"The Mouse That Roared"
James Shumaker
The following is an excerpt, reprinted without permission,
(don't know if that is legal or not :-> ), from Marc Elliot's
_Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince_ that appeared in the
_San Jose Mercury News_ on August 2, 1993, page E1 and 10.
THE MOUSE THAT ROARED
The story is told that on a train back to Hollywood, Walt
hit upon a new cartoon character inspired by a real mouse
that used to live during the Newman Laugh-O-Gram days. As
Walt himself liked to tell it, "Mice gathered in my wastebasket
when I worked late at night. I lifted them out and kept them
in little cages on my desk. One of them was my particular
friend."
Having decided to create a new character based on that mouse,
he told his wife, Lillian, he had decided to call him Mortimer.
Lillian suggested Mickey instead, insisting that Mortimer
sounded "too sissy." By the end of the train ride, Walt had
created the image of Mickey on piece of paper and worked out a
plot for the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
That version, Dave Iwerks, longtime employee and partner Ub
Iwerk's son, insists, isn't quite the way Mickey happened. "It's
pretty clear now that Mickey was Ub's character. Even the (Disney
archives) concedes that Ub created Mickey, although their version
has it that Walt stood over Ub's shoulder while he did it. The
whole scenario of the train story the studio used to be so fond of
is just not right at all."
Actually, according to Dave Iwerks, when Walt arrived back in
Hollywood, he had only the vaguest idea of a new character. He and
Ub put down all their ideas on "character sheets." Walt then
brought in his own proposed sketch of a mouse, which Iwerks
rejected because it looked to much like Walt. Disney confessed that
he had used a reflection of his own face as a model
Transformed to a mouse
Taking one of his own sketches of Oswald the Rabbit, the
character that had been for Universal Pictures, Iwerks, with
a few swipes of his pen changed the ears and rounded the eyes
and in doing so turned him into Mickey. Walt grinned when he
realized just how easy it was going to be to simply steal Oswald
back from Universal. Which, having learned firsthand the way
the movie business operated, was exactly what he did.
In March 1928, work began on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon,
its creation shrouded in secrecy behind the closed doors of Ub
Iwerk's tiny office.
Disney trusted only Iwerks. With ever greater frequency, Ub
was assigned to bring to animated life the characters Walt had
in mind, a job that ultimately became an expression of what was,
really, the character of Walt's mind. Thus freed from the confines
of physical animation, Disney concentrated on developing stories
and supervising his staff.
This shift in approach resulted in Walt's becoming the target
of rumors that lasted for decades, mostly by former employees,
that he was such a mediocre artist he couldn't so much as draw a
straight line.
The rumors dogged Walt and angered him. Finally, 20 years after
they began, he admitted publicly for the first time he never actually
"drew" Mickey, although he still refused to give proper credit to
Iwerks for his role in the cartoon character's creation.
In a way, Mickey Mouse was, of course, very real. Indeed his
original wise-guy attitude, taste for adventure and physical heroics
fairly reverberated with the essence of his original inspiration,
Charlie Chaplin. At the same time, Mickey's chaste love for Minnie
and his overall redemptive innocence had continued to reflect the
inner feelings of little Walt toward his favorite storyteller and
primal love, his mother.
Disney's decision in 1933 to replace Mickey with a new one whose
features resembled a new born baby's -- a large head, round stomach,
tiny arms and legs -- added a dimension of depth without sacrificing
the essential qualities of innocence. Mickey's face acquired a wider
range of expression, particularly in the eyes, while his physical
movements became more sophisticated. Walt also wanted Mickey's
personality adjusted, his wise-guy attitude replaced by one more
wholesome and childlike, his overall behavior gentler and less
aggressive.
The born-again Mickey
Disney would put Mickey through nothing less than a fully textured
and multicolored rebirth, to replace the bare bone of his own
childhood associations with a fully realized, animated individual
the whole world could not only laugh at but also love. This
transformation would take on heroic proportions and be repeated
over and over again in Disney's greatest characters and, in doing so,
perfectly reflect his own real-life transformation from his bare-bones
life of anonymous, impoverished, abused child to the fully realized,
creative animator the whole world came to love.
There was also, perhaps, a darker aspect to Walt's changing
relationship with Mickey. The successful Metamorphosis of the
character meant, in a sense, that Walt has done his job and was
now finished. As with a parent whose child has grown the time had
come to say goodbye. The worldwide institutionalization of Mickey
Mouse had given him a life of his own. There was little for Walt
to do other than wish his progeny well.
Offspring and rival
Or kill him off. For there was a sense of sibling rivalry at work
as well as a narcisstic jealousy between Walt Nan his vastly more
popular animated reflection. Walt may have been reassuring himself,
as well as his audience, when he insisted that "he still speaks for
me and I still for him."
Donald Duck, in many ways Walt's "second-born" and Mickey Mouse's
antithetical "sibling," made his cartoon debut in 1935 in a cartoon
short entitled "The Orpans' Benefit."
The third person description that Walt himself gave for Donald in
a studio press release was very revealing, as if the animated
character not only had a life of his own, but one that resembled
Walt's a little too closely:
"Donald Duck came into being in 1934 to fit a voice that interested
me a couple of years before....He was a character we simply couldn't
keep down...his towering rages, his impotence in the face of obstacles,
his protests in the face of injustice, as he sees it ..."
At the same time an "anonymous" Disney writer, probably Disney
himself -- a method Disney had often used in the past to express
himself without signature -- revealed more about Donald, particularly
his relationship to Mickey:
"Mickey is limited today because public idealization has turned
him into a boy scout. Everytime we put him into a trick, a temper,
a joke, thousands of people would belabor us with nasty letters.
That's what made Donald Duck so easy. He was our outlet. We could
use all the ideas for him we couldn't use on Mickey."
Clearly, Disney regarded Mickey and Donald as more than just
animated characters. They were, in many ways, his most important
progeny. over which he maintained absolute creative control,
rejecting his own, conflicted personality: Mickey as superego --
humble, asexual, always in control, universally adored; Donald as
id, sexual, always out of control, not quite as popular and angry
because of it.
END OF ARTICLE
I can not end this posting without some form of critique. While the
Mickey as a superego, Donald as an id is a characterization that is not
hard to take. The relationship that Eliot tries to create between Disney
and Mickey and Donald is totally preposterous and just glory theory.
Yes, Mickey was always considered a reflection of Walt, but there is
nothing in Mickey's character or history that would support the theory
that Mickey is a reflection of Disney's love for his mother. Mickey in
the first episodes was a little rascal, as was Walt, in the latter shorts
he grew to be the calm and collective Mickey we all know. That is simply
because of his popularity with the people, That was the way that people
saw Mickey and that was the way the studio portrayed him. Disney did
love his mother, but not to some extensive way that is implied here in
this article.
I must agree with one part that Eliot speaks of here and that Mickey
was not _totally_ Disney's creation. I do not know of the truth of
who actually did the first sketchings of Mickey. (But I think I saw a
reprint of the character sheet in a book and it said it was by Walt)
I do know however, that Ub is a great reason for the success of the
Mouse and thereby a great reason for the success of Disney itself.
Perhaps we should sing his and Roy's praises a whole lot more. (IMHO)
BUT, and this is a strong but, the layout of the character is only now
of many steps and it is preposterous to think that Walt is not "creator"
of Mickey. He just doesn't draw him. He rules the content of Mickey's
films, He rule's every movement the mouse makes. It MUST go by him, be
approved by him. There are many stories that the animators talk of
when Walt would go into their offices late at night when they weren't
there and look at the work in progress. I think that that was always
the way Disney was, nosy and ruling. But, hey! it made Great pictures!
-jiminy
Tigger
> That version, Dave Iwerks, longtime employee and partner Ub
>Iwerk's son, insists, isn't quite the way Mickey happened. "It's
>pretty clear now that Mickey was Ub's character. Even the (Disney
>archives) concedes that Ub created Mickey, although their version
>has it that Walt stood over Ub's shoulder while he did it. The
>whole scenario of the train story the studio used to be so fond of
>is just not right at all."
> Actually, according to Dave Iwerks, when Walt arrived back in
>Hollywood, he had only the vaguest idea of a new character. He and
>Ub put down all their ideas on "character sheets." Walt then
>brought in his own proposed sketch of a mouse, which Iwerks
>rejected because it looked to much like Walt. Disney confessed that
>he had used a reflection of his own face as a model
I have never heard that Walt had scetched Mickey out by the time he
got back to Los Angeles. Has anyone else heard that part of the
story? I always heard that Walt had the idea, and I've never heard
anyone dispute the Ub did the detail work of the character design.
The other interesting thing is that Ub always claimed that the train
story was BS. He said that he and Walt and several others had a
meeting to brainstorm a new character, and they decided on a mouse
becuase it was the only interesting animal that wasn't already a main
character in a cartoon series of the time.
> In March 1928, work began on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon,
>its creation shrouded in secrecy behind the closed doors of Ub
>Iwerk's tiny office.
> Disney trusted only Iwerks.
Disney was still under contract for several more Oswald shorts.
When he was informed that the distributor had legally stolen Oswald,
he was also told that most of his animators had already signed
sepparate new contracts in the event that Walt decided not to renew.
So Mickey had to be created and animated (in "Plane Crazy", not
"Steamboat Wille" as many think) in secrecy. Otherwise one of the
"traitor" animators might well have tipped Oswald's distributor.
It's interesting how sinister things can be made to sound when you
leave out some of the related facts.
Greg
Robert Cook
>
>>[story of Walt's creation of Mickey on a train ride deleted...]
>> That version, Dave Iwerks, longtime employee and partner Ub
>>Iwerk's son, insists, isn't quite the way Mickey happened. "It's
>>pretty clear now that Mickey was Ub's character. Even the (Disney
>>archives) concedes that Ub created Mickey, although their version
>>has it that Walt stood over Ub's shoulder while he did it. The
>>whole scenario of the train story the studio used to be so fond of
>>is just not right at all."
>> Actually, according to Dave Iwerks, when Walt arrived back in
>>Hollywood, he had only the vaguest idea of a new character. He and
>>Ub put down all their ideas on "character sheets." Walt then
>>brought in his own proposed sketch of a mouse, which Iwerks
>>rejected because it looked to much like Walt. Disney confessed that
>>he had used a reflection of his own face as a model
>
>I have never heard that Walt had scetched Mickey out by the time he
>got back to Los Angeles. Has anyone else heard that part of the
>story?
I have never heard of that part, either--it probably isn't a very
well-known idea. Actually, it sounds kind of like the story of how
Richard Williams (animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
designed Roger Rabbit on a napkin while on a passenger jet. Walt
might well have been thinking of something along the lines of Mickey
on that train; such stories don't usually come from _nowhere_.
>I always heard that Walt had the idea, and I've never heard
>anyone dispute the Ub did the detail work of the character design.
Let's face it--a lot of characters looked like Mickey back then. In
fact, Ub, Hugh Harmon, Rudy Ising, and Walt animated similar mice as
secondary characters in the early Alice Comedies. Other studios also
used mice like Mickey. The more uniquely designed Mickey we've come
to know (chubby cheeks, peachy face, and tall "cartoony" eyes) didn't
come about till a bit later. The whole argument is over credit, I
realize, but there's not a whole lot of original credit to give,
IMHO. It isn't usually argued in that manner anyway.
>The other interesting thing is that Ub always claimed that the train
>story was BS. He said that he and Walt and several others had a
>meeting to brainstorm a new character, and they decided on a mouse
>becuase it was the only interesting animal that wasn't already a main
>character in a cartoon series of the time.
I'm not sure about the idea that "several others" were in the
discussion (since Mickey was a secret), but this is the most likely
theory.
>> In March 1928, work began on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon,
>>its creation shrouded in secrecy behind the closed doors of Ub
>>Iwerk's tiny office.
>> Disney trusted only Iwerks.
>
>Disney was still under contract for several more Oswald shorts.
>When he was informed that the distributor had legally stolen Oswald,
>he was also told that most of his animators had already signed
>sepparate new contracts in the event that Walt decided not to renew.
According to most accounts, Disney was offered a job as director and
producer for a very large sum of money. He refused.
>>So Mickey had to be created and animated (in "Plane Crazy", not
>>"Steamboat Wille" as many think) in secrecy. Otherwise one of the
>>"traitor" animators might well have tipped Oswald's distributor.
>
>It's interesting how sinister things can be made to sound when you
>leave out some of the related facts.
I believe that Walt did what he felt he had to do. He had been
naive and trusting, and realized that wouldn't work. As for Mickey,
designing him wasn't a big deal. The legends we hear about--like
the inspiration during the train trip--are just to add color and
more credit to Disney's name, something that never went well with
most of his artists. Creating a well-known label is a great way to
automatically promote a product. Anyway, Mickey developed from the
stories he was placed in. Wanna get philosophical? Mickey wasn't
created all at once--he evolved. :-)
- Robert Cook
Robert Cook
>
> The following is an excerpt, reprinted without permission,
>(don't know if that is legal or not :-> ), from Marc Elliot's
>_Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince_ that appeared in the
>_San Jose Mercury News_ on August 2, 1993, page E1 and 10.
>
>
>>character that had been for Universal Pictures, Iwerks, with
>>a few swipes of his pen changed the ears and rounded the eyes
>>and in doing so turned him into Mickey. Walt grinned when he
>>realized just how easy it was going to be to simply steal Oswald
>>back from Universal.
[begin madness]
OH, POOR UNIVERSAL! Before Oswald there were no characters that
looked like he or Mickey. And Walt--with bloodthirsty vengeance
rushing through his veins, savoring delightfully devious quivers up
and down his spine--violated intellectual property rights and had
Ub plagiarize Oswald, oh-so-cleverly concealing the dastardly deed
by butchering the image, making it rounder and cuter in a sickeningly
Disney fashion!
[end madness]
Well, that's one way to make someone sound bad. :-) But this
excerpt from the book is a lot sneakier than that. Read that
last sentence of the passage (from the book, not the "madness").
It sounds suspicious to me, but decide for yourself.
>>Which, having learned firsthand the way
>>the movie business operated, was exactly what he did.
Lots of inference here--as I've noted in a previous article, Mickey's
design was none too unique. Watching cartoons of that era, this
becomes too apparent to be considered a nebulous point.
>>In March 1928, work began on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon,
>>its creation shrouded in secrecy behind the closed doors of Ub
>>Iwerk's tiny office.
"Shrouded in secrecy." That's an interesting way to put it. At
least it's consistent. ;-)
>>Disney trusted only Iwerks. With ever greater frequency, Ub
>>was assigned to bring to animated life the characters Walt had
>>in mind, a job that ultimately became an expression of what was,
>>really, the character of Walt's mind. Thus freed from the confines
>>of physical animation, Disney concentrated on developing stories
>>and supervising his staff.
That's better, but now it sounds like any other myth-making book.
>>At the same time, Mickey's chaste love for Minnie
>>and his overall redemptive innocence had continued to reflect the
>>inner feelings of little Walt toward his favorite storyteller and
>>primal love, his mother.
The rest of the passage is full of the same psychological analyses
that Freud would have been proud of. :-)
>> "Mickey is limited today because public idealization has turned
>>him into a boy scout. Everytime we put him into a trick, a temper,
>>a joke, thousands of people would belabor us with nasty letters.
>>That's what made Donald Duck so easy. He was our outlet. We could
>>use all the ideas for him we couldn't use on Mickey."
Well, this actually seems to make some sense! :-) But then, again,
it's a quote straight from Walt.... (not that he *always* makes total
sense)
>> Clearly, Disney regarded Mickey and Donald as more than just
>>animated characters. They were, in many ways, his most important
>>progeny. over which he maintained absolute creative control,
>>rejecting his own, conflicted personality: Mickey as superego --
>>humble, asexual, always in control, universally adored; Donald as
>>id, sexual, always out of control, not quite as popular and angry
>>because of it.
Okay, I got it: Mickey is superego, and Donald is id. I would never
have noticed the contrast...uh, uh.... :-) (just picking on the
book. ;-) )
>>END OF ARTICLE
>
>Yes, Mickey was always considered a reflection of Walt, but there is
>nothing in Mickey's character or history that would support the theory
>that Mickey is a reflection of Disney's love for his mother.
That sort of thing runs rampant.
>Mickey in
>the first episodes was a little rascal, as was Walt, in the latter shorts
>he grew to be the calm and collective Mickey we all know. That is simply
>because of his popularity with the people, That was the way that people
>saw Mickey and that was the way the studio portrayed him. Disney did
>love his mother, but not to some extensive way that is implied here in
>this article.
What sort of "love" for Walt's mother would the early Mickey
represent? Violent sexual impulses? I doubt it. I have yet to
read Eliot's book (I'm in no real hurry), but I wonder what he has
to say--if anything--about the time when Walt's mother was watching
a Mickey cartoon with him. She said that she didn't like Mickey's
voice, whereupon Walt told her that it was *his* voice (in falsetto).
She replied that she knew that, and said that it made him sound like
a sissy! :-)
>He just doesn't draw him. He rules the content of Mickey's
>films, He rule's every movement the mouse makes. It MUST go by him, be
>approved by him. There are many stories that the animators talk of
>when Walt would go into their offices late at night when they weren't
>there and look at the work in progress. I think that that was always
>the way Disney was, nosy and ruling. But, hey! it made Great pictures!
I wish I could remember the exact quote, but Richard Williams (famous
non-Disney animator/director I know a little about) was once told
that the only way to really influence the art of animation is to put
down the pencil. Animators are extremely important--that's obvious.
But you've got to be the big enchilada (so to speak) to make things
happen. Walt couldn't animate nearly as well as his employees, so
why should he waste his time on that aspect of the business?
As I think you implied, Walt still created Mickey, and without him,
none of the other films would have been made the way they were. The
animators that he brought over from New York, for all their obvious
talent, were working in studios that degraded animation as an artform
(which I believe it is). The argument--or accusation--that Walt
Disney couldn't draw that well is insignificant--just an interesting
little irony a person can tell a friend about.
- Robert Cook
bbi...@austin.ibm.com
>"Steamboat Wille" as many think) in secrecy. Otherwise one of the
>"traitor" animators might well have tipped Oswald's distributor.
Plane Crazy is, in fact, Mickey's first cartoon, but it had no sound.
Walt said, 'Gee, wouldn't sound be great, it is all the rage.'.
Steamboat willie is the first Mickey Cartoon with sound (2nd Mickey
cartoon total.). Plane Crazy was then re-worked with sound and re-released
with sound after Steamboat Willie. So Plane Crazy with sound was Mickey's
3rd cartoon.
In his early days, Mickey had to play the daring dual role of both himself
and Minnie.
Brad
.
bbi...@austin.ibm.com
a world of tears
It's a world of hopes
and a world of fears
There's so much that we share
that it's time we're aware
it's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
There is just one moon
and one golden sun
and a smile means friendship
to everyone
Though the oceans are wide
and the moutains devide
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
(real lyrics above - from memory)
This song never ends
so I grabed my gun
I aimed real carefully
at everyone
I shot with intent to kill
It gave me a thrill
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
It's a Small World after all
Brad