Fascinating unseen sketches of Mickey Mouse have been released by Disney to celebrate 90 years since the late cartoon creator brought him to life.
Exactly 90 years ago this week the world's most famous mouse hit our screens for the first time. In 1928 Mickey, originally known as Mortimer, was black and white and animated using 15,000 drawings that would take between six months and two years to make into a short film.
But nearly a century later from DisneyLand theme parks across the globe, to amazing technicolour film creations, Mickey is a star in his own right and is celebrating a milestone birthday.
The sketches were drawn by Walt Disney himself in the 1920s and 1930s, with some taken from the very first Mickey film Steamboat Willie in 1928 and the first colour film, The Band Concert in 1935.
Mickey was Disney's breakout star but were it not for a contract dispute and an intervention by Walt Disney's wife, he might have been neither mouse nor Mickey.
Happy 90th birthday Mickey! Disney has released a series of original sketches of Mickey Mouse and his cartoon friends to celebrate 90 years of the world's most popular mouse. This sketch was used for the first ever Mickey story to hit the small screen. Steamboat Willie, broadcast in 1928, showed the cheeky mouse chugging down a river on a boat, whistling while he worked, getting into Tom & Jerry-esque mischief with the bear-like Captain Pete, the ship's parrot, and a passing cow. It was an immediate hit and the film catapulted Mickey into the limelight, with similar releases quick to follow
Disney's first standalone character was Oswald The Lucky Rabbit in the 1920s. But in 1928 the rights to the character were taken by Universal Studios, who claimed him for their own.
It was only in response to the row that Mickey came into being. A few tweaks to the Oswald model – an elongated nose, shorter, rounder ears – and Mortimer Mouse was born. But after a frank conversation with his wife Lillian, Disney renamed his creation Mickey.
When he started out each cartoon required 15,000 drawings on some 30 different backgrounds, and took Disney's team of animators anywhere from six months to two years to create. Until 1946, Disney provided Mickey's squeaky, helium-like voice himself, something in which he took great pride.
Their first recorded cartoon was Plane Crazy – an aerial caper featuring loop-the-loops and bloomers used as parachutes – but the first to screen was 1928's Steamboat Willie. It was an immediate hit and the film catapulted Mickey into the limelight, with more releases quickly following.
Right from his opening scenes, Mickey was a mouse with a spouse. Mickey's 90th birthday also marks his and Minnie Mouse's 90th anniversary, and though their marital status has been the source of some speculation, Disney stated that they were wed 'in secret'.
Mickey at 90: This sketch, originally entitled Mickey's Amateur Concert, was drawn in colour by Walt Disney in the 1930s to depict his mouse character hosting an amateur talent show. The writing at the top of the sketch reads: 'Okay, okay the next amateur is... quack quack'
Within a few years of his debut, Mickey-awareness rivalled that of Charlie Chaplin and he was brought to life in colour for the first time in The Band Concert in 1935 using a new, technicolour film process.
But fame can change mice just as much as people, and Mickey's success was so massive that his eccentricities became liabilities.
In order to maintain his appeal, Mickey's negative qualities were stripped away, leaving a mouse so straight-laced and saintly that some argued he had become bland.
In 1949, Disney himself admitted the problem: 'Mickey grew into such a legend that we couldn't gag around with him'.
1934 brought the debut of Mickey's anything-but-bland frenemy Donald Duck, whose hare-brained schemes and boisterous temper tantrums picked up where Mickey left off. Between 1941 and 1965, Donald starred in 109 Disney shorts; Mickey in just 14.
Mickey's filmography dropped off a cliff (1983's A Mickey Christmas Carol would be his first film in 30 years), but he still had an entertainment empire to run.
A sketch shows an original work used to make one of the first Oswald The Lucky Rabbit films for Disney. Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was the Disney studio's character to have his own show, but the rights were taken from Disney in 1928 when Charles Mintz claimed them for Universal Studios. It was then that Mickey Mouse was created by Disney to compete with Universal
He was there to meet and greet visitors at Disneyland's grand opening in 1955, won the hearts of a new generation with his on-and-off children's TV show the Mickey Mouse Club, and built up a 40 per cent share in Disney consumer product sales.
Unsure what to do with him on the silver screen, Disney made Mickey master of ceremonies, family patriarch, and mainstay of merchandising.
By the mid-nineties, Mickey had become a bit of a problem. He was still Disney's prize asset – far too big to be discarded – but it would be a brave executive who tried to modernise or tinker with him.
When Andy Mooney arrived as Disney's head of consumer products in 2003, he couldn't believe how little the company was using the face of their franchise. 'Mickey is our swoosh', he remarked, referring to the omnipresent tick that Nike use.
With the aim of making Mickey cool again, he appeared in 3D in the video game series Kingdom Hearts.
Who's there! Mickey is pictured holding a torch in a sketch for the 1930 Disney animated film The Gorilla Mystery, where an ape escapes from a zoo and captures Mickey's girlfriend Minnie Mouse. After a long chase, Mickey finally captures the ape
A giant graffiti mural of the mouse also appeared on the corner of Sunset boulevard and the drive for merchandise was vamped up.
T-shirts made up the thrust of the campaign, and Mickey appeared splashed across the chests of Jennifer Aniston, Avril Lavigne, Lenny Kravitz, and Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex And The City.
The result was a Mickey for a new age. Though still the smiling face that meets visitors at the gates of Disneyland, the release of video game Epic Mickey in 2009 brought a darker, moodier Mickey, who could be cantankerous and calculating. The game initially received average reviews, but has since gained a sequel and a cult following.
Mickey may have begun life just as a mouse, but for some, he symbolised the American dream.
He rose from the ashes of the Great Depression and Walt Disney had endured years of rejections and bankruptcy before striking mouse-shaped gold.
'If you can dream it, you can do it' he said famously, and Mickey was the embodiment of this optimism.
This black and white sketch shows a new look Mickey starring in the Nifty Nineties (1941). He was given a new look by Fred Moore. The short film, which was eventually produced in colour, tells the love story between Mickey and girlfriend Minnie
The man behind the magic: Who was Walt Disney?
Walt Disney (1901 - 1966) is pictured surrounded by his cartoon creations from Mickey Mouse to Bambi
The name Disney is known the world over for being the source of millions of people’s childhood fantasies.
But not all Disney fans know about the man behind the name.
Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, USA, and went on to become one of the greatest animators on earth.
His father Elias Disney was Irish-Canadian and his mother Flora Call Disney was German American, he had three brothers and a sister.
He grew up in Marceline, Missouri where he developed a love of art from an early age, often selling drawings and paintings to neighbours, family and friends.
He went to McKinley High School in Chicago where he took up drawing and photography classes and drew cartoons for the student newspaper.
Obsessed with art he took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute, dropping out of school to join the Army at 16 – only to get rejected for being underage.
He joined the Red Cross instead and went to live in France for a year to work as an ambulance driver, returning to the US in 1919.
He moved to Kansas City where he dreamed of a career as a newspaper artist.
His brother Roy got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met Ubbe Eert Iwwerks, better known as Ub Iwerks, a well-known cartoonist.
He did a stint working at the Kansas City Film Ad Company where he worked on cut-out animation for commercials.
He started experimenting with camera and hand-drawn animation before he decided to go it alone and start his own business.
Fred Harman was his first employee and together they struck up a deal with the local Kansas City theatre to screen their cartoons, which they called Laugh-O-Grams.
The short films were so popular they made their own studio, calling it Laugh-O-Gram they hired Harman’s brother Hugh and Iwerks from his earlier career.
But in 1923 the studio had accumulated piles of debt and Disney was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Despite the country facing the impending doom of the Great Depression, Disney and his brother pooled their money together and moved to Hollywood with Iwerks.
There they founded the Disney Brothers’ Studio. It was then they were able to create characters like Oswald The Lucky Rabbit and a series of seven films called Alice in Cartoonland.
In 1928 Charles Mintz of Universal Studios stole the rights to Oswald, leaving Disney without a star character.
He quickly developed the character Mortimer the Mouse, which his wife Lillian, who he had married three years earlier after hiring her as an artist, advised him should be renamed Mickey.
Mickey’s first film was Steamboat Willie in 1928, which due to the mouse’s popularity, was quickly followed by others.
Mickey was brought to life in colour for the first time in 1935 in the short film The Band Concert.
Technicolour film production was used to make the colour cartoon, which Disney resisted at first, but eventually grew to love.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Disney brought several more characters to life, including Mickey’s girlfriend Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto, Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo.
In July 1955 Disney’s success grew with the opening of the first $17million theme park in California.
President Ronald Reagan visited on opening day and the site soon became popular with families as the place they could imagine their favourite Disney films coming to life.
Since then DisneyLands have opened in Florida, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong – with the latest opening in Shanghai in June 2016.
Industry experts and historians have repeatedly claimed Walt Disney was racist and anti-Semitic but these claims have been disputed by all those who knew him.
Within years of opening the California theme park, Disney was already dreaming up another one in Florida.
But he died of lung cancer in December 1966 at the age of 65 – before it could come to fruition.
Five years after his death his brother oversaw the launch of the Florida theme park Walt had dreamed of – under the name Walt Disney World.
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News Pictures Mickey Mouse is 90-years-old unseen Walt Disney sketches released for character's birthday
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kim cattrall
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