Walt Disney started his animation career in Kansas City, Missouri, producing films that were a combination of cartoon and live action and starring a curious little girl named Alice. Hoping for greater success, he moved to Los Angeles in 1923, joining his brother, Roy. Once the creative possibilities with the Alice series were exhausted, Disney started producing films for a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in 1927. Mickey Mouse was conceived the next year during a cross-country train ride, according to the 'official' company history. Walt Disney had just been forced to give up the Oswald rights to his cruel New York distributor, who had exercised copyright control over the character. On the ride back home to Los Angeles, Disney made up a little mouse named Mortimer. His wife, Lillian, thought the name too pompous(华而不实的) and suggested Mickey. Steamboat Willie, Mickey's screen debut, was an instant hit, arriving in the same year, a time when technological advances in motion pictures, radio and the phonograph(留声机) were transforming mass culture. By the end of the 1930s, Mickey had starred in more than 100 cartoons. Mickey gradually transformed both physically and spiritually. His face was rounded out and his eyes went from black ovals to white eyes with pupils in the late 1930s. His face became friendlier, less rat-like. Mickey Mouse became the face that launched a thousand merchandise products. Watches. Pencils. Bed sheets. Alarm clocks. Telephones. He is one of the most merchandised faces ever—about $4.5 billion a year in sales—even though he's currently second to Winnie the Pooh for the Disney company. Mickey's popularity may have declined in the 1940s, but he gained new life in the 1950s with the airing of TV's Mickey Mouse Club and the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. In the succeeding decades, Mickey has been a regular presence on television on the Disney Channel and is photographed daily alongside thousands of tourists at theme parks in California, Florida, France and Japan. 'Mickey Mouse speaks an international language,' Sklar said. 'When I go to Tokyo and see how kids react to Mickey Mouse the same way they do in Paris, it's reassuring that there are some things that cress international boundaries.' All from a simple cartoon. Said author Wasko: 'Mickey represents a fascinating interweaving of culture, politics and economics.' Walt and his brother Roy worked together ______.