THE WILDERNESS YEARS
ONE of the great cultural phenomenons of the 20th century, Mickey Mouse broke ground in animation, became synonymous with the cartoon short, and forged a career as a truly international star.
As he celebrates his 90th birthday, we find out more about the superstar rodent that charmed children, amused adults, and made Disney a household name.
FROM SCRIBBLE TO SUPERSTAR
‘I ONLY hope’, Walt Disney once said, ‘that we don’t lose sight of one thing. That it all started with a mouse’.
Mickey Mouse was Disney’s breakout star but, were it not for a contract dispute and an intervention by Walt Disney’s wife, he might have been neither mouse nor Mickey.
Disney’s first company – the ill-fated ‘laugh-o-gram’ – had championed the ponderouslynamed Oswald the Rabbit and, only after losing the rights to the rabbit, did he begin work on a mouse.
A few tweaks to the Oswald model – an elongated nose, shorter, rounder ears – and Mortimer Mouse was born. After a conversation with wife Lillian, Disney renamed his creation Mickey.
Mickey was a labour of love – with a heavy emphasis on labour. Each cartoon required 15,000 drawings on some 30 different backgrounds, and took Disney’s team of animators anywhere from six months to two years. Until 1946, Disney provided Mickey’s squeaky voice himself.
Their first recorded cartoon was Plane Crazy – an aerial caper featuring bloomers used as parachutes – but the first to screen was 1928’s Steamboat Willie. Mickey nonchalantly chugged down a river, whistling while he worked, getting up to Tom & Jerry-esque mischief with the bear-like Captain Pete, the ship’s parrot, and a passing cow. A major hit, the film catapulted Mickey into the limelight, and more releases quickly followed.
Right from his opening scenes, Mickey was a mouse with a spouse. Mickey’s 90th birthday also marks his and Minnie Mouse’s 90th anniversary, and though their marital status has been the source of some speculation, Disney stated that they were wed ‘in secret’.
Mickey was too pure for politics, but he made an exception for the Germans. In 1931 he fought off an army of suspiciously Germanlooking cats by firing piano keys out of a mounted sub-machine gun. He played a starring role in 1944, when his name was used as a code word by American soldiers arriving on the beaches of Normandy. Mickey Mouse cartoons were banned by the Third Reich – a feather in the cap for the all-American Mickey.
By this point, the pairing of Disney and Mouse had permanently altered the landscape of American cinema. Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon to synchronise screen and sound, and Mickey’s first spoken lines – “Hot dogs! Hot dogs!” – were some of the first in cartoon history. Mickey earned his creator an Oscar in 1932, and later became the first fictional character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. FAME, however, can change mice just as much as people, and Mickey’s success was so massive that his eccentricities became liabilities. In order to maintain his appeal, Mickey’s negative qualities were stripped away, leaving a mouse so straight-laced and saintly, he bordered on bland.
Mickey’s personality rested on the idea that he was “a little fellow trying to do the best he could”. So, what to do with him when he became a star? In 1949, Disney himself admitted the problem: “Mickey grew into such a legend that we couldn’t gag around with him”.
1934 had brought the debut of Mickey’s fiery frenemy Donald Duck, whose hare-brained schemes and boisterous temper tantrums picked up where Mickey left off. Between 1941 and 1965, Donald starred in 109 Disney shorts; Mickey in just 14.
Mickey’s filmography dropped off a cliff (1983’s A Mickey Christmas Carol would be his first film in 30 years), but he still had an entertainment empire to run. He was there to meet and greet visitors at Disneyland’s grand opening in 1955, won the hearts of a new generation with his on-and-off children’s TV show the Mickey Mouse Club, and built up a
40% share in Disney product sales. Unsure what to do with him on screen, Disney made Mickey master of ceremonies, family patriarch, and merchandising mainstay.