The Birth of a Mouse

"He popped out of my mind onto a cartoon pad twenty years agone on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when the business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb, and disaster seemed correct around the corner," Walt penned in a 1948 essay titled "What Mickey Means to Me." The disaster Walt mentioned was the brazen theft of both his successful cartoon grapheme Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, equally well as most of the Disney artists, at the hands of Universal distributor Charles Mintz. As for who popped out of Walt'due south mind? Why, that was Mickey Mouse!

Just before Walt left New York for the cross-country railroad train ride back to Hollywood, he sent his blood brother Roy a telegram. Nowhere in it did he outline the possible career-catastrophe blow he and his blood brother had just sustained. He but indicated when he would arrive dwelling, and took care to add, "Don't worry everything OK," to ease his brother's nerves. Everything was not okay. Walt knew he had to come up with a new character, and fast. Walt's girl Diane Disney Miller recalled, "It was on that long railroad train ride that dad conceived of a new cartoon bailiwick, a mouse who was then refined and further adult by Ub Iwerks, and given his proper name past my mother."

The first Mickey Mouse cartoon really completed was Plane Crazy. Inspired past Charles Lindbergh's heroic kickoff solo flight across the Atlantic, its plot entailed Mickey and some fauna friends attempting to get together their own airplane. The cartoon premiered in Hollywood on May 15, 1928, in the form of a exam screening. It failed to obtain distribution. The second Mickey Mouse drawing, The Gallopin' Gaucho, met with the same fate. One unpleasant distributor even told Walt, "They don't know you and they don't know your mouse."

The third fourth dimension was the charm for Mickey, even so, when Steamboat Willie premiered on November xviii, 1928, in New York'southward Colony Theatre. It was one of the very offset cartoons to ever successfully apply synchronized audio, and was so popular, it was talked about more than than the feature film it was meant to merely compliment. Walt received $one,000 for a ii-calendar week run—the highest sum e'er paid for a drawing on Broadway. Walt Disney Studios, with its small merely loyal staff, was saved, and a cartoon star was born.

But, when was he born?

Oddly enough, Mickey'south "official" birthday changed dates seemingly every twelvemonth for decades following 1928. In 1933, Walt himself proclaimed, "Mickey Mouse volition be v years old on Sun. He was born on October 1, 1928. That was the date on which his beginning picture was started, so we have allowed him to claim this day as his birthday." That engagement wouldn't concluding. Ranging from late September to December, Mickey's birthday was oftentimes contradistinct to conform to specific promotions. It wasn't until 1978 that Dave Smith, the founder of the Disney Athenaeum, adamant that the premiere of Steamboat Willie was truly Mickey Mouse's beginning public appearance, therefore his date of birth.

This of course makes November 18, 1928 Minnie Mouse'due south birthday too, as she was at that place hurrying along the banks of the river trying to grab Pegleg Pete's steamboat. E'er resourceful, Mickey found a way to get her aboard even later on the boat had departed. The two realized an instant connexion, and the rest, every bit they say, is history.

Happy birthday Minnie. And happy birthday, Mickey!

Keith Gluck is a WDFM volunteer, author/editor for thedisneyproject.com, a Disney fan site. His Disney life started early on, visiting Disneyland before turning one, and writing his very first volume report on a Walt Disney biography for kids.