In 1928, on a train from New York to his hometown of Los Angeles, a young Walt Disney filled the hours by doodling. He was depressed, having just lost the copyright for an unsuccessful cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to discontented financial backers. But, unwilling to submit to gloom and doom, Disney busied himself with trying to conceive the ultimate “sympathetic” character. This arrived in the unexpected figure of a mouse with wide-set eyes and red velvet pants. The kindhearted rodent, Disney proclaimed, would be named Mortimer Mouse. (Disney’s wife, Lillian, pronounced the name