On October 16, 1923, two young brothers signed a contract with a film distributor in New York from a small office in Hollywood, and the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio was officially born. Walt Disney was 21 years old. His older brother Roy was 30. They had barely any money. Their first 'studio' was the back of a real-estate office that their uncle let them use for free. Walt did the drawing. Roy did the bookkeeping. Together they would build one of the most famous companies in the world.
Their first hit was a series called the Alice Comedies, in which a real little girl named Virginia Davis acted on a hand-painted background of cartoon characters. By 1928 the studio had bigger fish to fry. Walt created a cheerful mouse he originally wanted to call Mortimer. His wife Lillian thought 'Mickey' sounded friendlier. Mickey Mouse debuted that November in 'Steamboat Willie,' the first cartoon with fully synchronized sound. Snow White followed in 1937 as the first feature-length animated movie. Disneyland opened in 1955. Walt Disney World in 1971.
Walt died in 1966, but the company kept growing into a giant. Today it owns Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and ESPN; it makes movies, runs theme parks on three continents, and streams shows into hundreds of millions of homes. All of it traces back to two brothers in a borrowed office on a fall day in 1923, betting their last dollars on the wild idea that drawings could come to life.
