Walt and Mickey: 'It Was All Started by a Mouse'

Walt Disney, looking back on a career by that time chock-full of success, glory, and fame, said, “It was all started by a mouse.” And today is the 97th birthday of that mouse, whom we know as Mickey.

On Nov. 18, 1928, the first sound cartoon, “Steamboat Willie,” premiered, featuring a new star — Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney and his studio had a lot of firsts during his career, including the first sound cartoon, the first color cartoon, the first animated feature film, the first major theme park, and the first black male star to win an Oscar. Walt won more Academy Awards himself (22) than any other individual in history and invented multiple new types of entertainment. But it all began that winter day in 1928 with the debut of the scrappy little Everyman, “Mickey Mouse.”

Walt Disney recalled in an interview years later, “I was in New York at the time. I'd been producing a series of pictures for a company there, they were about a rabbit called Oswald, but I lost that. They took it away from me, so I was all alone and had nothing.” Never a good businessman — his brother Roy later took charge of the finances — Walt found he’d inadvertently signed away both his character and his animators. It was one of several times Walt went broke.

Continuing the Mickey origin story, Walt remembered, “And Mrs. Disney and I were coming back from New York on the train, and I had to have something. I said, ‘by the time we get to Hollywood, I must have something to — I can't tell [my boys] I've lost Oswald.’ So I had this mouse in the back of my head, because a mouse is sort of a sympathetic character, in spite of the fact that everybody's frightened of a mouse, including myself.”

It’s rather amusing that Walt admitted to being afraid of mice, because when he was just starting out in animation, he had a pet mouse named Mortimer. Perhaps he had overcome his fear through Mortimer and wanted other people to have the same experience. Certainly, Walt originally wanted to name his new animated character after his real-life pet, as he once explained:

I’d always fooled around a lot with little mice, and they were always cute characters. And so I decided [the new character] would be a mouse. Then the name came. I had it Mortimer first, and my wife shook her head, and then I tried Mickey and she nodded the other way and that was it.

For which I think we all owe a debt to Lillian Disney, because Mickey is a lot catchier and cuter than Mortimer.

Now Walt had a star, but no stories. His first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, starting with “Plane Crazy,” were turned down by everyone. Walt was enthralled by the first “talkie” movie, The Jazz Singer, in 1927, and it gave him an idea. Suppose he could do to a cartoon what Al Jolson had done to live movies? What if he could make Mickey talk and play music?

Walt’s test audience for his cartoon, which he named “Steamboat Willie” after the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr., was delighted. Walt was sure he had a success on his hands. Phil Gramlich, an author who has interviewed multiple people who worked for Walt, explains how the movie industry almost passed on the first sound cartoon:

In the fall of 1928, Walt Disney showed "Steamboat Willie", complete with perfectly synchronized sound and music (a first for cartoons), to film distributors in New York City who were looking for a new animated series to show before first-run films in theaters across America. Walt went into that screening with absolute confidence. Mickey Mouse and "Steamboat Willie", sound and all, fell on deaf ears. The distributors said Mickey was just Oswald with rounded ears, and the synchronized sound was not enough of a draw. Not one distributor showed any interest.

Fortunately, one man was willing to take a chance on the cartoon — movie promoter Harry Reichenbach, who was managing the Colony Theater and was famous for his outrageous publicity stunts. Reichenbach agreed with Walt on “Steamboat Willie’s” revolutionary genius, and he said movie distributors never knew how much the public would like something until the public told them.

So on Nov. 18, 1928, “Steamboat Willie” played before the gangster film “Gang War” in the Colony Theater. It featured Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse using odds and ends and other animals as instruments for an impromptu musical interlude on deck despite the angry Captain Pete. The audience gave the cartoon a standing ovation. The public knew what movie distributors didn’t.

Soon, the sensational sound cartoon caught the attention of the press, and moviegoers were flocking to see it. The BBC says that some audiences would loudly demand the delay of feature films so they could re-watch Mickey’s cartoon. Walt Disney skyrocketed to fame. Carl Stalling provided Mickey’s first spoken words in “The Karnival Kid,” but Walt himself quickly took over voicing his creation, giving him that distinctive, high, squeaky voice that we know so well. Animation would never be the same.