Eighty years ago, a small rodent steamed onto the silver screen and
took over the cinematic world. You might even say he was the Mouse that
roared.
November 18, 1928 was the date “Steamboat Willie,” starring a new
animated character named Mickey Mouse, made its theatrical debut. It
wasn’t the first Mickey short Walt Disney, his brother Roy and their
soon-to-be legendary team of Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harmon, Rudolf Ising and
Friz Freling created. The first was called “Plane Crazy,” and was
produced May that year. The problem was no distributor picked it up, or
its sequel, “The Galloping Gaucho.”
It wasn’t even the first cartoon Disney and company ever did. Disney,
Iwerks and Harmon worked on three series of shorts “Newman’s
Laugh-Grams,” “Alice In Cartoonland,” and “Oswald The Lucky Rabbit,”
before then.
It wasn’t even the first cartoon to feature sound. According to many sources, just go to the Wiki or check out Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice & Magic, that honor belongs to Max and Dave Fleischer. Their “Phonofilms” series way back in 1924 (three years before Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer!).
Mickey didn’t even say a proper word throughout the entire short. He
mainly whistled, spat, got his tail handed to him by an old Alice
character named Black Pete and played a tune on a goat for Minnie. His
first words would come a year later, in the short “Karnival Kid.” He
would be voiced by no less than Walt himself, a job Disney kept until
1946.
The Mouse’s original name wasn’t even Mickey. It was Mortimer.
According to Maltin, the name change happened when Disney’s wife
Lillian suggested it.
Yet there were more than a couple things going for Walt. First of all,
even though Ub Iwerks is now credited with designing the Mouse, one
should not knock Disney’s own talents. Walt was an illustrator himself,
but he was also a great storyman. As renown animation historian and L.A. Times critic Charles Solomon once said, “Ub designed Mickey's physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul.”
It didn’t hurt that Disney was an independent studio, either. This gave
him room to experiment, refine and actually charge theaters for his
shorts, a rarity back in the day. Disney, after nearly a decade in the
business, had also learned his lessons well from his predecessors;
among them Pat Sullivan/Otto Messmer (Felix The Cat), the Fleischers
(Out of the Inkwell) and Paul Terry (Farmer Al Falfa).
Another thing about Disney that set him apart was he probably was the
first to realize that to truly succeed in animation, one needed to
become a master of three different disciplines; art, finance and
technology. For instance, when “Steamboat Willie,” which was a parody
of a Buster Keaton short entitled “Steamboat Bill Jr,” Disney
immediately pulled “Plane Crazy” and “Galloping Gaucho” out of the
vaults and added sound to them, re-releasing them that December. One
thing Disney picked up from Sullivan was he also struck a number of
licensing deals, and soon Mickey stuffed and action figures, coloring
books and the immortal wrist watches were national obsessions.
On the technological front, “Willie” was the first animated short to
ever use a click track, thus giving Disney a serious edge over the
Fleischers. His sounds actually synched to the action going on the
screen, making Mickey and Minnie’s actions a lot more believable. Most
important, Disney kept plowing money back into the firm, constantly
refining the art aspects. In fact, when he started losing his original
crew to deals that were far more lucrative (to them anyway), he set up
his own school begetting his equally legendary Nine Old Men.
One could also say that Disney also benefited from the times. Jolson’s Jazz Singer
made theater owners realize “talking” motion pictures were a great way
to bring in an audience. There just weren’t that many theaters capable
of handling the Fleischers’ works when they first came out. In other
words, one could say that if Walt didn’t take advantage of the
situation, someone else with equal talent would have, sooner or later.
The thing is, Disney had the talent; as an artist, technician and businessman.
Disney would soon populate Mickey, Minnie and Pete (every good hero
deserves a good villain) with a crew of equally memorable characters.
It wasn’t long before Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto would spin off into
their own shorts, further expanding the reach of the rapidly growing
Disney empire. The innovations didn’t stop there. Another key hire
Disney made was music arranger Carl Stallings. When Disney realized
that the audience loved the music in those shorts, he ordered Stallings
and Iwerks to create a new series of shorts entitled “Silly
Symphonies.” Their first effort, the very spooky “Skeleton Dance” would
again make humongous waves.
Disney and Mickey would dominate the theaters for nearly the next
decade, until the Fleischers finally came up with the first true
animated superhero, Popeye. Disney’s dominance of the Oscars would last
even longer, until two Harman-Ising proteges, Bill Hanna and Joe
Barbera, created a cat-and-mouse team called Tom & Jerry. Finally,
as Mickey’s more ornery aspects were processed out of his character,
one gray hair named Bugs appeared and took that element to all new
levels.
Most historians say Mickey’s supremacy of the theatrical short lasted
until 1937. Then again, by anyone’s standards, an eight year run is one
heck of an accomplishment, especially in Hollywood. Besides, Disney had
bigger fish to fry. His and Roy’s Walt Disney Productions were on the
verge of blowing everyone’s minds again. They were putting the
finishing touches on the first American feature-length film, Snow White.
Not that the Mick would ever fade into the background. Basically, as
the years passed, he would become targeted to younger and younger
audiences. Walt had actually set up a Mickey Mouse Club back in the
early 1930s, and used that incredible fanship to launch a TV series
back in 1955. Again, Mick would introduce kids to a number of other
successful spin-offs, among them the TV series Hardy Boys and Spin & Marty.
It would also launch the career of 60s bikini movie star Annette
Funicello. A later incarnation of the series included such young talent
as Britney Spears, Christina Aguillera and Justin Timberlake.
Mickey is still on the air today, now the host of a very pre-school oriented show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the Disney Channel.
So was Mickey the most original character to ever enter the world of
cinema? Obviously no. At the same time, try to now imagine how
different animation would have been without him or his creator, Walt
Disney. Say what you will, but without the Mouse, future groundbreaking
work such as Fantasia, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and even Toy Story would probably be very different beasts, if they were to exist at all.
That he “officially” turns 80 today is something all animation fans, and quite frankly all film fans, should truly celebrate.
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Meet the Flintstones... Again...CARTOON NETWORK PROMOTES NATHANIA SEALES
Nathania Seales has been promoted to vice president of production for
Cartoon Network On-Air, it was announced by Michael Ouweleen, senior
vice president and creative director, on-air, a division of the
marketing group for Cartoon Network. Formerly senior director of on-air
production, Seales will oversee production of on-air promotions,
program production, ad-supported/sponsored promotions and branding
material for Cartoon Network and Boomerang. She will continue to manage
the assignment of projects and budget allocations to partnering
production companies, writers, animation and live-action producers and
on-air talent. Seales also will liaise with network programming,
marketing and ad-sales groups to recommend on-air responses to multiple
network initiatives. Seales is based in Atlanta and reports directly to
Ouweleen.
"Nathania is not only a great producer herself, but she is a great
manager of her people," said Ouweleen. "She creates a 'can do' culture
among her group, inspiring her producers always to rise to the challenge
of supporting ambitious creative and finding ways to make the impossible possible."
Prior to joining Cartoon Network in 2003, Seales served as a senior
producer at SpiralWest, Inc., a boutique Web design agency that
specialized in Web site redesign, Flash games to CD-ROM and print work
for such clients as Intel, Lucent Technologies and Century Theatres.
There,Seales was responsible for primary client interaction, creative
development and internal team management as well as coordination of
project flow, scheduling and budget projections. Before that, she was a
script/recording supervisor at Wild Brain, Inc. where she oversaw
script and recording of 26 episodes of Poochini's Yard, the first original animated series for the San Francisco-based production company.
In 1999, Seales served as post-production supervisor at Sony Pictures
Entertainment where she helped set up the in-house post-graphics online
operation at the studio. Her projects included supervising 67 episodes
of the animated series Jumanji, Men in Black and Godzilla.
Prior to this, Seales was a recording supervisor and post production
manager at Universal Cartoon Studios, assigned to manage two 26-episode
seasons of Casper, a #1-rated Saturday morning show on Fox Television.
Seales earned a bachelor's degree in telecommunications with a minor in
creative writing from Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.
SHIPPUDEN GOING ONLINE THIS JANUARY
Viz Media announced that English-subtitled versions of Naruto: Shippuden will start going online starting January 15.
As hardcore noodle-head fans know, Shippuden is the sequel
to the original series, featuring the kid ninjas of the original
series, only three years only. It’s creating a ton of buzz already
thanks to pirates.
The series will air on the website www.naruto.com. New episodes will then be added every Thursday.
NEXT COLUMN: We next look at Disney’s latest project, the film Bolt.
