There is a young man, in Hollywood of all places, who could be a millionaire if he liked, but who smiles and shrugs and says, “No; I'm having too much fun this way, thanks."
He is Walter Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies.
In 1919 a young Red Cross ambulance driver came home from France to Kansas City, Missouri. He became a ten dollar-a-week apprentice in a commercial art firm. Let out when business was slow, he carried mail for Uncle Sam and shortly teamed up with another youngster who liked pencils and paper. They drew pictures of oil wells.
"The firm that was selling the oil wells told us to draw them the way they would look when the oil came in," Walter recollects. "You should have seen the amount of oil we got into those drawings!"
Always interested in cartoons, he next experimented with a motion-picture cartoons, he next experimented with a motion-picture cartoon reel for a Kansas City chain of theaters, denoting local happenings and personalities. Finding that he had a knack for it, he laid out a series of fairy-tale cartoon reels to be shown in schools and churches. His backers failed, and he found himself reduced in assets to a pair of trousers, a sweater, a motion-picture camera, and a pair of shoes bought with five dollars borrowed from a friend; those, and a great faith in the pssibillties of motion pictures.
Hollywood was motion-picture headquarters. Always impetuous, he sold the camera and arrived there with $40 to spare. His brother Roy was in Hollywood selling vacuum cleaners. He had $250 in a savings account. Walter talked fast, and a few hours later Roy discovered himself to be in the movie-picture business. Walter's initial idea was to hire a child actress and let her act in the cartoons along with the drawn figures. For the first reel he did all the drawings himself – fifteen hundred of them. Iis entertainment value was instantly recognized, and a studio gave him a ccntgact to do a series.
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