“He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when the business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb, and disaster seemed right around the corner”
―Walt Disney in 1948 essay, "What Mickey Means to Me"
1920s
Mickey might never have been born were it not for another character that emerged from the early work of Walt Disney and his animation studio: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. If you’ve never heard of him, you’re not alone. Few remember Walt Disney’s original cartoon star. Oswald appeared in several silent black and white films in the 1920s, only some of which have survived to the present day. This rabbit, not the now-famous mouse, might have taken the road to stardom were it not for a dispute between Walt Disney and his film financier. In the cold winter of 1928, Walt Disney was in New York trying to get a small raise from his distributor, Charles Mintz, so that the Oswald cartoons could continue production. Disney hoped to increase the price per cartoon from $2,250 to $2,500. Mintz would have none of it – instead chopping the production budget down to $1,800 and demanding that Disney continue work or the character (who technically belonged to Mintz) would be taken away. Prior to this brutal ultimatum, Charles Mintz had even stolen away several of Disney’s key artists and animators.
Walt Disney wouldn’t be bullied, so this bitter negotiation signaled the end of Disney’s involvement with his beloved cartoon rabbit. It’s not clear exactly where and when Mickey Mouse came in to the picture, but the common story relayed by Walt Disney was that the idea of a mouse came to him on the train ride home to California after the disastrous meeting in New York. Disney collaborator Ub Iwerks had at least as much to do with the creation of the character as Disney himself. While much of the acclaim in later years would be heaped on Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks is the artist who gave form to the character. Most accounts relay that Disney first named the little guy Mortimer Mouse, but his wife declared that a terrible idea, and suggested Mickey instead. A star was born.
Mickey’s first few cartoons, and those that followed in the early 1930s, reveal a dramatically different Mickey Mouse from the one we’ve become familiar with in recent years. Mickey was originally mischievous, petulant, and misbehaved. It’s an aspect of the character that has lain dormant for years, which begs the question: Why has this funny and scrappy version of the character been abandoned? “He was a guy who smoked and drank and shot guns, skewered people with swords, threw Minnie Mouse out of a plane when she wouldn’t kiss him, and abused farm animals,” Spector explains. “He was a badly behaved little guy. As he became more popular, I think Walt started saying, ‘Let’s make this guy more realistic. We don’t want to do things with this guy that the world isn’t going to like,’ so they started taming him and taking different parts of his personality.”
“Mickey is critical to both animation history and film history,” Spector continues. “He was absolutely and demonstrably the most recognizable and popular film star in the world for about three or four years in the early ‘30s. He was huge at the box office. It’s not an overstatement to say that he gave hope to an entire generation of people living through the Depression. He was a little ray of sunshine. He seems kind of sweet and innocent, and his films don’t seem as anarchic and crazy and maybe relevant as today’s films do, but at the time it was exactly what the country needed, what the world needed. So he was there to provide it.”
The early 1930s saw an explosion of adoration for Mickey Mouse, both through his cartoon shorts and a long-lived comic strip. Though the comic strips started out playing on sight gags, the serialized format of the newspaper allowed for more complex stories, sometimes across months and dozens of individual strips. The comics were originally drawn by Ub Iwerks, though Floyd Gottfredson eventually became the chief creative voice behind the strip. After ostensibly taking over as a temporary replacement, Gottfredson ended up crafting the comic for the next 45 years.
By 1932, only a few years after his initial appearance, the world was in love with Mickey Mouse. The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences even awarded Walt Disney a special Oscar that year for his creation of the adored mouse. Mickey Mouse was also one of the earliest fictional characters to hit it big with merchandising. Watches, stuffed toys, bedside lamps, phones – Mickey Mouse branded items became unavoidable, a rarity during the dark days of the Great Depression.
The 1930s represent the height of popularity for the character. Disney’s studio pumped out 18 cartoons per year on average, and the character garnered international acclaim. By the middle of the decade, Mickey had his own magazine, comics, toys, movies, and regular coverage in newspapers and other media.
1930s
1940s
The 1940s started off big for Mickey, with his appearance in the feature film Fantasia. For many, his role as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an overwhelming favorite. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” saw hints of the troublemaking personality that the character first had, but it was the scope and grandeur of the feature film that amazed audiences. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” had originally been planned as a short, but the incredible expense involved in its production led to an expansion of the original ambitions for the project, and other pieces of music and animation were added to create Fantasia in its final form.
Though the film did not do particularly well at the box office upon its initial release, Fantasia continued to garner more and more affection as the years passed, especially for its stylish integration of music and animation. Today, Fantasia is regarded as one of Disney’s (and Mickey’s) greatest triumphs.
Much of the world’s attention in the early 1940s turned towards the momentous and terrible events of World War II. Mickey showed up in propaganda shots and other imagery supportive of the American war effort, and his presence in the cultural landscape of the war was apparent. Famously, the Allied command word on D-Day was “Mickey Mouse.” On the other side, a well-circulated German newspaper quote from the 1930s declared: “Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed... The dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom cannot be the ideal type of animal. Down with Mickey Mouse!” Harsh words for such a beloved American icon.
Mickey’s appearances in comics and film outside of the war effort in the 1940s depicted an increasingly suburban Mickey Mouse – playing golf and polo, coming home from work to toss his hat onto the stand by the door, and enjoying the occasional date with longtime sweetheart Minnie. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of these ideas and life experiences reflected those of creator Walt Disney at the time.
Great cartoons like Lend a Paw (1941) and The Nifty Nineties (1941) were highlights among Mickey’s increasingly sparse roles of the period. Mickey showed up in six cartoons in 1941, three in 1942, but only eight more throughout the rest of the decade. By the early 1950s, his film career was mostly non-existent.
The 1950s saw two major new steps for the mouse, each of which helped set the stage for the way following generations would meet him. The first was The Mickey Mouse Club, which first aired in 1955. Filled with musical numbers and cartoons culled from Mickey’s vast catalogue of shorts, the show was a tremendous success, and expanded Mickey’s media presence to make him a television mainstay until 1959. The cast of talented young actors and singers would tackle special themed days, like Guest Star Day, Circus Day, Talent Roundup Day, and the always popular Anything Can Happen Day. The variety show for children, with its familiar theme song and joyous celebration of all things Disney, spawned a follow up series decades later in the form of The All New Mickey Mouse Club, which premiered in the 1970s.
The second major new project for Mickey Mouse was Disneyland. The California theme park featured Mickey in its many attractions, most notably as park visitors were able to interact with a costumed Mickey character. The park was the first of many – Walt Disney World opened in 1971, five years after the death of Walt Disney in 1966. More parks across the world, notably in Europe and Japan, released in later years.
1950s
1990s
The 1980s and early 1990s saw yet another attempt at bringing the property back to life with the MMC. This popular Disney Channel program is most notable for being the starting place for many current pop culture icons. Cast members included Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell, JC Chasez, and Ryan Gosling, among others.
Mickey’s presence in the media continued to scale back, but occasional cartoons have released over the years. The year 1983 found him in the role of Bob Cratchit in a remake of the Dickens’ classic entitled Mickey’s Christmas Carol. The Prince and the Pauper debuted in 1990, based on the 1882 Mark Twain story, where Mickey plays double duty as both the royal prince and his poorer look-alike. Finally, Runaway Brain (1995) explores a strange Frankenstein-inspired story where Mickey’s mind is exchanged with a monster named Julius.
Around the same time, Mickey found a home in a brand new medium: video games. Though the many games bearing his name vacillated wildly in quality, they succeeded in bringing Mickey Mouse to a new generation. The early Nintendo release Mickey Mousecapade (1988) helped to begin a long line of Capcom-published Disney adventures. Around the same time, Sega enjoyed great success with Castle of Illusion (1990) and its sequels. More recently, Mickey made memorable guest appearances in the Kingdom Hearts series.
The 21st century has seen little of Disney’s once-ubiquitous mouse, which is on the threshold of changing in some dramatic ways. Warren Spector has taken the reins of the classic character, and is targeting a new game for release on the most widely owned system of this hardware generation: the Wii. Disney Epic Mickey reveals a major new direction for the character, but one that is rooted in his earliest birth and history. “The irony is I think the best way to rejuvenate or revitalize the character, whether in a game or in a movie or anywhere else, is to return him to his roots,” Spector says. “Mickey used to be a character who about whom kids could say, ‘He’s acting out for me,’ and I think he could do that again.” For the full story on the new game, read this month’s issue of Game Informer, and then check back here after throughout the month for expanded articles, videos, interviews, and details on what might be the biggest and most ambitious third-party Wii game yet created.