LUCKY RABBIT’S RETURN?

Mickey Mouse has just turned 90. The first Mickey cartoon - Steamboat Willie - was released on November 18, 1928, and there has been no shortage of news stories wishing the rodent a happy birthday.

But did you know that if it wasn’t for a legal battle, the Disney icon may never have been?

Walt Disney once said “It all started with a mouse”, but one year before Mickey appeared, Disney created 26 short films with Universal, that starred a character called Oswald the Rabbit.

Ultimately, Walt Disney lost the rights to Oswald, but instead of ditching the animation game altogether, went about creating a new character with which to launch his rebranded studio. Of those 26 Oswald films, seven were thought lost, but one of them called Neck ‘n’ Neck has just been discovered in Japan. When 84-year-old Yasushi Watanabe was a teenager, he bought a copy of the two-minute film in Osaka, Japan from a toy wholesalers’ market back when he was a high school student. He hung onto it all these years, but wasn’t aware of its significance until he read a 2017 book called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons and realised he had one of the last remaining copies. The cartoon involves a car chase between Oswald and his girlfriend in a car, and a dog policeman on a motorcycle. David Bossert, who wrote the book Yasushi Watanabe read, said he hopes to screen the film in Los Angeles with animation scholars.

It’s not the first time a lost Oswald cartoon has been uncovered. In 2011, a cartoon titled Hungry Hobos was found in the Huntley Film Archives and sold to Disney for $31,000. In 2015 another short called Sleigh Bells was discovered in the archives at the British Film Institute.

If Walt never had that tussle over the rights, would Oswald have had the same level of success as Mickey? Would the Disney corporation have gone on to become the entertainment behemoth we know now? Imagine there’s no Frozen, it’s easy if you try.

Steamboat Willie