Walter Elias Disney ( ; Disney later described his childhood in Marceline as one of the happiest and most formative periods of his life, and drew inspiration from the town for several of his future projects.
In 1911, the Disneys moved to Kansas City, Missouri. There, Disney attended the Benton Grammar School, where he met fellow-student Walter Pfeiffer, who came from a family of theatre fans and introduced him to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Before long, Disney was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' house than at home. Elias had purchased a newspaper delivery route for The Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times. Disney and Roy woke up at 4:30 every morning to deliver the Times before school, and repeated the round for the evening Star after school. The schedule was exhausting, and Disney often received poor grades after falling asleep in class, but he continued his paper route for more than six years. He attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute and also took a correspondence course in cartooning. the first official Walt Disney Studio was established at 2725 Hyperion Avenue; the building was demolished in 1940.
By 1926, Winkler's role in the production and distribution of the Alice series had been handed over to her husband, the film producer Charles Mintz, and her brother George Winkler; Winkler had dropped their distribution services at this point, finding distributors in FBO and Universal Pictures.
1928–1934: Creation of Mickey Mouse and following successes
To replace Oswald, Disney and Iwerks developed Mickey Mouse, possibly inspired by a pet mouse that Disney had adopted while working in his Laugh-O-Gram studio, although the origins of the character are unclear. Disney's original choice of name was Mortimer Mouse, but his wife Lillian thought it too pompous, and suggested Mickey instead. Iwerks revised Disney's provisional sketches to make the character easier to animate. Disney, who had begun to distance himself from the animation process, provided Mickey's voice until 1947. In the words of one Disney employee, "Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul."
Despite the demands wrought by non-studio projects, Disney continued to work on film and television projects. In 1955, he was involved in "Man in Space", an episode of the Disneyland series, which was made in collaboration with NASA rocket designer Wernher von Braun.