THEY MADE EACH OTHER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20014, 23 January 1935, Page 10

THEY MADE EACH OTHER

WALT DISNEY AND MICKEY MOUSE HARD STRUGGLE TO FAME Walt Disney is thirty-two. People will tell you that Mickey Mouse was born nearly a quarter of a century later, but their calculation is too superficial to be worth very much. When Disney’s biography comes to be written the fact will emerge that he was born with his characters and grew up with them, like every other great artist in history (says Tangye Lean in the “News-Chronicle”). In the early days of his childhood his family deserted the roaring city of Chicago, which had failed to bless them with riches, and retired to a farm in Missouri. There were pigs and cows and rabbits on the farm; it was overrun by ants and rats and grasshoppers. Sometimes a skunk came crawling furtively round the barn in search of mice. Young Disney pursued it in fury. The smell was a horror, and for obscure reasons he disapproved quite as strongly of its passion for consuming mice. He grew out of childhood at the age of nine—he was forced out of it artificially by the necessity of earning his own living. He went back to the city. His parents had worked and failed; they were entitled to their escape. But for him the grim and patternless fight with reality was to come.

He sold newspapers in Kansas City, getting out of bed at half-past three in the morning. He tried the variety stage and conjuring, and failed at both. He worked as a Post Office messenger in in the daytime and a pillar box collector at night. He sold sweets and magazines and apples to people travelling by train to Chicago. For a year he drove an ambulance in Flanders. All this time something was pushing him on to spend every spare moment at drawing. It may have been the creative impulse of the artist, or it may have been an ineradicable desire to force his ugly life into the pattern and colour which had gone from it with childhood. Perhaps, for that matter, the two things are the same. His luck was bad. He got a job with an advertising company which specialised in farm work, and was happy drawing cows and jolly farmers at £lO a month. But he was fired and had to go back to the Post Office rounds. Eventually he was granted a precarious job in a newspaper office, and there an important thing happened to him. One night as he sat working at his desk, he heard a faint scratching sound and a high-pitched squeak. He shuffled his foot, and everything was quiet. But in that moment memories of the f*rm at Missouri with its skunks and mice came flooding over him. In an effort to recapture them more permanently, he set about catching those mice, and soon had a minor zoo imprisoned in his inverted wastepaper-basket. For days and weeks he used to watch their antics.

It would be foolish to try to analyse the birth of Disney’s idea in any detail. He had always been attracted by the cinema, and there was nothing surprising in the particular line along which his thoughts were to run. About that time A 1 Jolson was howling his plaintive notes at a world whose critical faculties were momentarily struck dumb by the novelty of a brand new medium. Theorists might have pointed out that here was the supreme chance for a man who could create an art within an art. For every branch of art has so far given rise to an “escape art” within itself, a world where the ugly daughter becomes the beautiful princess and the villain is treated according to his merits, Such things scarcely ever happen in the real world, and if they sometimes happen in novels and plays there is reason to suspect that they are bad. But the fairy tale and the ballet are things apart. There the universe would crack if the villain came out on top or the heroine lived as miserably in eternity as she did in the beginning. Perhaps the theorists said all this at the time; but Disney, because he was an artist, and because his whole life had been formed by Providence for this moment, put it into practice. Luck still avoided him. Against heavy financial odds he had already succeeded in making several silent cartoons. But they were failures, and it was not until 1929 that Mickey Mouse, articulate at last, won the enthusiasm of the world.

Six years have passed, and in that time Mickey Mouse has soared to fame on a scale that history has never known before. Hitler is a nonentity compared to him. He receives nearly a million letters every year. Statues have been erected to him, and his portrait hangs in one of the most famous art galleries of America.

What is the secret of his popularity? Partly, no doubt, that he is brilliantly drawn and even more brilliantly accompanied by sound effects ranging from a thunderous orchestral crescendo to the villainous ping of a mosquito. What struck critics from the very beginning was that because synchronisation was so perfect and the visible movements of the characters cut down to their essentials, a sense of reality greater even than the ordinary talkie could be obtained. There is infinitely more “kick” in a piano solo played by him than in the performance of the most skilfull jazz pianist in the world. But there are deeper reasons for our love of Mickey Mouse than mere admiration of the drawing and music. He performs the very important function of fulfilling our private wishes. For he holds the unique position in the world of being both physically and intellectually perfect. He can jump over a mountain as easily as we ourselves can in a dream, or he can plan a battle campaign with a strategic perfection which would have been the envy of Napoleon. He may make an occasional mistake, but you can rely on him coming out victorious in the end. Pluto, his dog, plays the role of an ordinary human being by his side, and what a show-up of the ordinary human being it is, what a display of bright ideas that are really stupid and of blind fidelities that wrap him up in trouble. Mickey, the superman, smiles and whistles his way through life. Pluto, who stands for you and me, crawls grovelling behind. As we watch we join in Mickey’s laughter, and, forgetting our relationship to his companion, we are for a few minutes released from our imperfections and at one with the gods. A shilling or two is a small price to

pay for a privilege which is hard to come by at a time when opium is banned and drunkenness unrespectable. The fact is that it would be highly surprising if Mickey Mouse had failed to make Walt Disney famous.

“Stamboul Quest” Myrna Loy and George Brent appear together for the first time as a romantic team in an intriguing and exciting tale of international espionage in “Stamboul Quest,” a Metro-Gold wyn-Mayer production. This newest film shows Miss Loy at her best and proves that she can carry a picture alone without the aid of a star or two, as she has always done in the past. As Fraulein Doktor, whose existence is known to only one man, Myrna Loy sets out to trap the Turkish general, Ali Bey, who is suspected of selling military secrets to the enemy. But before she accomplishes her mission in the Dardanelles she is continually hounded by a love-smitten and reckless young American, whose antics only serve to complicate matters. As Beall, George Brent shines in his finest performance in his brief screen career. C. Henry Gordon takes care of the skulduggery with the role of Ali Bey, his performance comparable to his memorable work with Greta Garbo in “Mata Hari.” Lionel Atwill takes care of the character of Sturm, chief of the secret service, and the one person who knows whether or not “Fraulein Doktor” is a myth.

‘Twenty Million Sweethearts’

Simply because a man is alleged to have twenty million sweethearts, it does not follow that he is an out-and-out flirt. One may think so, but if one sees Warner Brothers’ delightful comedy romance one will find out that the man with so many attachments may really be true to one only. In this exceptionally entertaining film, the audience is introduced to a “gogetting” publicity man, a promising vocalist, a radio girl, business men and the well-known Four Mills Brothers, all of whom are merrily mixed up in a romance that was almost shattered through too much publicity. The showgoes with a great swing fom start to finish. Many of the scenes take place within the walls of a New York broadcasting station, and are of more than passing interests Richard Powell, young and enthusiastic, and in excellent voice, is the hero, who is the radio sweetheart of the twenty million radio listeners. Ginger Rogers, more charm-

ing than ever, is the other part of the love element, Pet O’Brien is at his cheekiest as the publicity man, and brilliant character acting is displayed by Joseph Cawthorne, Grant Mitchell, Johnny Arthur, and Allen Jenkins. The music is supplied by Ted Fio Rito and his band. The song hits, especially “You May Not Be An Angel (I’ll String Along With You),” and “Out for no Good,” are bound to be great hits. "Human Bondage” R.K.O. Radio Pictures have scheduled four features for early release, headed by “Of Human Bondage.” This production is an adaptation of the classic Somerset Maugham novel, starring Leslie Howard.

New Type of Romance in Film

Romance with a new flavour is provided by a type of leading man new to the screen in ‘‘Mala the Magnificent,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s drama of the Arctic, filmed during the year’s stay of the studio’s polar expedition in the Far North. This leading man, who has become a sensation as the result of the picture, is Mala, who heads the native cast seen in the thriller. Tall and handsome, the swarthy son of the icelands has the features of a bronze statue. A great hunter and tribal leader, he stages the thrills of polar bear and walrus capture, the fight with the wolf, and such astounding action perfectly naturally—it is only what he has done all his life. Mala was bom at Candle, Alaska, and as a child of seven first learned to hunt wild foxes with his grandmother, then 100 years old, who used to capture the animals for their furs. Mala says that he has seen her kill a fox with her bare hands. She froze to death in a blizzard.

“Directors much prefer the less attractive girl because she thinks about her part and not her appearance. Although,” he added, “personality is still in demand.”

“Splendid Fellows” The cargo steamer City of Bedford, of the Hall Line, on its maiden voyage to Australia, was generously loaned by the directors of the company to Mr Beaumont Smith for the incidents which the story of “Splendid Fellows” demanded should be portrayed on the high seas. When young Montmorency Ralston, son of an English lord, was summarily shipped to Australia for having an entanglement with an actress, taking his valet with him, the voyage from England provided a great deal of the comedy of the picture. Frank Leighton and Leo Franklyn in the respective roles actually spent a whole day at sea, on the rolling main, whilst these sequences were truthfully recorded. One can appreciate the extent of the steamship owners’ magnanimity when we take into consideration that to send the ship out to sea even for one day entailed heavy expense. There are 89 in the crew and each man performed a good day’s work. The result is intense realism.

Major Role for Colin Tapley Colin Tapley, New Zealand winner of Paramount’s world-wide Search for Beauty” contest, has been awarded a role of major importance m Paramount’s forthcoming “Lives of a Bengal Lancer.”

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