Despite What Walt Disney Said It Didn't All Begin With A Mouse

Despite what Walt said, it didn't all begin with a mouse. The Disney Brothers Studio started in 1923 with a live-action character named Alice (portrayed by Virginia Davis) interacting with animated animals in a popular series of 56 cartoons. Looking for new challenges that would showcase the growing skills of his animation staff, Walt agreed, in 1927, to produce a new series of cartoons featuring a rabbit character for Charles Mintz at Universal Studios.

Later, after a year of producing the successful Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, Walt traveled to New York to negotiate additional installments of the series, only to discover that the character and the cartoons were copyrighted by Mintz, who hired away Walt's entire animation staff (except for Ub Iwerks) to produce another year of Oswald cartoons.

Legend has it that, during that distraught train ride back to Hollywood; Walt came up with the idea of Mickey Mouse. The rest, as they say, is animation history.

In 2006, The Walt Disney Company regained the rights to Walt's Oswald cartoons as part of a negotiation involving sportscaster Al Michael's move from ABC/ESPN's Monday Night Football to Universal owned NBC's Sunday Night Football. Unfortunately, of the 26 Oswald cartoons Walt produced, only about a dozen still exist today.

Because of the history behind this rabbit, I wanted to find more. So, here are seven lucky secrets that you might not ever find out of these old cartoons.

1. Just as a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, Oswald's name was pulled from a hat. The name reportedly was selected by P.D. Cochrane, the head of Universal Studios' Publicity Department. He gathered suggestions from office staffers, and drew a name out of a hat filled with submissions. Diane Disney Miller (Walt's daughter) confirmed years later that the name was, indeed, pulled from a hat, which explains why Oswald the Lucky Rabbit didn't follow the animation and comic strip convention of using alliteration in a name (like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck).

2. Universal rejected the first Oswald cartoon Walt Disney created. Executives criticized the first installment, "Poor Papa," believing that the Oswald character wasn't cute or likeable enough. The memo from Universal included the phrase: "With the exception of Chaplin, important movie comedians are neat and dapper chaps." Undaunted, Walt and Ub Iwerks redesigned the character and made another called "Trolley Troubles," inspired by Fontaine Fox's "Toonerville Trolley," a popular comic strip at the time. The cartoon includes a scene in which Oswald removes and rubs his foot for good luck. After all, he's blessed with four lucky rabbit's feet. The cartoon proved to be good luck for Walt, as Universal executives were impressed and gave the series the green light. (Mintz, incidentally, later released the once-criticized "Poor Papa" to theaters after Walt left the series.)

3. The fiery temper and short stature of an animator on the early Oswald cartoons inspired the Warner Brothers animated character Yosemite Sam. Animation Legend Friz Freleng, who directed many Looney Tunes cartoons and was the inspiration for Yosemite Sam, animated the "Trolley Troubles" scene in which Oswald takes off his foot. In an interview conducted with Freleng later in his career, he recalled thinking, "What do I show when his foot's taken off? Do I show a bone in there or what?' And Walt joked about it, and of course, he had never thought about it either. Nobody had thought of it." (In the cartoon, the foot pops off and pops back on.)

4. Oswald was the first Disney Character to have merchandising. Universal marketed several Oswald items, including a five-cent marshmallow-and-chocolate candy bar made by the Vogan Candy Corporation of Portland, Oregon. The company produced the candy before the first cartoon was completed, so Oswald appears on the wrapper as a slender, white rabbit. The Philadelphia Badge Company issued a button featuring Oswald (buttons were the precursor to today's trading pin), and the Universal Tag and Novelty Company offered an Oswald stencil set to help young children draw the character. The fact that the Disney Studio didn't receive royalties from this merchandise didn't seem to bother co-founder Roy O. Disney, who said, "We are a movie studio, not a toy store." The Disney brothers were simply happy that the merchandise brought attention to the character so that audiences would ask theaters when they would be showing an Oswald cartoon.

5. Mickey Mouse's nemesis, Peg Leg Pete, also provided trouble for Oswald. Peg Leg Pete is Disney's longest continuously running animated character. He first appeared in the Alice Comedies as early as 1925, and he appeared in seven Oswald cartoons, including "Rival Romeos" and "Ozzie of the Mounties."

6. Walt Disney used some of the gags from the Oswald cartoons in the early Mickey Mouse cartoons. In the days before video recording and reruns, it wasn't unusual for artisits to recycle sight gags since it was unlikely that theater audiences would have seen or remembered the gag from an earlier cartoon release. Mickey Mouse's "Steamboat Willie," for example, included several gags that appeared previously in Oswald cartoons. One of the gags in Oswald's "Rival Romeos" involves a goat eating Oswald's sheet music, and Oswald opening the goat's mouth and cranking its tail to make music. Mickey repeated the gag in "Steamboat Willie." The script for that "Steamboat Willie" scene, in which Pete pulls and stretches Mickey's stomach, features handwritten notes from Walt Disney reading, "same as Oswald and the Bear in 'Tall Timber'" [an Oswald cartoon released on July 9, 1928].

7. Woody Woodpecker and Oswald share a "father." After Walt left, Mintz gave the series to his brother-in-law, George Winkler, who set up his own studio, Snappy Productions. During the next year, Universal decided that, instead of outsourcing to Mintz, they would produce the cartoons themselves, hiring a young animator named Walter Lantz to direct. Lantz contacted Walt to see if this would cause Walt any concern. Walt, now successful with Mickey Mouse, gave Lantz his blessing and told him there would be no hard feelings. Lantz, working with animation legend Bill Nolan (who was known to be a fast and talented as Iwerks) turned Oswald into a cuter and more appealing character, and the series continued in production until around 1938. Lantz also added sound to the cartoons, hiring actor Mickey Rooney to be the character's first voice. So, the character that inspired a mouse named Mickey got his voice from a guy named Mickey. Was it destiny, or just plain "Lucky?"

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Comments

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 at 5:40 AM, by The Gamer
Looks like Disney wants to make Oswald popular again. He's even showing up as an important character in the upcomong Wii game Epic Mickey.

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