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It all started with a
mouse!
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MICKEY
MOUSE, Walt Disney's most famous character, made his screen debut on
November 18, 1928, as star of the first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie.
Since his debut, Mickey Mouse has become an international personality
whose success laid the financial foundation upon which Walt Disney built
his creative organization. Besides being the personification of everything
Disney, Mickey Mouse has become one of the most universal symbols of the
Twentieth Century.
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Mickey Mouse was born in Walt Disney's
imagination early in 1928 on a train ride from New York to Los Angeles.
Walt was returning with his wife from a business meeting at which his
cartoon creation, Oswald the Rabbit, had been wrestled from him by his
financial backers. Only 26 at the time and with an active cartoon studio
in Hollywood, Walt had gone east to arrange for a new contract and more
money to improve the quality of his Oswald pictures. The moneymen
declined, and since the character was copyrighted under their name, they
took control of it. " . . . So I was all alone and had nothing,"
Walt recalled later. "Mrs. Disney and I were coming back from New
York on the train and I had to have something I could tell them. I've lost
Oswald so, I had this mouse in the back of my head because a mouse is sort
of a sympathetic character in spite of the fact that everybody's
frightened of a mouse including myself" Walt spent the return train
ride conjuring up a little mouse in red velvet pants and named him
"Mortimer," but by the time the train screeched into the
terminal station in Los Angeles, the new dream mouse had been rechristened.
Walt's wife, Lillian, thought the name "Mortimer" was too
pompous and suggested "Mickey." A star was born!
Upon
returning to his studio, Walt and his head animator, Ub Iwerks,
immediately began work on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy. The
enthusiasm with which his small staff completed the project faded when no
distributor wanted to buy the film. Refusing to give in, Walt forged into
production on another silent Mickey Mouse cartoon, Gallopin'Gaucho.
However, late in 1927, Warner Brothers ushered in the talkies with The
Jazz Singer, staffing Al Jolson. This soon signaled the end of silent
films so, in 1928, Walt dropped everything to begin a third Mickey Mouse
cartoon, this one in sound: Steamboat Willie.
To record the sound
track, Walt had to take his film to New York, since no one on the West
Coast was equipped to do it. Walt sank everything he had into the film.
When finally completed, Walt screened it for the New York exhibitors. The
manager at the Colony Theatre liked the eager young producer and decided
to take a chance on his film. Steamboat Willie scored an overwhelming
success, and Walt soon became the talk of the nation. Buoyed by the
artistic and popular success of Steamboat Willie, Disney added sound to
the first two cartoons and was able to offer exhibitors a package of three
shorts. As with all of Mickey Mouse's pictures through World War II, Walt
himself supplied the voice. Then in 1946, when Walt became too busy to
continue, Jim Macdonald, veteran Disney sound and vocal effects man,
tookover. ( Jim Macdonald continued to provide the voice of Mickey Mouse
for nearly thirty years, until he retired in 1974. Following his
retirement, Wayne Allbright was selected to perform the voice of Mickey
Mouse. Wayne has provided Mickey Mouse's vocal characterizations in his
most recent screen appearances ).
Mickey Mouse's skyrocket to fame
didn't take long. His cartoons became so popular that people would first
ask ticket takers if they were "running a Mickey" before they
would purchase admission. Soon, theaters were displaying posters that read
"Mickey Mouse playing today!" It was not uncommon for patrons to
sit through a feature twice to see him again. The thirties was Mickey
Mouse's golden age; 87 cartoon shorts starring the multi-talented mouse
were produced by Walt Disney during that decade. He played everything from
fireman to giant killer, cowboy to inventor, detective to plumber.
Technically and artistically Mickey Mouse cartoons were far superior to
other contemporary cartoons and gave life to an entire family of animated
characters: Minnie Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Goofy,
Pluto, Donald Duck, Peg-Leg Pete, and many others.
The artistic
success of the animators was honored in 1932 when an Oscar was presented
to Walt Disney for the creation of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse's popularity
spawned a Mickey Mouse Club in 1929 which met every Saturday for an
afternoon of cartoons and games in local theaters. The several million
Mouse Clubbers had a secret handshake, special member greeting, code of
behavior, and even a special club song, "Minnie's Yoo Hoo". The
peak of Mickey Mouse's golden decade was his starring role as the
Sorcerer's Apprentice in the feature Fantasia (1940), a major artistic
innovation. It interpreted music in colors, shapes, movement, and story.
The animation techniques were years ahead of their time and have never
been matched. Fantasia also introduced stereophonic sound to theaters, an
element not employed by other studios until more than a decade later.
With
the advent of World War II, the Disney Studio suspended nearly all
commercial activity and concentrated on aiding the war effort with
training films, goodwill tours, and designing of posters and armed forces
insignia. Mickey Mouse played his part by appearing on insignia and
posters urging national security and the purchase of war bonds. And,
incredibly, the password of the Allied forces on D-Day, June 6,1944, was
"Mickey Mouse." Following the war, Mickey Mouse returned to
making cartoons and appeared in his second feature, Fun and Fancv Free
(1947), in which he co-starred with Goofy and Donald Duck in a new version
of "Jack and the Beanstalk," titled appropriately "Mickey
and the Beanstalk."
Through the forties and early fifties,
Mickey Mouse made fewer cartoons, giving ground to Donald Duck, Goofy, and
Pluto, who were more flexible as characters. Mickey Mouse's evolution into
a Disney symbol made it increasingly more difficult to create story
situations for him. If he lost his temper or did anything sneaky, fans
would write in insisting that Mickey Mouse just wouldn't do that. After
the success of the Disneyland television show in 1954, Disney agreed the
next year to create an afternoon program for ABC. He gave them The Mickey
Mouse Club, which became the most successful children's show ever. In
1977, The New Mickey Mouse Club, featuring 12 new Mouseketeers, debuted on
television, and a third generation of Mouseketeers hit the airwaves in
1989 when The Mickey Mouse Club debuted as a series on The Disney Channel
with shows airing on weekday afternoons.
Mickey Mouse moved to
Disneyland in 1955 to become chief host of the theme park, welcoming
millions of visitors annually, shaking hands, posing for pictures, and
leading the big parades on national holidays. In 1971, he helped open the
Walt Disney World Resort; in 1983 he donned a kimono for the dedication of
Tokyo Disneyland; and in 1992, he sported a beret for the opening of what
is now called Disneyland Paris. His other activities include public
appearance tours around the world for The Walt Disney Company.
Mickey
Mouse has been saluted at three of the Disney theme parks by having
"lands" created in his honor. Mickey's Birthdayland (now
Mickey's Starland) opened on November 18, 1988, in the Magic Kingdom in
Walt Disney World to honor Mickey Mouse on his 60th birthday. Mickey's
Toontown opened in 1993 in Disneyland, then in 1996 at Tokyo Disneyland
and now serves as home to Mickey Mouse and all of his cartoon friends.
After
all these years, the cultists are beginning to understand why the Mickey
Mouse of the thirties was so popular. He was a little guy born out of the
depression who satirized people's foibles and taught them to laugh. Most
importantly, he was a character who dreamed big, and his dreams were
universal.
One of the finest tributes to Mickey Mouse was given by
Walt Disney himself when, on his first television show as he surveyed
Disneyland, Walt said, "I hope we never lose sight of one fact...
that this was all started by a Mouse."
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