Here’s a trivia question for you: Who created Mickey Mouse? If you said Walt Disney, you’re only half right!!! Ub Iwerks was an early partner of Disney’s who took a drawing that Walt sketched out of a cartoon mouse and refined it into the character who starred in Steamboat Willie. Iwerks went on to do much of the animation for the early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons, becoming so popular that the Motion Picture Academy gave Disney a special Oscar in 1932 for creating him. If you find it odd that Walt got all the credit for creating Mickey, so did Iwerks who had left the studio in 1930 because he was sick of never getting any credit for Disney’s creations despite being a major contributor to them. Disney ultimately received a record 26 statuettes, never sharing credit with any of his collaborators.
