"MICKY MOUSE"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21456, 1 April 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

"MICKY MOUSE"

THE CHARM OF FANTASY A STRUGGLE FOR SUCCESS Back in 1920 an obscure young artist named Walt Disney was working on the night shift of a commercial art studio in on© of the mid-western cities of the United States. About midnight he would hear a scratching against the metal wires of the waste-baskets, where the girl clerks had thrown their lunch boxes. The mico were having their buffet supper. The young man was fascinated by their antics. He cultivated their friendship, adopted a family of ten in a cage, and even tamed one so that it sat on his drawing board. This young artist now owns a vast Hollywood film studio, believed to be the largest sound-cartoon plant in tho world, situated on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It bears an electric sign with the young man's name in gigantic letters, and over the sign is the figure of a mouse with his hands outstretched as' though to bid you welcome. Mickey Mouse was born in a train between New York and Hollywood, but to trace his conception it is necessary to go right back to Disney's childhood, when there grew in young .Walter an intense love of all animals. After the war Walt and his brother Roy were seized with the idea of making movie cartoons in a tiny empty store room. The chief character in the cartoons was a child actress who played with cartoon animals, swam in cartoon water, and ate cartoon food.

Walt wrote the scenarios, drew the cartoons and built the sets. He pounded in nails, laid floors, and went homo night after night dog tired. He directed the pictures, and acted any part that was going begging. Walt drew all the 1500 drawings which made up the cartoons. Success came. Walt Disney was given a contract to produce a series. Another studio invited him to draw cartoons with a rabbit as the chief character. Ho consented, although he felt that something not quite so meek and mild as a rabbit would be better.

This was the beginning of the Oswald films, of which he eventually produced 26. For three years Walt Disney laboured with Oswald. He moved to a larger room, and his staff grew to a dozen. Walt still drew and wrote and laboured. But his heart wasn't in it; sometimes Oswald could be pretty much of a dumb animal.

All the time in the back of Walt Disney's mind there lurked the tiny germ of an idea. But it grew and grew and grew, and finally arrived—a mouse! A little, romping, rollicking mouse. The idea engulfed him. Disney remembered the mice that had so interested him in the art studio in 1920. Mice, he decided, were tiny and cute, and for ever up to some scrt of prank. A mouse was a grand hero.

His first name was originally to be Mortimer, but Disney decided that that was too unwieldy. Mickey was better. Mickey it became. Up in the loft of a private garage Walt, Roy and a group of faithful workers drew and copied and toiled and finally brought into the world the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Mickey was ready for a waiting world. But a waiting world was past being ready for Mickey. Sound had come in, but the poor little mouse of Disney's cartoons could not even squeak. Here was a set-back—the problem of how to get sound into Mickey. Walt Disney actually went round Hollywood begging for sound, but no one would even look at Mickey. After weeks and weeks of discouragements he arranged through an independent company in New York to add sound to Mickey. Yet still no one wanted the cartoons.

A year later every studio was to bid frantically for Mickey, but at the moment they were too busy with musical comedies and variety acts. Then one day Walt succeeded in placing Mickey Mouse in the tiny Colony Theatre in New York. The film was such a huge success that in a few days it was playing to tremendous applause in New York's largest cinema—the Roxy, Mickey Mouse had arrived.

To-day there is a lot of hand-wringing by the people who turned down Mickey, for no star in pictures ever had the worldwide appeal of the cheerful little comic.

More than 1,000,000 American children belong to Mickey Mouse clubs, and similar clubs are being started in England. Mickey receives more than 8000 fan letters every week. And a hundred manufacturers all over the world have licences from Walt Disney to manufacture Micky Mouse novelties. His latest idea, which he has worked out to a brilliant consummation, is the production of silly symphonies in colour. Disney is always a step ahead of the other fellow. All the most famous fantasies of the world, in any language, are ideally within the scope of Disney's pen and camera. The screen, with its cartoon films, is the modern medium of the fairy tale, a medium which brings it almost simultaneously to millions of people the world over. The fantastic things, growing " curiouser and curiouser," which Lewis Carroll's Alice found in her Wonderland find their modern counterpart in Disney's trees which sing; pianos which danco, grimace, and bite their players; buildings which acquire legs; fish which do their daily dozen; and mice which perform without a blush the most impossible impertinences. The world, which never tires of makebelieve, owes a deep debt of gratitude to the fun-making Mickey, to the silly symphonies, and especially to Walt Disney, their modest young creator.