Walt before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928

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Walt before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928

Long before Mickey Mouse became a global icon, Walt Disney was a young dreamer scraping by in Kansas City and Hollywood. In Walt before Mickey, historian Timothy S. Susanin tells the story of Disney’s formative decade, from 1919 to 1928 — the ten years that made everything else possible.

The book follows Disney from his return from World War I France through his first ventures: the Laugh-O-Gram Films studio in Kansas City, which collapsed into bankruptcy, and the bold move to California with his brother Roy in 1923, where the Disney Brothers Studio was born. Susanin traces the creation of the Alice Comedies, the rise of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and the devastating moment in 1928 when Disney lost the rights to his most popular character — a defeat that forced him to invent something new.

Drawing on extensive research and interviews with Disney’s surviving associates, Susanin paints an honest portrait of a determined young entrepreneur learning his craft through failure after failure. The final chapters reveal how those hard lessons led directly to the birth of Mickey Mouse and the revolution of sound cartoons.

Richly illustrated with thirty rare photographs and documents, Walt before Mickey is essential reading for Disney fans, animation historians, and anyone who loves a story about turning defeat into triumph.