Hare-raising tale
Meet the bunny who paved Mickey Mouse’s path
IN the beginning, Walt Disney created Oswald, a rabbit with big plans and a temper. Some two dozen cartoons later, the rabbit was declared the property of Universal Studios. Disney’s team went back to the drawing board and, in 1928, a year after Oswald’s debut, created Mickey Mouse.
Clearly, Mickey won the race between rabbit and rodent. Oswald would have been a rabbit’s footnote in history if those early, quirky cartoons weren’t found.
Enter “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons” (Disney Editions, out Tuesday). Author David A. Bossert likens their discovery to “finding . . . the prehistoric paintings . . . in the South of France.” And while the rabbit’s a lot funnier than those cave paintings, “both are an important part of our his- tory,” says Bossert, who grew up in Massapequa, LI, watching Popeye cartoons.
Granted, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit looks a lot like Mickey, only with floppy ears. But their personalities are quite different, Bossert says: Oswald’s edgier. He also two-times a bunny named Fanny Cottontail with a cat.
Oswald’s own name was pulled out of a hat, four decades before the JFK assassination. (Bossert initially titled his book “Finding Oswald,” but Disney said no.)
The rabbit’s adventures continued through 1943, when he was voiced by June Foray, who went on to voice Rocky the Flying Squirrel. By then, Bugs Bunny had entered the cartoon fray. Oswald, who’d been redrawn and retooled into looking like the Nesquik bunny, was relegated to comic books. And there he might have stayed, if Disney’s daughter, Diane Miller, hadn’t intervened. She and studio chief Bob Iger brokered a “trade” with Universal: the rabbit for ABC/ESPN football commentator Al Michaels. “He came across as bitter about it,” says Bossert, who quotes from “You Can’t Make This Up,” Michaels’ 2014 bio. “He hasn’t embraced it the way the Disney fan base has. They think he’s a hero.” Disney’s since recovered 19 cartoons, some of which are on YouTube. Meanwhile, Oswald’s joined Mickey in videos and theme parks. True to his name, Oswald got lucky.