What is Reddit's opinion of A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, and Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt?

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I’m pop culture biographer Jeff Ryan: my new book A MOUSE DIVIDED is all about Mickey Mouse: AMA!

I’m the author of a new book about the friendship between Walt Disney (who everyone’s heard of) and Ub Iwerks (who most have not.) Ub was Walt’s best friend, business partner for ten years, 20% owner of Disney, and the man who single-handedly designed Mickey Mouse and drew every frame of his first appearance. The book is about why you’ve only heard of Walt. M I C K E Y, time for AMA!

Proof: https://https://i.redd.it/o0j5nncwws811.jpg

IamAbot_v01. Alpha version. Under care of /u/oppon. Comment 1 of 1 Updated at 2018-07-09 14:50:16.850681

Next update in approximately 20 mins at 2018-07-09 15:10:16.850714

Autogenerated.

I’m pop culture biographer Jeff Ryan: my new book A MOUSE DIVIDED is all about Mickey Mouse: AMA!

I’m the author of a new book about the friendship between Walt Disney (who everyone’s heard of) and Ub Iwerks (who most have not.) Ub was Walt’s best friend, business partner for ten years, 20% owner of Disney, and the man who single-handedly designed Mickey Mouse and drew every frame of his first appearance. The book is about why you’ve only heard of Walt. M I C K E Y, time for AMA!

Proof: https://i.redd.it/6850bd7aky711.jpg

IamAbot_v01. Alpha version. Under care of /u/oppon. Comment 1 of 1 Updated at 2018-07-06 14:55:38.191177

Next update in approximately 20 mins at 2018-07-06 15:15:38.191210

> Babbitt left and came back a number of times. He left to join the Marines in 1942, and successfully sued Disney for his job back after he came back from the war, before ultimately leaving to join UPA in 1946.

Yes, as you pointed out, he went back but only after he sued. Disney was pissed. He did not want him back, and he considered him a bee in his bonnet. They continued to dog each other, when Babbitt helped with the animation on the 1949 British/French film <em>Alice In Wonderland</em>. Babbitt probably knew Disney was working on his own version, and once the producers tried to distribute it in the U.S., Disney filed a lawsuit to try to stop it. This, despite the fact that Alice In Wonderland was long out of copyright so Disney had no exclusivity to the story.

> Also, regarding Walt taking all the credit for Mickey Mouse, Ub Iwerks' name is rather prominently displayed for someone who got no credit.

Well, that's definitely the view that Walt Disney himself took. He thought Iwerks should be happy with the screen credit and a paycheck.

Iwerks was more pissed that Disney was taking credit for creating the character period, and that Disney was reaping all the profits for it, despite the bone he'd been thrown via the screen credit.

I'll quote the Ub Iwerks page on Wikipedia since that's the easiest to copy-and-paste, but you can read all about Iwerks' and Disney's falling out here in Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.

The events are also written about in <em>The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney</em>, <em>The Hand Behind the Mouse: An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks</em>, and (briefly) <em>Walt Disney: An American Original</em>. There's also a new book out now that I haven't read called <em>A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, and Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt</em>.

Anyway, here's the brief version written on the Ub Iwerks wikipedia page:

> "However, as Iwerks began to draw more and more cartoons on a daily basis, he soon found himself unable to cope under Disney's harsh command;[11] Iwerks also felt he wasn't getting the credit he deserved for drawing all of Disney's successful cartoons.[12] Eventually, Iwerks and Disney had a falling-out; their friendship and working partnership were severed when Iwerks accepted a contract with Disney competitor Pat Powers to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name."

The hatchet was buried later on, though, when Iwerks' production company failed, and Iwerks accepted a non-animation job back at the Disney company.