LESSONS FROM WALT: Losing Oswald

In 1927, after a successful run of an innovative series of a live action girl mixed within a cartoon called, Alice Comedies, Walt Disney created an animated cartoon character by the name of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This “peppy, alert, saucy, and venturesome” Oswald was an instant hit for Disney and his team. Although the first 27 shorts were produced at the Walt Disney Studios, they were distributed by Universal Studios. Without doing much homework, Disney signed a contract that didn’t leave him financially secure. Long and complicated story short, a year later, Charles Mintz (a middle man from Winkler Pictures) claimed the rights to Oswald and hired away his animators, telling Walt Disney….“You’re finished!”

Imagine living in that moment. You’re successfully on top of the world with a great product. But suddenly, the sheets of paper with your creation is pulled out from your desk, with those final words that your career is done. You’re broke as it is, and now you’re lost. You feel like a complete failure. 

I was in Bend, Oregon working with a great team, and expanding my programming and branding knowledge with multiple formats. And we were succeeding. While there, I had a few calls and even offers to program other radio stations. And of course, I thanked them saying I was not interested in moving. But one day I got a call asking if I wanted to come back to California to program a station in a market I’ve worked before. What peaked my interest was that I had ironically done some analysis on the market a year prior. (Doing research on other markets and stations is something I like to do.) Plus I’ve got friends that live out there. It was relatively close to my home in LA. And I was just getting word that my daughter was moving from Ohio to Ventura. So the thought of having it all with family and friends close by, caused me to want to follow through on this call.

Now I did do some homework on the people that worked in the building, and all came back very positive, but with quick weekend trips to Disneyland dancing in my head, I didn’t do much more thinking. I didn’t complete my homework. I just wanted to come home.

Long and complicated story short, I took the job, moved into a nice house near the beach, and after all the work that I put into getting the radio station in order (it was a bit of a mess), and collecting new research, three months later, I was told that I was finished. 

I was a bit shocked, to say the least. I felt like I failed before I even had a chance to succeed. Then the realization that I’m going to be penniless hit me. And despite years of success, people were suddenly saying that because of this, my career is over. It was then I started getting calls from friends and others in the industry that said that the company had done the same thing to them. How did I not know this before moving out there? Because my homework was incomplete.

For Walt Disney, he was crushed. He just lost his Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. But he was determined to move forward. And this time, he was not going to let anyone own his creation. With the help of his long time friend and animation partner Ub Iwerks, they were able to come up with a new character that would change not just animation, but become a mascot of an empire. Where would the world be without Mickey Mouse. But we would not have Mickey had it not been for a bit of failure. And that is what I need to focus on right now. Because as I write this, (and I’ll be honest with you…it is not easy to admit and write this), I’m living in ‘the moment’ where I feel as if I have lost everything. But I need to move forward. I need to create my Mickey Mouse.

FOOTNOTE: In 2006, Universal Studios returned Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Walt Disney.