Mickey Mouse: What has he done for us lately?

Factual Questions
1

Or what has he ever done for us? I was discussing MM with a friend of mine recently. We could not come up with any reason why he should be famous. Growing up, i watched the WB cartoons. I can think of no Mickey Mouse cartoon except Fantasia, which is what, 40 years old? Obviously there were Mickey Mouse cartoons before Fantasia, and maybe there have been some since, but I’ve never seen them.

There’s also the Mickey Mouse club, again from the 50s, but I don’t think Mickey was even in that show.

So why, exactly, is Mickey Mouse famous, aside from being a Disney Corporate logo? I’d guess that at some pre-television point in our history, there were Mickey Mouse cartoons… I dunno!

2

Actually Mickey currently has a series on ABC (at least I think that is the network) on Saturday mornings.

3

I’m no historian by any means, but there must be at least 50 to 100 Mickey cartoons. I’ve seen at least thirty with him in them in some capacity, and the early cartoons where everyone had bandy legs, and big buttons on their shorts, and rode horses all the time, are where Mickey, Minnie, and Peg Leg Pete, first got to be so famous and popular. There are tons of those.

After Donald came along, he, Mickey, and Goofy became a trio, which was about the time when colour cartoons started being spread around the place. Those are the ones we usually see on TV.

The character images became more refined in the forties, more standardised, and due partly to the comic books that came out soon after, they haven’t changed their look and overall feel much since.

One of the best Mickey, Donald and Goofy cartoons is ‘Clock Cleaners,’ and they tried to imitate that style of slapstick in a few others afterwards - one about them building a boat, one set in a fire station, one of them in a caravan going on a holiday around a mountain trail etc. Oh, and one where they go bird watching. And there’s a ghost one too that has some nice animation tricks in it.

Mickey is a bit of a bland fellow, but he was the first iconic Disney character, and that’s where his true fame originates. Walt adopted him as the symbol of his Empire.

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4

Walt Disney embraced Mickey because he pretty much saved the Empire (the Disney Empire, that is).

Walt was returning from a trip to New York where he had discussed financing of some project of some kind with some bankers there. Negotiations failed, and he was on his way back to either KC or LA to break the news to his brother and fold up the company.

On the train, he was doodling and somehow got the idea to draw a mouse (there’s a UL that a real mouse ran across his sketch pad, but I don’t believe it). He drew the mouse, and it was a big hit. I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but Walt eventually wound up making tons of money off little animated shorts featuring that mouse.

Walt used the money he earned from Mickey’s first few animated shorts to finance an extremely risky and (until then) un-heard of project: a full-length animated feature film. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? It’s called “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Ergo, Mickey both saved and built the Disney Empire.

Today Mickey is to the Disney Empire what the Queen is to the British Empire. He’s a symbol with little (or no) real duties.

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I’ve been away at the auto-da-fé.
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5

Remember, Disney never sold off his old cartoons to TV, so you didn’t get a chance to see them constantly, like you did with WB.

Mickey starred in a series of short cartoons starting with “Steamboat Willie,” the first sound cartoon. When Disney moved on to features, he used fairy tales as a basis, and had no room for Mickey until FANTASIA. As Disney turned to feature films (more money), Mickey got ignored. Eventually, he showed up in MICKEY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL.

The 30s, though, were Mickey’s decade. And with things like the Mickey Mouse Club, he continued even though they weren’t making new cartoons about him any more.

Mickey is particularly bland compared to the Warner characters and even Disney’s Donald Duck. But merchandising in the 30s and 40s made him a ubiquitous part of American culture.

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6

Mickey became a Role Model. That is a very bad thing to happen to animated characters. Essentially, he wasn’t allowed to be funny any more. The same thing happened to Popeye, but the effect wasn’t nearly as bad in Popeye’s case, because even the most idiotic censor realized that a non-violent Popeye cartoon was a contradiction in terms.

He continued to be interesting for a while in Gottfriedson’s comic strips, though as a free-lance adventurer, rather than as a clown, but eventually the strip became a gag strip, and not a very good one. In Murray’s comic books, he continued to be an interesting character (again as an adventurer) right up to the 60’s.

The new series of cartoons are supposed to be a return to his roots, but Political Correctness and MTV-style editing have squeezed all the juice out. Disney would have been much wiser to do a series of Mickey Mouse adventures ala Gottfriedson and Murray, as they did a decade ago when they adopted the style of Carl Barks’ comic books for Duck Tales.

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

7

What Mickey Mouse has done is pretty much screw us, since Disney Corp has pulled strings to continually extend copyright laws, just before he gets into the public domain.

I remember Project Gutenberg lamenting the latest extension to seventy years last winter. A lot of books were to be added to the Internet Public Library that will have to wait a lot longer. Pity, many of those books are not owned by authors, but by publishers and corporations and author’s descendants.

It’s hard to believe copyright was once, like, five years - a balance intended to recompense the artist, but still allow public benefit.

Mickey Mouse is a bastard.

8

On the Disney Channel there’s a series called “Vault Disney” which shows some of the old Mickey (and Donald, et al.) cartoons. If you don’t have the Disney Channel and are under retirement age, you probably haven’t seen most of the stuff Mickey’s in. He was already fairly well established as an icon in the 1950s, and the Mickey Mouse Club and the opening of Disneyland were just icing on the cake.

The “DTV” segments (clips from Disney cartoons set to music; sort of an animated music video) also use segments from the old cartoons.

The most recent full-blown Mickey cartoon (as opposed to him appearing in a cameo) I can think of is “The Prince and the Pauper”, which I believe came out in the early 90s… it’s considerably newer than Fantasia, anyway.

9

Oops… I meant “most recent before the current TV series”; obviously those are newer.

10

Actually, Chuck, “Plane Crazy” was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, not “Steamboat Willie” (don’t you hate know-it-alls!).

Mickey was incredibly popular in the dreariest years of the Depression, both as a newspaper comic strip and onscreen. This gave him a lot of good will, and the M.M. Club in the '50s gave another whole generation Mickey Memories.

Me, I’m a Betty Boop girl, myself.

11

Note : quotes are from various posts above.

I am. :wink:

Called “Mickey’s MouseWorks.” See http://www.disneyshorts.org/mouseworks/introindex.htm for more info.

That’s partly a UL itself. Disney had been working on the Oswald the Rabbit series of shorts for Charles Mintz. He had gone to New York to negtotiate a larger fee for what had been a fairly successful series of shorts. When he got to New York, he found out that Mintz not only wanted to decrease his fee, but had secretly negotiated with his artists to go with him instead of Disney; effectively taking Oswald away from Disney AND wiping out his staff. Disney might have had the idea for a mouse on the way back on the train, but the mouse’s appearance was pretty much the work of Ub Iwerks. It was always said that the personality of the mouse was Walts’ but the artwork was almost completely Iwerks’.

There is a chance that might happen. They did one called “Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot” which was more of a return to the comic book Mickey. In talking with Tony Craig (the exec. producer of the show) I get the feeling they might go more in this direction in the future. For instance, I know that they are working on a Junior Woodchuck episode for as future show.

Actually it’s called “The Ink and Paint Club.” It’s on almost every day at 5:00 in the morning EST.

Besides the MouseWorks show there was also a Christmas video that came out this year which features Mickey and Minnie in a version of O Henry’s “Gift of the Magi.”

A little of both. “Plane Crazy” was the first MM toon made; “Steamboat Willie” was the first released.

But to answer the OP, remember that Mickey also starred in the first popular cartoon short with fully synchronized sound; it was a pretty amazing thing for 1920’s audiences. That in itself might have made anyone a star, but it was probably a combination of Disney’s drive and Iwerks amazing talents for animation that drove Mickey into the limelight.

Saint Eutychus
www.disneyshorts.org

12

When I was growing up Disney movies were no longer preceded by short cartoons and (unlike WB) Disney cartoons were not aired on TV very often. Mickey Mouse meant just one thing to me: DISNEYLAND! The happiest place on Earth! (or at least in Orange County). Disneyland was my paridise and Mickey was its god. He was always there to greet you when you entered the park and his image was plastered all over the shirts and hats and watches and other crap I pestered my parents into buying me. I was probably in my teens before I realized he was a cartoon character and not just a corporate icon.

13

It would be a very good idea for the folks at Disney to read a bunch of old Mickey Mouse comics, interspersed with viewings of Pokémon – the anime series. Pokémon has more of the wonder-just-over-the-hill sense of those old comics than 99% of kids’ TV today.

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

14

I like Mickey as a guy in a suit at Disney World, or as a cool logo on a sweatshirt, but god those Micky cartoons (except Fantasia) were dreadful!!

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15

Opal…

There’s a “filler” spot that runs on Cartoon Network (I think; maybe it’s Nickelodeon) which features this ancient-looking black-and-white cartoon character who’s talking about “the old days.”

“We’d come out… mebbe move a liddle… not too much, mind you!..”

The spot is hilarious, and a dead on parody of some of the earliest cartoons.

Euty: I’m absolutely positive that they said “Vault Disney” at the beginning of the show I watched. I’m not sure what the difference between it and the Ink and Paint Club is… maybe Vault Disney is “filler” instead of a half-hour or hour show?

16

“Vault Disney” is the generic name for the 11:00 pm to 6:00 am block when they show mostly all older Disney stuff. “The Ink and Paint Club” is one show that is shown in the “Vault Disney” block.

Saint Eutychus
www.disneyshorts.org

17

Not only was Mickey head of Walt’s empire, he was there first. Walt once said we should remember that it all started with a mouse.

18

IIRC, another reason Walt liked Mickey is because originaly, Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse.