Kick in the Teeth

Mary Blair’s concept art for Cinderella.

This one is my favorite.

I picked these up at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco about a month ago.

It was also where I saw this, the first known drawing of Mickey Mouse. I must have stood there for a solid fifteen minutes staring at it, as reverently as some look at the Mona Lisa.

The legend goes that Walt drew it at the lowest point in his life. He was broke. A shady businessman had just stolen the rights to his first commercially successful character. He had a long train ride back across the country to dwell on rejection and failure. He could have given up, called it quits. No one would have blamed him.

But he didn’t. Instead, he picked up his pencil and drew. And when he got back to L.A., he had an idea. A few months and a whole hell of a lot of hard work later, the world had Mickey Mouse.