Who created Mickey Mouse. Interesting Facts. Mickey Mouse in various roles

There is no person in the world who does not know who Mickey Mouse is, because this bizarre mouse not only appears in Disney animated films, but is also a symbol of American culture in general - along with Coca-Cola and the clown.

This fictional character, who debuted in 1928, has made its way into video games and movies, and has become a major marketing ploy: even children's clothing features prints of a winking Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie.

History of creation

The history of the creation of this character is multifaceted, because the appearance of the anthropomorphic mouse coincided with a number of technological innovations in terms of cinema. Initially, Oswald the rabbit, who differs in appearance from Mickey Mouse only by the presence of long ears, shone on the screens and brought joy to young viewers. The character was created in 1927 by illustrator Ub Iwerks and became a famous cartoon character overnight.

The films about the long-eared adventurer were created by Disney, but the official distributor was the film studio Universal Pictures, which managed to lure some of the animators. In addition, due to a hastily signed contract, the rights to Oswald belonged not to Disney, but to Universal Pictures. Therefore, realizing that the film studio might refuse his services, he decided to create a new character from scratch.

Walt Disney, along with a few dedicated employees, secretly began to come up with a whimsical mouse, while another team of artists, already working for the new boss, was busy drawing Oswald the Rabbit. This situation played into the hands of an upset Walt, because he began to be more careful about respecting copyrights and signing contracts.

Not to say that the illustrators came up with the main Disney character right away. The artist Iwerks admitted that the choice was between a frog, a kitten and a puppy, but all these ideas were destroyed in the bud by Walt. But one day the owner of an animation studio found a mouse to be an attractive character, although he had not the most pleasant memories associated with these rodents: in the early twenties, Walt worked at the Laugh-O-Gram studio, which was literally inhabited by mice.

The new character appeared on the screens on November 18, 1928 in the animated film “Steamboat Willie,” which was broadcast in a New York cinema. It is noteworthy that the children's cartoon hero was originally named Mortimer, but Disney's wife rejected this name, proposing to call the character a more euphonious nickname - Mickey Mouse.

Initially, Mickey Mouse, who appeared in the cartoon “Plane Crazy” on May 15, 1928, was not successful with viewers because he resembled other Disney characters, which viewers were pretty fed up with. Then Walt thought about finding a distributor, and, against all odds, took up the production of the third cartoon. Walt realized that the new hero needed a distinctive feature that would set him apart from other characters. Having achieved this, Disney witnessed how Mickey Mouse won laurels of honor and the love of the audience.

Biography

It is not known for certain when Mickey Mouse was invented by Walt Disney, but his official birthday is considered to be November 18, 1928, the day of his debut on the silver screen. The favorite of young children began to appear in white gloves only in 1929, in the film “The Opry House”: this was done so that the mouse’s hands contrasted with his body, because the first cartoons about Mickey Mouse were black and white. This accessory with three black lines on the back (the same folds were on children's gloves) became an individual feature of the character.

During its existence, the tailed hero in red pants managed to transform into various images, and also acquire loyal friends: Goofy and Pluto. Despite the fact that in some episodes the mouse is courting his girlfriend, Walt Disney used to say that these characters were married even before the appearance of the cartoon. Although sometimes they act as if they met for the first time.

“Depending on the plot, Minnie plays the role of a carefree girl or a wife. For ourselves, we decided a long time ago that they were already officially married,” said the creator of the cartoons.

But the illustrator contradicted himself, because in The Barn Dance, which was released on March 14, 1929, Mouse suffers from unrequited love, as Minnie prefers Black Pete to him. Viewers saw in this film Walt’s attempt to pity fans of the cartoon character.

Among other things, the character tried on a soldier's uniform in the film “The Barnyard Battle,” where he fought against cats, and also visited Africa as a tourist.

The first color Mickey Mouse cartoon, "The Concert," was released in 1935 and earned a place on the list of the fifty greatest cartoons. The painting, made in technicolor, tells the story of a mouse conducting an orchestra. But Donald Duck, an ice cream seller, loudly encourages passers-by to buy the treat, thereby preventing Mickey Mouse from concentrating.

There are a total of 21 short films featuring Mickey Mouse. The mouse itself changed over time. Also, this hero “starred” in TV series, for example, in “The Mickey Mouse Club”, “House of Mouse” and other multi-part cartoons.

Walt Disney even brought the lovable traveler to full length. In 1940, the film “Fantasia” was released, which became Disney’s most daring idea: the film used new stereo sound “fantasound”, and the plot, where the main character acted as a wizard’s apprentice, resembled abstraction and avant-garde.

In 1988, Touchstone Pictures and Amblin Entertainment released Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a collaboration between cartoon characters and real-life actors. In this cinematic work, which won an Oscar, Mickey Mouse and another iconic character, the star of the Warner Brothers studio, met for the first time on the same set.

The popularity of Mickey Mouse is due to interesting plots: fans watch how the main character goes fishing, rides a train, or goes to an unknown country. But his fame is also due to the commercial moves of the Disney company.

The fact is that the bosses of the animation decided to use a marketing ploy: the company produced and promoted products with the image of a mouse. Roy Disney became the creator of a series of wristwatches with Mickey Mouse on the dial. Today, such an accessory costs a lot of money at auctions.

Disney also uses the “hidden Mickey” method, which is a skillfully hidden Mouse symbol - three circles resembling a mouse’s head. The character is indirectly found in the company's cult films: "", "", "The Lion King", children's parks, Disneyland and so on. Moreover, only the most attentive cartoon lover will notice the symbol: in “” it is formed by soap bubbles, and in “Rescuers” there is a clock with the image of the hero hanging on the wall.

• Until 1947, Walt Disney himself voiced the mouse. But since the cartoonist did not think about giving up cigarettes, he was tormented by a chronic cough. Therefore, other dubbing actors took over this position. In the Russian translation, the character was voiced by Vadim Kurkov, Oleg Bezinskikh and Maxim Sergeev.
• Mouse's parents are Max and Mary. He also has sisters and brothers.
• When turning his head, Mickey Mouse's ears remain in the same position. This is the specialty of the brand.

• $2500 – the price of the first two Mickey Mouse films.
• According to the script, Mickey Mouse is 32 years old.
• The mouse’s very first word is “hot dog.”
• According to rumors, films with the adventure of the main Disney character were not shown in Italy, since children who grew up in the land of pizza and pasta were afraid of this cute character.

• In 1988, Mouse came to visit the USSR and even danced with the Olympic bear on Red Square.
• "Who is Mickey Mouse?" - such a question helped American soldiers identify German spies.
• Dubbing actors Russi Taylor and Wayne Allwine, who previously voiced Minnie and Mickey, were in a relationship, but did not advertise this fact so as not to be associated with Disney characters.

Quotes

“If you laugh at your weaknesses instead of blaming yourself for them, you will be much happier. After all, no one is perfect."

September 19, 1928 fromThe premiere of the Walt Disney animated film “Mickey Mouse” took place. the site talks about the history and evolution of this iconic character.

Mickey Mouse appeared thanks to a mistake by Walt Disney, who transferred all rights to the then popular Oswald the Rabbit to Universal Pictures without really looking at the contract. Disney had to come up with a new character and, after much deliberation, he chose a mouse, first nicknamed Mortimer (which didn’t stick) and then Mickey Mouse.

While working on the image:

One of the first Mickey Mouse posters sold for $100 thousand.

Mickey Mouse was created thanks to a mistake by Walt Disney

Mickey was first featured in the silent cartoon Airplane Crazy on May 15, 1928:

And the first sound cartoon with this hero was “Steamboat Willie,” presented not much later, on November 18 of the same year:

In these cartoons, Mickey did not yet wear white gloves: they appeared after the release of The Opry House cartoon in 1929. Three black folds on the back of the glove were characteristic of children's gloves of that time:

And this is the first color cartoon with Mickey Mouse “The band concert”:

One of the first Mickey Mouse posters sold for $100 thousand.

Not in all cartoons Mickey remained an anthropomorphic character. In the cartoon "Alice rattled by rats" (1929), Mickey and Mickey were ordinary mice who were running away from an evil cat, similar to Tom, created in the 40s by William Hanna for "Tom and Jerry". Here's the cartoon:

In 1939, Mickey Mouse changed again: instead of two huge black eyes, animator Fred Moore began drawing eyes with a black pupil in the middle.

At first, Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse, but in 1947, coughing and wheezing from smoking increasingly began to appear in his voice, then the company invited Jimmy MacDonald to take this place. From 1997 to 2009, Mickey Mouse was voiced by Wayne Ollivan.

Walt Disney first voiced Mickey Mouse himself.

In 1940, Mickey Mouse appeared in his first full-length cartoon, Fantasia. After 1940 until the 50s, Mickey Mouse's popularity declined, but he returned as a character for children's programs and television shows.

In 1983, Mickey appeared again in A Christmas Carol, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. And in 1988, he, in turn, appeared in the famous Zemeckis film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Mickey the mouse still delights children with his appearances in the Mickey Mouse Club.

The first comics with Mickey Mouse appeared in 1930 (drawings by Floy Gottfrendson):

Pattern:Disney Cartoon Character Mickey Mouse, or Mickey Mouse(eng. Mickey Mouse “Mickey the Mouse”) is a cartoon character, one of the symbols of The Walt Disney Company and American pop culture in general. Represents an anthropomorphic mouse.

Birthday data is not entirely clear. Mickey's official birthday is November 18, 1928. It was on this day that the cartoon “Steamboat Willie” was shown to the world. Although moviegoers first met Mickey 183 days ago (May 15), when the small silent cartoon “Plane Crazy” was released.

Speaks in a high and thin voice. Until 1947, Walt Disney personally voiced Mickey Mouse; due to a chronic cough due to smoking, he was forced to stop voicing. Disney then assigned the job to Jimmy MacDonald. From 1977 to 2009, Mickey Mouse was voiced by Wayne Allwine.

He often appears in the company of his friend Donald and a dog named Pluto. In addition, Mickey has a girlfriend named Minnie, his younger brother Morty, and aggressive and mischievous nephews Michael and Milo Fieldmouse. Mickey Mouse has been featured in cartoons, comic books, video games, and amusement parks.

Mickey Mouse appeared in 1928 after Walt Disney lost the rights to his first character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The first short animated Mickey Mouse films were drawn by Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney's chief associate. Subsequently, with the growth of popularity, Mickey Mouse began to appear in feature-length cartoons, television, comics and various objects.

Story

The history of Mickey Mouse is very rich, especially its first decades. Its appearance in the late twenties coincided with the advent of many technical innovations in cinema. The very birth of the character is associated with a number of circumstances:

Replacement for Oswald

Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Rabbit, whose rights Walt lost due to lack of due diligence. Oswald the Rabbit was created by Iwerks in early 1927. His works were created by Disney and distributed by Universal Pictures. Within a year, Oswald gained fame and began to generate income.

In February 1928, Walt approached Mintz asking for more funding. However, the company "Universal Pictures" not only reduced the cost of producing the work provided for under the contract, but also lured away some of the artists and animators. In addition, the rights to the character, according to a hastily signed contract, belonged to Universal Pictures, and it could refuse Disney's services, which served as an important argument in the negotiations. Frustrated, Disney decided to start from scratch.

Walt lost most of his animation team. Together with several dedicated employees, including Ub Iwerks and Les Clark, he began working on a new character in secret while the (no longer his) team continued to work on the Oswald Rabbit cartoons. Walt remembered his first failure well and since then has always carefully monitored the observance of copyright on all works.

Birth of a character

Disney biographers have differing opinions regarding the exact timing of Mickey Mouse's creation. Various dates have been put forward from late January to May 21, 1928, when Walt Disney applied for the trademark.

Iwerks said in an interview that he experimented for a long time with other species - a frog, a kitten and a puppy. All were rejected by Walt. Michael Barrier refers the reader to Lillian Disney's memoir, according to which, after some reflection, Disney found the mouse an attractive character. Barrier mentions that several years later Disney stated that the choice of the mouse was due to the fact that the Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City, where he worked in the early twenties, was literally overrun with these rodents, as were the cartoons of that time , and he decided to try to tame one.

1928: First screen appearance

The date of birth of Mickey Mouse is considered to be November 18, 1928, the day of the first showing of “Steamboat Willie” at the Colony Theater in New York. (This cartoon is often called the first talkie, although the earliest ever was an episode of Max Fleischer's Song Car-Tunes, presented in 1924.)

Mickey Mouse was featured in the silent cartoon Plane Crazy, introduced on May 15, 1928. The cartoon was inspired by the exploits of Charles Lindbergh, but was not successful. Despite the failure, Walt released a new cartoon, The Gallopin' Gaucho, at the end of the summer. Problems led to Walt looking for a distributor. Part of the difficulty was due to the similarities with his previous works.

Against expectations, Disney began producing a third film, the silent version of which premiered on July 29, 1928. He realized that his cartoons needed a distinctive feature that would allow them to stand out from the work of competitors and predecessors.

Graphic innovation: white gloves

Typically, Mickey Mouse did not wear white gloves until the release of The Opry House on March 28, 1929. "The Opry House" was the second cartoon of 1929, and from there on the mouse almost always appeared wearing gloves. Supposed [ by whom?] that gloves made it possible to highlight the hands against the background of the body in black and white cartoons (the first color cartoon with Mickey Mouse - “The Band Concert” - was released in 1935). In this cartoon, Mickey appears as a pianist. Three black lines on the back of the glove are folds typical of children's gloves of that time.

1929: Mickey Mouse in various roles

Just a mouse

Video games

Awards

Commercial use

There are a large number of derivative products using the image of Mickey Mouse, and royalties from the use of the image generate significant income for Disney. Since 1930, dolls in the form of Mickey Mouse have been produced.

Copyright

In 1971, a group of American cartoonists led by artist Dan O'Neill (English) Russian and called itself Air Pirates (English) Russian, published two issues of comics, which were parodies of Mickey Mouse and a number of other cartoon characters from The Walt Disney Company. In these stories, O'Neill portrayed Mickey and Minnie having sex and using and dealing drugs. Walt Disney Productions filed a lawsuit against Air Pirates, accusing the group of artists of copyright infringement.

The Walt Disney Company is fighting to maintain copyright protection for the Mickey Mouse image, which was valued at more than $3 billion in 2008. Due to the company's efforts to periodically extend proprietary copyright terms, which resulted in Mickey Mouse never entering the public domain by 2008, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 is sometimes referred to as the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

Censorship

In 1936, cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse were banned from showing in Nazi Germany. Historian Gerhard Weinberg in the book “Germany, Hitler and the Second World War” ( Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History) gives the following explanations: Disney was considered a Jew, Hitler was outraged by the episode in which Mickey was dressed in the uniform of a Prussian officer and the propaganda of the Third Reich called Jews "rats", and the appearance of Mickey could negatively affect the views of the "true Aryans". At the same time, Hitler himself enjoyed watching these cartoons; they also remained popular in the Third Reich. For similar reasons, Mickey Mouse was banned in Fascist Italy (in 1938), in Romania (1935, because the giant mouse could frighten spectators) and in the GDR (as a symbol of the American

Mickey Mouse (Mickey Mouse) is a cartoon character created with the participation of Walt Disney in 1928. Officially, Mickey's first appearance occurs in a cartoon called "Steamboat Willie", although the mouse has already appeared before in the short film "Plane Crazy" ( "Steamboat Willie" was the first cartoon with sound).

Source: Walt Disney short and feature films

Mickey Mouse is a famous cartoon character, one of the symbols of American pop culture. Walt Disney created this character during a train ride and the mouse was originally going to be named Mortimer, but at the insistence of his wife, Walt renamed the mouse Mickey.

Creation

Mickey Mouse's birthday is November 18th. At first, Walt Disney wanted to name the mouse Mortimer, but his wife suggested her own option - Mickey. Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse in his cartoons for a long time.

Comics featuring Mickey first appeared in January 1930. Back then these were still short stories in 3-6 frames.

Mickey Mouse cartoon characters

Mickey Mouse
Donald Duck
Goofy
Pluto
Daisy Duck
Minnie Mouse
Chip and Dale
Pete

Further use

Mickey Mouse is the logo of the Disney corporation. Many Disney films feature the "hidden Mickey" phenomenon - at an unexpected moment, a shadow or some other composition appears in the frame in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head and round ears, a kind of cameo.

The Walt Disney Company is fighting to maintain copyright protection for the image of Mickey Mouse, which in 2008 was valued at more than three billion US dollars. Due to the company's efforts to periodically extend proprietary copyright terms, which resulted in Mickey Mouse not being in the public domain by 2008, the CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act) ) of 1998 is sometimes called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

Mickey Mouse in popular culture

In the Hungarian-German-Canadian full-length animated film “The Cat Trap,” chronology is calculated “from the Christmas of Mickey Mouse.” The main character of the cartoon, Nick Grabovsky, before the events shown in the cartoon, converted to Buddhism and declared himself Mickey Mouse the Thirteenth

The final shots of Full Metal Jacket show a troop marching through the burning ruins of a Vietnamese city, singing the Mickey Mouse Club song: “We play fair, we work hard // And we live together // Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse // We hold our banner high / / Boys and girls, please come to us // Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse"

In the animated series Multireality, Mickey Mouse appears as an evil genius who is going to destroy all politically incorrect cartoons.

In the episode "The Ring" of the animated series "South Park", Mickey Mouse is shown as an evil and enterprising director of the Disney company - he beats his subordinates, takes the main characters hostage and threatens them with violence, believing that they were sent by Dreamworks to disrupt the Jonas Brothers concert.

American artist Dan O'Neil depicted Mickey's varied sex life in a series of comics. The book quickly became a bibliographic rarity.

Mickey Mouse received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the video game Kingdom Hearts, Mickey Mouse is presented as the wizard king, in search of whom the main characters went in search of

On April 16, 2010, a song dedicated to Michael Jackson, but whose hero is Mickey Mouse, premiered on Moscow radio stations. Its creators are the popular Russian group Vintage. The group Zveri also has a song called “Mickey”.