The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse (13 page)

Read The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Online

Authors: Jim Korkis

Tags: #Mickey Mouse, #walt disney, #Disney

Disney Legend Ward Kimball revealed: “I own many Disney items from the early days that I happened to buy back then but not with the thought that one day they would be valuable. For instance, I bought the Lionel Mickey Mouse circus train when it was first issued (in 1935) because I’m a train buff and I just wanted to have it.”

In 2000, Lego introduced five Mickey Mouse-themed sets: Mickey’s Fire Engine, Minnie’s Birthday Party, Mickey’s Car Garage, Mickey’s Mansion, and Mickey’s Fishing Adventure. The majority of the parts for these sets were from the Fabuland theme (1979-1989) and the figures were sized to the same scale as the Fabuland figures. Only three mini-figures were made: Mickey Mouse (in three variations), Minnie Mouse, and Pluto. In 2013, a Mickey Mouse and Friends theme was produced with Mickey done in DUPLO bricks.

In 2012, Disney donated more than 100,000 Mickey Mouse plush toys to the Red Cross to give to children who have lost everything in natural disasters. Gail McGovern, president and CEO of the Red Cross, said: “The Mickey Mouse plush bring comfort to those impacted by disaster, which brings a sense of normalcy back into children’s lives”.

Roy E.ney, Walt’s nephew, remembered: “Our house was filled with Mickey Mouse toys and watches and games. As soon as my father brought home new toys, I’d see how fast I could destroy them.”

Mickey Mouse Watches

The first Mickey Mouse wristwatch was featured at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. At the Exposition, it outsold the World’s Fair commemorative watch by a 3:1 margin, with as many as 5,000 Mickey Mouse watches selling per day, usually to adults who stood in long lines to purchase one.
On Wednesday, March 27, 1957, in Disneyland, U.S. Time officials presented Walt Disney with the 25th million Mickey Mouse watch. By 1946, U.S. Time had absorbed the Ingersoll-Waterbury Clock Company, the original manufacturers of the watch, but they continued to display the Ingersoll brand on Mickey Mouse watches until 1948.
Cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, wrote: “I did want a Mickey Mouse watch [in the 1930s] in the worst way, though. In those days, it cost $2.95 and I saved up my money for one. My mother took me to the local jewelry store to buy one. She asked them if they were really good watches and the guy said that they were okay but for a dollar more, I could have a really good watch. So I never did get my Mickey Mouse watch.”
In 1969, it was reported that comedienne Carol Burnett once refused an offer of $500 for her classic 1930s Mickey Mouse watch, a gift from her husband, Joe Hamilton.
In 1968, comedian Bill (“Jose Jimenez”) Dana gave his new Mickey Mouse wristwatch to astronaut Walter Schirra, who carried it with him on the Apollo 7 spacecraft as it orbited the Earth. According to the
Navy Times
in 1969, astronaut Eugene Cernan wore the Mickey Mouse watch given to him by the Commander of the Blue Angels during the Apollo 10 mission to the moon.

Mickey in Print

A trade advertisement for David McKay, the company that in 1931 published the first professional Mickey book,
The Adventures of Mickey Mouse
, proclaimed: “Mickey Mouse is close to a child’s heart long after his frisky form has faded from the screen. A Mickey Mouse Book is a permanent companion for children who want to have their pal with them always.”
The book was kept in print for nine years and McKay later published three others, all Mickey Mouse titles.
The slogan for the 1935 version of the
Mickey Mouse Magazine
was “A Fun Book for Children to Read to Grown-ups.” Roy O. Disney told publisher Hal Horne that the slogan was accurate because his young son (Roy E. Disney) spent an entire evening at a polo match reading the first issue and pestering his father by reading him the jokes.
Charles Schulz recalled: “I used to subscribe to
Mickey Mouse Magazine
[in the 1930s] and even won a contest for Mickey Mouse’s crazy invention. I remember that my invention had to do with a movie theater that didn’t show pictures for people who didn’t like Mickey Mouse. I didn’t win the big prize but I did win a Mickey Mouse pen.”
Walt Disney ordered six subscriptions to
Mickey Mouse Magazine
for the Orthopedic Hospital and School in Los Angeles, one of his favorite charities at the time.
In the mid-1930s, silent movie actress Mary Pickford made arrangement with publisher Hal Horne to purchase at a reduced price copies of the
Mickey Mouse Magazine
that were returned by newsstands. She distributed those issues to local hospitals.
The first issue of
Mickey Mouse Magazine
appeared in newsstands on May 15, 1935 and sold nearly 150,000 copies. It lasted until September 1940 when Kay Kamen convered it into a comic book,
Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories
, which appeared in October 1940.
The first Mickey Mouse book, published in 1930 by Bibo and Lang, was called simply
Mickey Mouse Book
and at fifteen pages long was more magazine than book. It came with a game and game board as well as a marching song. The main four-page story, written by Bobette Bibo, the eleven-year-old daughter of one of the publishers, recounted how Mickey was kicked out of Mouse Fairyland and met Walt Disney. Roughly 100,000 copies were printed and sold over a six-month span at fifteen cents apiece.
Another first, the
Mickey Mouse Coloring Book
, was produced by the Saalfield Publishing Company of Ohio in 1931. It was an oversized 11”x15” book with thirty pages of drawings and short captions. Some of the drawings were partially colored to show young artists which colors they should use.
Saalfield was also responsible for the first Mickey and Minnie paper doll book.
Whitman Publishing of Racine, Wisconsin, released its first ten Big Little Books in 1932, with Mickey starring in one of them. Each book was 4”wide, 4½” high, and about 1½” thick. Text would be printed on one page, and then on the facing page there would be a black-and-white illustration. Each book cost only a dime.
Over two dozen different Mickey Mouse Big Little Books were published between 1932-1949. The first Mickey Mouse Book (#717) came in two different versions: the first had a crudely drawn Mickey and Walt Disney’s signature on the cover, while the other had a more pleasing, standard Mickey without the signature. Even though the front and back covers of the book were different, both versions share the same interior and number, #717.
Several Big Little Books published by Whitman Publishing were used as premiums.
Mickey Mouse The Mail Pilot
was given away by the American Oil Company and Clark Drugstores.
Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island
was a premium for Kolynos Dental Cream. Two special editions were produced for Santa at Macy’s Department Store to hand out to children during the holiday season:
Mickey Mouse and Minnie at Macy’s
(1934) and
Mickey Mouse and Minnie March to Macy’s
(1935).

Mickey Goes to War

In 1930, the German Board of Film Censors prohibited the Mickey Mouse short
Barnyard Battle
because they felt the kepi-wearing Mickey Mouse shown in the film fighting the helmeted cats negatively portrayed the Germans and would “reawaken the latest anti-German feeling existing abroad since the War.”
Perhaps the most oft-reprinted quote about Nazis hating Mickey Mouse is this: “Youth, where is thy pride? Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed. Mickey Mouse is a Young Plan medicine to promote weakness.
“Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal… Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!”
This diatribe was reprinted in the October 1931 issue of
The Living Age
magazine on page 183 in a small news blurb section entitled “Against Mickey Mouse”, prefaced with: “one of their [Nazi] newspapers in Pomerania has published the following malediction attacking young people who decorate themselves with little emblems of Mickey.”
The Nazis were well aware of the power of film and the popularity of Mickey Mouse, in particular, since young people wore images of Mickey including buttons and patches rather than swastikas.
In his diary entrfor December 22, 1937, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote: “I am giving the Fuhrer… 18 Mickey Mouse films (as a Christmas gift). He is very excited about it. He is very happy about these treasures which will hopefully bring him much fun and relaxation.”
Goebbels chose to give this gift because he knew that during July 1937, in Hitler’s private screening room, the Fuhrer had watched five Mickey Mouse cartoons and laughed loudly.
During World War II, Mickey Mouse appeared on thirty-seven military insignia for units like the signal corps and the chaplain’s unit. Mickey was just not perceived as very threatening or war-like. Donald Duck appeared on two-hundred-and-sixteen insignia.
The very first Disney military insignia was designed in 1933 for the Naval Reserve squadron stationed in New York. It featured Mickey Mouse sitting on a diving bird that held a bomb in its claws. Disney did not do the design but merely gave permission for the use of Mickey’s image.
A prominent and feared Mickey Mouse insignia first appeared around 1937, when German flying ace Adolf Galland of the Luftwaffe painted a homemade version of Mickey on all the fighters that he flew. Mickey had a cigar in his mouth and held a pistol in one hand and an axe in the other. When asked why he chose Mickey Mouse, Galland replied: “I like Mickey Mouse. I always have. And I like cigars, but I had to give them up after the war.”
During World War II, the Sun Rubber Company of Ohio made a children’s Mickey Mouse gas mask designed by Bernard McDermott, in the hope that the mask would seem less frightening. The company sent samples to President Franklin Roosevelt for his grandchildren. However, the rubber shortage and the lack of any real threat of gas attack resulted in the product never being mass produced in the United States.
In 1938, based on the Ministry of Popular Culture‘s recommendation, the Italian Government banned foreign children’s literature except for Mickey Mouse. Mickey was exempted from the decree because of his “acknowledged artistic merit”. Actually, Mussolini’s children were fond of Mickey Mouse, so they managed to delay the eventual ban on Mickey as long as possible.
In 1949, on the verge of the Korean War, the American Army asked a group of prominent Koreans to suggest what sign over the door of its Information Center would immediately make it clear to Koreans that Americans were inside. “After a brief consultation, the Koreans’ vote went 100 percent for Mickey Mouse,” reported
Collier’s
magazine April 9, 1949.
Emperor Hirohito of Japan was a huge fan of Mickey Mouse. He was given a Mickey Mouse watch as a gift during his special tour of Disneyland in 1975. For years, even on formal occasions, His Majesty was observed wearing the watch. In 1979, there was panic when the watch stopped ticking, and a concerned Palace Chamberlain rushed it to experts in Tokyo who specialized in American timepieces. Fortunately, the watch merely required a new battery. When Hirohito died in 1989, he was buried at his request with the Mickey Mouse watch.
At the end of December 1980, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, received a letter addressed to Mickey Mouse. Inside was a form letter requesting that Mickey send in his correct birth date information so he could be properly registered for the draft.

Mickey Mouse Music

Disney composer Paul Smith had this to say about the first Mickey Mouse cartoon he ever saw: “Mickey was playing the piano and I noticed that the sound of the keys was perfectly matched to his finger action. But, what impressed me the most, he was playing the correct keys!”
A fox trot released in 1930 with words and music by British lyricist Harry Carlton includes the lnes: “There’s a certain animile, making everybody smile. What’s this fellow’s name? Mickey! Mickey! Tricky Mickey Mouse!”
It was not an authorized Disney song, though the sheet music features a picture of Mickey and the name of the song as “Mickey Mouse”.
Jimmy MacDonald, one of the official voices of Mickey Mouse, appears on screen as a drummer on the tympani in
Fantasia
(1940), causing colored lights to glow from inside the drum. He also appears as a circus band drummer in
Toby Tyler
(1960).
The song “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo”, written by composer Carl Stalling and Walt Disney, was Walt’s only official song-writing credit. The song begins with the line: “I’m the guy they call little Mickey Mouse…”
Lyrics from the Mack Gordon and Harry Revel song “It’s the Animal in Me” sung by Ethel Merman in the film
The Big Broadcast of 1936
include: “Look at Mickey Mouse. Look at Minnie Mouse. They just live on love and cheese.”
Lyrics from the popular Cole Porter tune “You’re the Top” (1934) include: “You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss. You’re a Bendel bonnet. A Shakespeare sonnet. You’re Mickey Mouse.”
A music colleague approached conductor Leopold Stokowski, who appeared in
Fantasia
(1940) and said, “I’ll bet you don’t know why I admire you so much. It’s because you’re the only man I know who shook hands with Mickey Mouse [in the film]!” Stokowski wagged his finger at his friend and replied, “No! No! No!
HE
shook hands with
ME
.”
The term “Mickey Mousing” refers to the close synchronization of music with cartoon action as in the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts. The music literally punctuates every physical motion on the screen, usually for comedic effect. Around the mid-1940s, the term began to be used as a pejorative in film-scoring circles and has sometimes been cited as one of the reasons the term “Mickey Mouse” itself became a derogatory term in later years.
Author Bob Thomas explained: “[Mickey Mousing music] stemmed from circus bands and can-can in which the effects corresponded closely to what was happening on the stage or in the ring.”
The
Mickey Mouse Disco
album was released in 1979, peaked at #35 on Billboard’s Pop Albums Chart, and was certified 2x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The left library in the Walt Disney World Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction has a trumpet on a bookcase in reference to a
Twilight Zone
episode. Underneath the trumpet is the sheet music for the song “What! No Mickey Mouse?” (1932) by Irving Caesar. The lyrics for that song include: “What? No Mickey Mouse? What kind of a party is this? So where’s that tricky mouse? That slicky, wacki, wicki, bolsheviki Mickey Mouse?”
The song “Hey Ra Ra Ray — Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse”, written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, was first sung by Davy Jones of the Monkees along with “a Million Kids”, according to the label on the Warner Bros record released in England in 1978.

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