Was Walt Disney immediately successful

Answer 1

Not at all. Walt began his cartooning career after serving as an ambulance driver just after World War 1, but could not get hired by any newspaper. His first company doing artistic work was in association with Ubbe Iwerks, but that company did not suceed. Walt's first attempt to create movie animations -- a company called "Laugh O Grams -- got a lot of business, but expenses were so high that the company went bankrupt. His second company, Alice Comedies, had trouble finding a distributor in Kansas City, and Walt and Roy Disney went to Hollywood. It took eight years of struggle before Walt had his first major animation success -- Oswald the Rabbit. Within a year he found out he did not have the rights to that character, and thus could no longer create Cartoons under that name -- forcing him to start pretty much from scratch. He and Iwerks decided to create a mouse cartoon character -- and the rest is history.