detail. For example, in Neal Gabler’s biography, it says Walt Disney met with Universal before the Steamboat Willie premier, but Bob Thomas’s said it happened after. Gabler’s, however, had a rough date for the Universal meeting, and Thomas’s did not. So, I went with the information in Gabler’s biography. Another example is that Gabler says that Walt Disney sold his moon roadster to fund a sound recording of The Barn Dance, but both the Thomas biography and the Ub Iwerks biography The Hand Behind the Mouse said the car was sold to fund the second recording of Steamboat Willie. Because Thomas’s version of events was backed up by another source, I went with his instead of Gabler’s.

Sources of information used for the video:

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

Walt Disney: An American Original by Bob Thomas

The Hand Behind the Mouse by Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History by David Gerstein & J.B. Kaufman

A Mouse Divided by Jeff Ryan

The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 19211968 – Chapter Two: “From Alice to Mickey” by Russell Merritt

The Official Walt Disney Quote Book compiled by the Staff of the Walt Disney Archives

The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder by John Baxter, Bruce C. Steele, and the Staff of the Walt Disney Archives

The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms and Beyond by Christopher Finch

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open and backstory
1:22 Title sequence
1:50 Introduction
3:22 Part 1: Ub Iwerks
6:55 Part 2: Charles Lindbergh
15:36 Part 3: Douglas Fairbanks
19:29 Part 4: Buster Keaton
37:26 Part 5: Walt Disney
39:50 Ending Montage/Outro

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