HISTORY's Moments in Media: Happy Birthday, Mickey!

That39s when Steamboat Willie the first Mickey Mouse film featuring synchronized sound premiered at New York City39s Colony Theater and promptly became an enormous hit Within months Walt Disney Studios produced a stream of animated shorts starring Mickey and Disney started marketing the character with his own line of merchandise These shorts were played before feature films and fans would check before buying tickets that their movies would be preceded by a Mickey short Within another year or two young fans were joining the Mickey Mouse Club tooMickey wasn39t Walt Disney39s first successful character That honor belongs to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit which his studio created for Universal Pictures When Disney asked for more money Universal hired away nearly all his animators and retained the rights to the character On the long train ride back to Hollywood from New York after the illfated meeting Disney dreamed up a mouse to replace the rabbit One loyal animator who remained with him Ub Iwerks drew the new cartoonOur rodent hero was initially called Mortimer Mouse it39s generally agreed that Walt39s wife Lillian disliked the name and suggested Mickey instead The name would live on though when a competitor for Minnie39s heart was introduced in Mickey39s Rival in 1936Mickey spoke for the first time in 192939s The Karnival Kid and the first color Mickey appeared in 193539s The Band Concert The first Disney theme park Disneyland opened in 1955 in Southern California The Mickey Mouse Club premiered on television that year as well Mickey had helped to launch an entertainment giantDisney and Iwerks made several Mickey shorts before Steamboat Willie First came Plane Crazy a Charles Lindbergh spoof and then The Gallopin39 Gaucho But Disney wasn39t able to interest a distributor based on those films The first movie with synchronized sound The Jazz Singer had been released the previous fall to much attention and acclaim Disney realized that if he could bring that new technology to cartoons he39d have a hit He accomplished both with Steamboat WillieMovies with synchronized sound were new And no one had made a cartoon that way before so no one was sure what one should sound like One of Disney39s animators came up with the idea of creating a chart to map sound effects and music to specific moments in the animation To test their ideas the animators played the film for an audience of their wives amp8212 jobs outside the home were mostly reserved for men then amp8212 while playing songs on a harmonica and generating simple sound effects from behind the movie screen The wives were impressedThe first recording session held in New York where there were sound facilities didn39t go well The conductor and his 17piece orchestra couldn39t keep time with the film Two weeks later with a bouncing ball added to the film to help mark time things went much better A month or so later came the triumphant premiereWalt Disney39s visionary business acumen even more than his animation skills allowed Walt Disney Studios to grow First came nonMickey features such as Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Then liveaction films and TV shows Then more theme parks and a television network Then cable networks and so much more Mickey himself appears in movies fairly irregularly these days but he39s still ranked as one of the most recognizable figures in the worldAs Disney once famously said quotI only hope that we never lose sight of one thing that it was all started by a mousequot Ninetyone years later we haven39tClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Happy Birthday, Mickey!

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Happy Birthday, Mickey!

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