Project MUSE - A Mickey Mouse Reader
A Mickey Mouse Reader
edited by Garry Apgar
Publication Year: 2014
Ranging from the playful, to the fact-filled, and to the thoughtful, this collection tracks the fortunes of Walt Disney’s flagship character. From the first full-fledged review of his screen debut in November 1928 to the present day, Mickey Mouse has won millions of fans and charmed even the harshest of critics. Almost half of the eighty-one texts in A Mickey Mouse Reader document the Mouse’s rise to glory from that first cartoon, Steamboat Willie, through his seventh year when his first color animation, The Band Concert, was released. They include two important early critiques, one by the American culture critic Gilbert Seldes and one by the famed English novelist E. M. Forster.
Articles and essays chronicle the continued rise of Mickey Mouse to the rank of true icon. He remains arguably the most vivid graphic expression to date of key traits of the American character—pluck, cheerfulness, innocence, energy, and fidelity to family and friends. Among press reports in the book is one from June 1944 that puts to rest the urban legend that “Mickey Mouse” was a password or code word on D-Day. It was, however, the password for a major pre-invasion briefing.
Other items illuminate the origins of “Mickey Mouse” as a term for things deemed petty or unsophisticated. One piece explains how Walt and brother Roy Disney, almost single-handedly, invented the strategy of corporate synergy by tagging sales of Mickey Mouse toys and goods to the release of Mickey’s latest cartoons shorts. In two especially interesting essays, Maurice Sendak and John Updike look back over the years and give their personal reflections on the character they loved as boys growing up in the 1930s.
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pp. xvii-2
Born in Chicago in 1901, raised in rural Missouri and Kansas City, Walter Elias Disney was a child of the new century, a son of the Heartland. Never a stranger to hard work, as a boy, Walt delivered papers—morning and evening—, sold refreshments on passenger trains, and dreamed...
1. The Early Years, 1928–1931
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pp. 3-5
In March 1927, Universal Pictures hired Walt Disney to produce Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Five months later, in a squib labeled “Short Subjects,” the trade paper Film Daily termed the feature “a riot.” Despite Oswald’s success, however, when Walt’s contract came up for review, he was offered a reduction in...
Steamboat Willie
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pp. 6-6
Not the first animated cartoon to be synchronized with sound effects but the first to attract favorable attention. This one represents a high order of cartoon ingenuity cleverly combined with sound effects. The union brought forth gags galore. Giggles came so fast at the Colony...
"Steamboat Billie" / Walt Disney Cartoon / Real Entertainment
Film Daily
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pp. 7-7
This is what “Steamboat Willie” has: First, a clever and amusing treatment; secondly, music and sound effects added via the Cinephone method. The result is a real tidbit of diversion. A maximum has been gotten from the sound effects. Worthy of bookings in any house wired...
The Barn Dance / Draughtsman . . . Walt Disney
London Film Society
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pp. 8-8
The Mickey Mouse series of films presents a model of synchronisation. It consists of animated cartoons, of that kind of which Mutt and Jeff, The Katzenjammer Kiddies (renamed during the war The Prohibition Children) and Æsop’s Fables were among the earliest examples and of...
Mickey Mouse
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pp. 9-11
To my mind, Walt Disney’s cartoons of Mickey Mouse are the most imaginative, witty, and satisfying productions that can be found in the modern cinema. It is surely beside the point to argue that cartoon is not, and never can be, the highest form of expression in any medium...
The Cinema (excerpt)
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pp. 12-14
Today, 15 December 1929, Jazz can, without fear of inciting laughter among those who will leaf through its pages in 1960, proclaim the following: “Technically perfect sound films are now being shown in the cinema.”...
An International Language: The Animated Cartoon (excerpt)
Maurice Bessy
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pp. 15-16
It seems that everything has been said already about the marvelous “talkartoons” which have, no doubt, converted more people to talking pictures than either Trois Masques or Broadway Melody.
Miraculous Mickey
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pp. 17-19
Should I ever visit Hollywood—that golden land where other people’s ideas are used until they are threadbare and then patched a hundred times—there is but a single studio I should insist on visiting. This is the modest establishment which turns out the Walt Disney “Mickey...
On Mickey Mouse
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pp. 20-21
From a conversation with Glück and Weill.—Property relations in Mickey Mouse cartoons: here we see for the first time that it is possible to have one’s own arm, even one’s own body, stolen...
Regulated Rodent
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pp. 22-24
Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America last week announced that, because of the complaints of many censor boards, the famed udder of the cow in Mickey Mouse cartoons was now banned. Cows in Mickey Mouse or other cartoon pictures in the future will have...
The Only Unpaid Movie Star
Harry Carr
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pp. 25-34
Even though you may be a citizen of the world, you really must have a place to hang your hat. Just so with the illustrious, world-famous, pen-and-ink talkie star—El Señor . . . Herr . . . Monsieur . . . Mister . . . “Mickey Mouse.”...
You Can See Mickey Mouse Dancing . . .
Film-Kurier
"Mickey Mouse": How He Was Born
Walt Disney
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pp. 37-42
Filmgoers in this enlightened age are more or less familiar with the inner mysteries of a motion picture studio. Almost anyone can explain how the studio scene-shifters can produce at a moment’s notice, so to...
Mickey-Mouse Maker
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pp. 43-50
In the current American mythology, Mickey Mouse is the imp, the benevolent dwarf of older fables, and like them he is far more popular than the important gods, heroes, and ogres. Over a hundred prints of...
2. Into the Realm of High Art, 1932–1933
Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse reached the airy strata of high art half a century before their now far more familiar association with Pop Art maestros like Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol...
Mickey Mouse and American Art
Diego Rivera
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pp. 53-55
The other night after a lecture on The Functions of Art and of the Artists in Present Day Society we prolonged the same theme and arrived at length at the discussion of things which are not taken seriously, not even by those that make them...
Mickey Mouse: He Stays on the Job
Terry Ramsaye
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pp. 56-57
Mickey Mouse is the crystalline, concentrated quintessence of that which is peculiarly the motion picture. He is at one with the Great Common Denominator of the great common art of the commonality in terms of expression, while in production he is a logarithmic...
An Artist of Our Time: Walter E. Disney, 1901–
Dorothy Grafly (unsigned)
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pp. 58-60
Walter E. Disney, American artist, creator of Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies, was born in Chicago, December 5, 1901, of Irish-Canadian and German-American ancestry...
He Gave Us Mickey Mouse
Jack Jamison
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pp. 61-65
There is a young man, in Hollywood of all places, who could be a millionaire if he liked, but who smiles and shrugs and says, “No; I’m having too much fun this way, thanks.”...
Notes on the Art of Mickey Mouse and His Creator Walt Disney
Eleanor Lambert
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pp. 66-71
In a five dollar-a-month room over a garage which he proudly termed his “studio”, a boy named Walt Disney used to sit at night and watch the antics of a pair of little mice. After weeks of patient persuasion, he had tamed them beyond the precincts of their hole in the base-board, ...
Mickey Mouse Invades Gallery
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pp. 72-72
May, the month of merriment and gay festivals, marks the appearance in a New York art gallery, of that cheerful little creature, indigenous to America, but welcomed heartily in other countries, Mickey Mouse...
Mickey Mouse Goes to Hollywood—How Young Artist Tamed His Models
Edwin C. Hill
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pp. 73-75
Behind the news that Artist Walt Disney will hereafter do all his work and transact all his affairs in Hollywood, lies one of those human stories which make news live. For the announcement means that Mickey Mouse has gone to California—Mickey and his beloved Minnie and all...
Mickey Mouse, Big Bad Wolf Reach Walls of Art Museum
United Press
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pp. 76-78
CHICAGO, Dec. 14—The antics of Mickey Mouse and fantasies from Silly Symphonies ascended to the stately walls of the Chicago Art Museum today for the winter exhibits of the Art Institute...
3. "You're the Top," 1934–1935
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pp. 79-81
The New York Times was truly the “Newspaper of Record” where Mickey Mouse was concerned. One-sixth of the texts in this book appeared in the Times, which, in 1928, thanks to Mordaunt Hall’s glowing review, had given...
The Life Story of Mickey Mouse
Walt Disney
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pp. 82-88
Perhaps it is one of the many paradoxes of the picture business that a star who has taken the screen by storm should receive no salary for his services, and should have been made, not born...
Mickey and Minnie
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pp. 89-92
I am a film-fanned rather than a film-fan, and, oh, the things I have had to see and hear because other people wanted to! About once a fortnight a puff of wind raises me from the seat where I am meditating upon life or art, and wafts me in amiability’s name towards a very...
Mickey Mouse's Financial Career
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pp. 93-104
Newfound wealth, regardless of its source, is viewed with the same fact-distorting enthusiasm as that which greets a gold strike. News and rumors fly thick and fast, gathering exaggeration as one wild-eyed narrative whispers to another...
Mickey Mouse
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pp. 105-115
Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse are the only universal characters that have ever existed. The greatest kings and conquerors, gods and devils, have by comparison been local celebrities. Mickey’s domain is today even more extensive than Chaplin’s. Charlie’s mustache, hat, ...
Mickey Mouse Makes the Britannica
New York Times
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pp. 116-118
The most significant item of the week’s film news was the announcement that Mickey Mouse had crashed the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The editors of that voluminous publication—according to United Artists— intend to present the history and mechanics of the animated cartoon...
Mickey Mouse Emerges as Economist
L. H. Robbins
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pp. 119-125
New applause is heard for Mickey Mouse, riding high above the general acclaim for him that already rings throughout the earth. The fresh cheering is for Mickey the Big Business Man, the world’s super-salesman. He finds work for jobless folk. He lifts corporations out of bankruptcy...
Mickey Mouse at the Gaumont-Palace
Jean Laury (Nicole Boré-Verrier)
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pp. 126-127
At the Gaumont-Palace yesterday morning over five thousand children cheered “Mickey Mouse” and his father, Walt Disney. A full report on this gala affair, organized by Le Figaro, which was a complete success, appears in our movie column...
Mickey Mouse Is 7 Years Old Today
Cholly Wood
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pp. 128-130
There is no better-known actor on the screen. His name, his face and his personality are better known than those of Clark Gable and Greta Garbo. His personal and public life are so closely merged that his innermost habits and thoughts are public property. His fame extends beyond...
Fox, Disney Add to Museum Film Group
Motion Picture Daily
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pp. 131-132
Further additions to the collection of historic films being made by the Museum of Modern Art include a group of 13 subjects from Twentieth Century-Fox and a number of cartoons from Walt Disney...
4. Glory Days in Color, 1936–1939
Praise and honors, public and private, some more glorious than others, continued to be heaped on Mickey and Walt in the second half of the thirties. In January 1936, the Associated Press informed the world that “the red ribbon of the French Legion of Honor arrived today for Walt Disney, producer of...
"Mickey Mouse" Is Eight Years Old: Disney's Squeaky Star Played to 468,000,000 in 1935
Literary Digest
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pp. 135-140
Eight years ago this week, an unsuspecting audience sat in New York City’s Colony Theater viewing a movie romance entitled “Lonesome,” starring Barbara Kent and Glenn Tryon. As a filler, the management ran a short animated cartoon bearing the title “Steamboat Willie.” It introduced...
L'Affaire Mickey Mouse
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pp. 141-145
Now that that unreconstructed international rebel, Mickey Mouse, has been thrown out of Yugoslavia for conspiring against the throne—he together with the newspaper correspondent who rashly reported the plot—the expulsions from foreign countries of this arch-enemy of nations...
Walt Disney, M.S., M.A.
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pp. 146-146
In almost a bandwagon rush great American universities are hastening to confer academic degrees upon Walter Elias Disney, pictorial historian to Snow White and father of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Yale has just honored him with the degree of master of arts, two weeks after he...
Mickey Mouse Celebrates His Tenth Birthday . . . By Capturing a Giant
Look
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pp. 147-148
Mickey Mouse is back, with a feather in his hat. For months, Mickey has been taking it rather easy, not loafing, but chivalrously staying out of the spotlight as much as possible while the world was applauding his good friend, Snow White...
A Tale of Six
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pp. 149-150
Five hundred disappointed lecture-goers were turned away yesterday afternoon from a Fogg lecture room in which Professor Robin Feild was extolling the merits of Mickey Mouse and associates. Each of the five hundred bore witness to the wide interest which has been evoked...
5. World War II into the Seventies, 1941–1977
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pp. 151-154
During World War II, Mickey’s name and image—like scores of other Disney cartoon characters—supplied wry comfort to American and Allied servicemen: as insignia for military units, nicknames and emblems for ships, planes, sundry gear and devices (gas masks, bomb-release mechanisms on aircraft, etc.), and...
New British Army Slang Less Colorful Than Old
North American Newspaper Alliance
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pp. 155-155
LONDON, April 5-This war is producing a new batch of army slang, though so far it is neither so picturesque nor so extensive as it was in 1914–1918. Many of the words are peculiar to certain units, and very few are yet in general use...
"Mickey Mouse" Was Invasion Password
Johannesburg Sunday Times
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pp. 156-157
LONDON, Saturday.—Senior naval officers passing into a naval cinema at a southern port a few days before the invasion had to whisper furtively into the ear of the sentry the magic words “Mickey Mouse,” writes the “Sunday Times” correspondent...
That Million-Dollar Mouse
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pp. 158-163
LOS ANGELES. Twenty years ago a man labored and brought forth a mouse and the civilized world still hasn’t stopped applauding the miracle. Mickey Mouse is the goshdarndest single act of creation in the history of our civilization. He probably is more widely known than...
What Mickey Means to Me
Walt Disney
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pp. 164-167
Mickey Mouse to me is a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end. He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago 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...
Mickey Mouse and How He Grew
Irving Wallace
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pp. 168-177
Not so many years ago there was a lady scribbler in Hollywood who made her living ghostwriting a monthly gossip column called Mickey Mouse’s Diary. She pretended she was actually Mickey Mouse, relating day-to-day adventures, to the delight of all juveniles under sixty who...
I Live with a Genius—a Conversation with Mrs. Walt Disney (excerpt)
Lillian Disney and Isabella Taves
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pp. 178-180
Right here I want to say another thing about Mickey Mouse. Stories have been printed about how Walt got interested in mice back on the farm in Marceline, Missouri, when he was a kid. Newspaper articles have told how Walt used to have a pet mouse named Mickey, which...
Of Mouse and Man, or Mickey Reaches 25: Time Has Slowed His Step, But Walt Disney's Remarkable Rodent Has Come Smiling through Depression, Wars, A-bombs and H-Bombs
Barbara Berch Jamison
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pp. 181-184
HOLLYWOOD. This week Mickey Mouse will be 25 years old, and although the average life expectancy of a mouse is four years, millions of Mickey’s friends the world over—among them children, kings, college presidents and African bushmen—will not feel at all absurd to be wishing...
Vox Bop (excerpt)
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pp. 185-185
A considerable amount of anything is bogoobs (e.g., ‘It’s a mickey band,’ but there’s bogoobs bread’), quite obviously from beaucoup. Incidentally, a mickey or Mickey Mouse band is not merely a ‘pop tune’ band, as Gold indicated, but the kind of pop band that sounds as if it is playing...
. . . on the Navy
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pp. 186-188
MILWAUKEE—To many Navy men, the term “Mickey Mouse” sometimes means laughter—but not at a cartoon character. Sometimes it isn’t a laughing matter...
6. The Nostalgia Begins, 1978–1989
Mickey’s fiftieth anniversary in 1978 provoked much hoopla, and broad-based stirrings of nostalgia for the Mouse of yore. A series of month-long screenings of his cartoons at MoMA (“Modern Museum Celebrates Mickey”*) was a major factor in his resurrection. That resurgence was evident as far afield as...
Growing Up with Mickey
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pp. 191-194
This year Mickey Mouse and I will be celebrating our 50th birthdays. We shared, at least for our first decade, much more than a common first initial; it was the best of relationships and one of the few genuine joys of my childhood in Brooklyn during the early ’30s...
A Mouse for All Seasons
John Culhane
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pp. 195-199
Mickey Mouse has always been a star. When Mickey first played New York City’s Music Hall, Cole Porter would bring his dinner guests there just to see the cartoon. In 1935, Arturo Toscanini asked that...
Modern Museum Celebrates Mickey
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pp. 200-203
Here’s to a character who’s been a superstar for half a century and only gotten sweeter, who’s always worn the same unassuming garb and simple smile. Here’s to a guy who made the big time but always kept the old friends and never deserted the gal who stood by him in his spaghetti...
Le Grand Charlie et le Petit Mickey
Garry Apgar
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pp. 204-206
Prominent proboscis aside, what on earth could Mickey Mouse and Charles de Gaulle possibly have in common? De Gaulle, after all, was on record as a Tintin fan, whilst what the Mouse thought of the General— well—God only knows...
Mickey Mouse Meets Konrad Lorenz
Stephen Jay Gould
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pp. 207-214
Age often turns fire to placidity. Lytton Strachey, in his incisive portrait of Florence Nightingale, writes of her declining years:
Destiny, having waited very patiently, played a cruel trick on Miss Nightingale. The benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been...
We Are Mickey: Meet the Men behind the Mouse
Charles Solomon
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pp. 215-216
Mickey Mouse’s familiar personality is actually a mosaic. Each of the animators, artists, writers and voice actors who worked with him has seen him a little differently and added a little of his own vision to the world’s most recognized cartoon character...
Mickey Mouse's Age
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pp. 217-218
By now, is there anyone from the Hudson to the Dnieper and beyond who doesn’t know that today is Mickey Mouse’s 60th birthday?
But how do we know?
Meet David R. Smith...
The Masks of Mickey Mouse
Robert W. Brockway
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pp. 219-230
From time to time in his later years, Walt Disney tried to explain the enduring popularity of Mickey Mouse. The animated cartoon character he created in 1928 always baffled him. Mickey continues to baffle critics today. Over the years since Mickey Mouse first appeared, just...
7. Into a New Millennium, 1991–2012
There has been a boom over the past quarter-century in research and writings about Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, with a noticeable uptick in contributions from Academe. As a result, over three-fifths of the principal bibliography at the back of this book date from 1991 or later. None of which, incidentally...
The Mystery of Mickey Mouse
John Updike
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pp. 233-241
It’s all in the ears. When Mickey Mouse was born, in 1927, the world of early cartoon animation was filled with two-legged zoomorphic humanoids, whose strange half-black faces were distinguished one from another chiefly by the ears. Felix the Cat had pointed triangular ears...
Mickey, A Mouse of Influence around the World
Marshall Fishwick
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pp. 242-244
Join in the celebration for the 65th birthday of one of the best-loved Americans. But don’t ask him to retire at 65. He’s too busy conquering France...
The Mickey in Macy's Window: Childhood, Consumerism, and Disney Animation
Richard deCordova
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pp. 245-260
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse films emerged against the backdrop of a complex set of debates about children’s leisure and the role of the cinema in children’s lives. During the late 1920s and early 1930s the cinema’s address to children was contested ground and a matter of frenzied...
An American Icon Scampers In for a Makeover
John Canemaker
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pp. 261-266
The rumors were true. Mickey has had a mouse-lift. The beloved 67-year-old star took the big step in Paris at a Disney animation studio where he was filming “Runaway Brain,” his first cartoon short in more than 40 years. Although public relations executives at the Walt Disney...
Who Is He?
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pp. 267-273
Mickey Mouse has earned fame and fortune, but there have always been those who think of him as a silly little rodent, a nebbish, a lightweight. Until recently, it would have seemed odd to associate him with New York. What would America’s biggest, sweatiest, edgiest city have...
The Meaning of Mickey Mouse
Garry Apgar
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pp. 274-287
In purely biographical or psychological terms, Mickey Mouse was in many ways the fictional extension and alter ego of his creator, Walt Disney, who provided his squeaky voice on film for years. However, Mickey soon took on a life wholly his own. Walt’s signature character...
Through the Years We'll All Be Friends: The "Mickey Mouse Club," Consumerism, and the Cultural Consensus
Barbara J. Coleman
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pp. 288-298
In January 1967 Time magazine published its “Man of the Year” issue: the distinction went to the entire postwar Baby Boom generation of which Stephen Davis was a member. Focusing its attention on the white, affluent suburban teenager, ...
"New" Mickey: Big Cheese of "MouseWorks": Animators Look to the Past to Liven Up the Personality of Disney's Star Rodent for a Cartoon Series Starting Saturday
Charles Solomon
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pp. 299-302
The idea of Mickey Mouse, who starred in some of the most beautifully animated cartoons in the history of the medium, appearing in limited television animation sounds almost blasphemous. But “Disney’s Mickey MouseWorks,” the new series from Walt Disney Television...
M-I-C-K-E-Y: He's the Leader of the Brand
Richard Verrier
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pp. 303-307
Mickey Mouse, once described by Walt Disney as “a little fellow trying to do the best he could,” is now being called on to do even better.
Trying to turn around its flagging merchandising operation, Walt Disney Co. is planting Mickey’s vintage visage in some hip new places...
Disney Presents Mickey Mouse, Again: Media Giant Pushes to Make Cartoon Rodent Hip
Frank Ahrens
pp. 308-311
GLENDALE, Calif.—If you thought Mickey Mouse was already ubiquitous, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The sainted and globally famous four-fingered trademark of the Walt Disney Co. is about to become the centerpiece of a movie, retail, ...
Can Disney Build a Better Mickey Mouse?
Jesse Green
pp. 312-319
“He was the only time I was happy,” said Maurice Sendak.
Mr. Sendak, who based the character of Max in his children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” on Mickey Mouse, is an exact contemporary of the cartoon rodent: both were born in 1928. “I was around 6...
Secrets of Steamboat Willie
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pp. 320-330
Walt Disney was fond of saying that it should never be forgotten that “it was all started by a mouse.” Mickey Mouse was indeed the cornerstone of an entertainment empire that flourished during Walt’s lifetime, and still flourishes today...
More Secrets of Steamboat Willie
Jim Korkis
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pp. 331-338
Most articles refer to Steamboat Willie as a parody of Buster Keaton’s last independent silent comedy, Steamboat Bill Jr., released earlier that same year. However, other than the fact that both films feature a steamboat, and that Keaton’s character is nicknamed Willie, the...
Mickey Mouse
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pp. 339-347
There is no more widely known an iconic figure out of American culture in the world at large than Mickey Mouse. So successful have been the marketing strategies of the Walt Disney Company, so widely distributed have been the films and comics, and so strongly appealing is...
Mock of Mickey Is Pure Evil: Disney's Daughter Rips Hamas Over Monster Mouse
Bill Hutchinson
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pp. 348-349
The only surviving child of Walt Disney is calling Hamas “pure evil” for making a mockery of Mickey Mouse by turning the lovable icon into a propaganda tool for hate...
Mickey Mouse Appears on Poster Atop a Nude Woman's Body beneath a Swastika
Sean Alfano
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pp. 350-351
Of all the places Mickey Mouse’s face has appeared, attached to a nude woman’s body beneath a giant swastika on a poster in Poland has to be a new one...
Egyptian Christian Faces Trial for Insulting Islam
Sarah El Deeb