One of the most recognizable and popular animated characters in the world, and Walt Disney’s (1901–1966) most enduring artistic offspring, Mickey Mouse is the official mascot of the Walt Disney Company and an image of the Golden Age of animation. He is perhaps the most widely known iconic figure of American culture. Known by several other names such as Topolino in Italy, Musse Pigg in Sweden, Raton Miguelito in Spain, Mi Lao Shu in China, and Mic-Kay in Vietnam, he is no doubt the longest-surviving character in the history of animation. He has appeared in almost 130 films—both shorts and feature-length—that have garnered nine Best Animated Short Film Oscar nominations and earned Walt Disney a Special Academy Award in 1932. Also, Mickey Mouse was the first cartoon character to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 1978. He is usually seen together with longtime girlfriend Minnie Mouse; his two nephews, Mortie and Ferdy; his loyal dog, Pluto; and his villain enemy named Peg Leg Pete.
American animator and producer Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse, his most famous creation. The iconic Disney image and the official mascot of the Disney Corporation, Mickey has been one of the most instantly recognizable images in the world since he made his screen debut in Steamboat Willie, the first sound-synchronized cartoon, in 1928. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
Worshipped by the British Film Society, he has had many famous admirers throughout the world and throughout history, such as E. M. Forster, William Faulkner, Charlie Chaplin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Updike, Maurice Sendak, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, George Lucas, and above all, the legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who visited Walt Disney’s company when he toured America in the early 1930s.
There are several contradictory stories about the creation of Mickey Mouse. He generally succeeds Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was created in 1927, whose design was similar. Oswald appeared in a series of successful animated films for Universal Studios, but since he was a copyrighted character under the name of its New York film distributor Charles Mintz, Walt Disney decided to originate a replacement character. In an attempt to come up with something new, Disney drew a mouse figure. There seem to be two reasons for the creation of a cartoon mouse: First, Disney said that his idea for a cartoon mouse was the result of his having a pet mouse while he was growing up in Kansas City. And second, the choice of a mouse for a cartoon character was common in the 1920s, as there were plenty of other examples in the cartoons at that time. A mouse’s large ears, rendered as black circles or ovals, would make it easy to be recognized from the rest of the animals, whose crude and simple drawing in most cartoons could make it hard to tell one animal from another. Walt Disney wanted to name his character Mortimer, but at the suggestion of his wife, who believed Mortimer to be “too pompous and Sissy,” the name Mickey was settled on for the character. Walt Disney’s ideas were drawn by his animator (and later on, director), Ubbe Eert “Ub” Iwerks, who did not receive the full credit for that actual design. The early similarities between Mickey and Oswald were noticeable, as the two characters were almost identical. In the course of time, Disney developed his personality and supplied him with a high, squeaky voice, which turned out to be very popular. Walt Disney provided Mickey’s voice until 1947, and from 1947 to 1977 the voice was delivered by Disney’s sound effects director, James MacDonald.
In terms of Mickey’s physical appearance, Disney and Iwerks settled on a cheerful, energetic, and mischievous mouse, who physically resembled Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. His appearance was initially simple: his head was more in the shape of a real rodent, he had black dots for eyes, a tiny muzzle and nose, unusually thin legs, and a short, curled tail. He had a black body and head with a white area around the mouth just like Felix, Bimbo, Oswald, and most of the animated film characters who preceded him. He was also much thinner, and his movements were rather clumsy like silent film comedy stars of that time. Mickey was first a little barefoot mouse, but in the 1930s and afterwards, the design of Mickey was modified, and he was better dressed. Disney gave him pie-cut eyes and made him wear yellow bulbous shoes to give him the look of a kid wearing his father’s shoes. As he was supposed to be more human, he did not have mouse hands. Since his film The Opry House (1929), he wore big white gloves and had four fingers. Also, he was mostly seen in his short pants. However, he has also been seen to wear a variety of clothes in accordance with the roles he played in the films.
Mickey made his screen debut on November 18, 1928, as the star of the first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, at the Colony Theatre in New York. Being the first sound-synchronized animated cartoon, the movie was a huge sensation and turned Mickey into an animation star. In Steamboat Willie, Mickey did not speak. He laughed, grunted, and whistled. But he started speaking in his 1929 film, The Karnival Kid. Based on the success of Steamboat Willie, Disney added sound to two other previous films of Mickey, Gallopin’ Groucho and Plane Crazy, and successfully offered them as a package of three shorts. Steamboat Willie still remains a landmark in animation and is known for the introduction of a mischievous Mickey Mouse.
It should be taken into account that the early Mickey Mouse was unlike what the current world knows and loves. In his first films, he drinks, smokes, chews tobacco, commits violence against other animals, and treats Minnie roughly. As a matter of fact, in his first silent film, Plane Crazy (1927), he is guilty of sexual harassment against Minnie, who finally bails out of Mickey’s airplane and uses her underwear as a parachute. Mickey’s aggressive sexual desire continues in his second cartoon, Gallopin’ Gaucho, too. He is also featured as a prisoner firmly replanted in a guarded cell singing joyfully in the film The Chain Gang (1930).
In the wake of some criticism, there was an attempt to keep Mickey’s character more calm and morally upright. In his movie appearances in the 1930s, he pursued Minnie but now with flowers and candy rather than threats and bullying. Gradually, both Mickey and Minnie portrayed conventional sweethearts in a more respectable setting. Disney correctly came to the understanding that Mickey should be a nice fellow who never does anybody any harm, gets into scrapes through no fault of his own, and always manages every problem while grinning. He is gentle but self-confident, sentimental but not maudlin, naive without being foolish, and generally a very nice fellow. It is up to his sidekicks to play the naughty or mischievous roles in the films. He is accepted as a boy/mouse with rather human-like qualities.
Disneyland
Walt Disney was not satisfied simply to create cartoon characters or even to repackage folktales in an animated format; he was determined to reenvision and to bring to vibrant life a fantasy world suitable for idyllic family vacations in which real people could actually enter the Disney universe. When Disneyland, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955, it reinterpreted what an amusement park could be, and Disney World extended this concept in Orlando, Florida, in 1971. Epcot Center and various Disneylands across the globe followed, in addition to themed cruises on special Disney ships. The realities lurking beneath the polished surface of such fantastic themed experiences might be in stark contrast to the dreams these endeavors attempt to market, however, and thus the term Disneyfication has been coined to refer to a sanitized, saccharine, controlled, and ultimately false fantasy alternative to the workaday world.
C. Fee
During the 1930s, Mickey became famous internationally as well as the star of his own comic strip by Floyd Gottfredson, which ran until 1975. Mickey Mouse quickly became a wild success. The American public fell in love with him, and as the country slid into the Great Depression, he struck a chord and became an optimistic affirmation of Americans’ own values. Countless items of merchandise such as T-shirts, combs, watches, and dolls of Mickey Mouse were soon on the market. This success also led to Walt Disney producing a full slate of black-and-white sound cartoons.
In time, Mickey’s onscreen persona showed rapid improvement just like the stories in his cartoons. Soon, he was no longer simply a collection of gags. He turned into a character with a number of skills and roles, including a detective, a wizard, a diplomat, and a wise leader. The early Mickey borrowed his personality from notable figures of the time such as Charles Lindbergh, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, and Buster Keaton. However, according to Disney himself, Mickey’s character was chiefly borrowed from Charlie Chaplin and his tramp character, a timid but brave soul who overcomes all the difficulties of life cheerfully.
In 1935, the first official color Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Band Concert, was produced, and then came Disney’s most sophisticated work, Fantasia (1940). In a segment of the film entitled The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Mickey starred in his first feature-length movie. The consecutive successes of these animated films made the years between 1931 and 1941 Disney’s Golden Period, during which his studio dominated the animation market worldwide. As another success brought by Mickey for the Disney Studio, we may refer to the formation of various local Mickey Mouse Clubs in 1955, which were instant hits and had millions of members.
Despite his continuing success, Mickey’s appearance in Disney’s films was terminated in 1953, after 121 films, with the exception of Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983). His surrounding sidekicks such as Pluto, Donald Duck, and Goofy eventually became stars in their own rights. After his final feature film, The Simple Things (1953), Mickey became a TV character and still survives there. The year 1988, however, marked a historic moment in animation history, in which two long-running rivals, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, the two mascots of Disney and Warner Brothers, acted together in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit by Robert Zemeckis.
The reason for the staying power and the continuing popularity of Mickey Mouse may be related to his character, a living creature with babyish features, which appeals to innate instincts in all human beings. For ordinary people, this adorable, cheerful, resourceful, hapless, and mischievous little mouse is a symbol of America and all that’s good about its culture. He is a character whose appeal cuts across national boundaries in terms of geography, centuries, and history, and taps into a longer tradition of American folklore populated with trickster animals like Brer Rabbit and Coyote.
Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari
See also American Cinderella Tales; Animal Tales; Brer Rabbit; Coyote Tales
Further Reading
Bain, David, and Bruce Harris, eds. 1977. Mickey Mouse: Fifty Happy Years. New York: Harmony Books.
Griffin, Sean. 2000. Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out. New York: New York University Press.
Heide, Robert, John Gilman, Monique Patterson, and Patrick White. 2001. Mickey Mouse: The Evolution, the Legend, the Phenomenon. New York: Disney Editions.
Lenburg, Jeff. 2011. Walt Disney: The Mouse That Roared. New York: Chelsea House.
Susanin, Timothy S. 2011. Walt before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919–1928. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Watts, Steven. 1997. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin.