Happy Birthday Mickey!

category: Lean Mommy
by Lisa Druxman,

Did you know that today is Mickey Mouse’s 81st birthday? As you may know, I am a huge Disney fan. Walt Disney has inspired me as an entrepreneur and I think of him often as I run Stroller Strides.

The character of Mickey Mouse made his debut on November 18, 1928, in a black and white cartoon called “Steamboat Willie.” Disney celebrates this day as his official birthday. Mickey Mouse was born in Walt Disney’s imagination early in 1928 on a train ride from New York to Los Angeles. Walt was returning with his wife from a business meeting at which his cartoon creation, Oswald the Rabbit, had been wrestled from him by his financial backers. Only 26 at the time and with an active cartoon studio in Hollywood, Walt had gone east to arrange for a new contract and more money to improve the quality of his Oswald pictures. The moneymen declined, and since the character was copyrighted under their name, they took control of it. ” . . . So I was all alone and had nothing,” Walt recalled later. ” Mrs. Disney and I were coming back from New York on the train and I had to have something I could tell them. I’ve lost Oswald so, I had this mouse in the back of my head because a mouse is sort of a sympathetic character in spite of the fact that everybody’s frightened of a mouse including myself” Walt spent the return train ride conjuring up a little mouse in red velvet pants and named him ” Mortimer,” but by the time the train screeched into the terminal station in Los Angeles, the new dream mouse had been rechristened. Walt’s wife, Lillian, thought the name ” Mortimer” was too pompous and suggested ” Mickey.” A star was born!

Upon returning to his studio, Walt and his head animator, Ub Iwerks, immediately began work on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy. The enthusiasm with which his small staff completed the project faded when no distributor wanted to buy the film. Refusing to give in, Walt forged into production on another silent Mickey Mouse cartoon, Gallopin’Gaucho. However, late in 1927, Warner Brothers ushered in the talkies with The Jazz Singer, staffing Al Jolson. This soon signaled the end of silent films so, in 1928, Walt dropped everything to begin a third Mickey Mouse cartoon, this one in sound: Steamboat Willie.

Mickey Mouse came about as a result of an obstacle in Walt’s life. He turned lemons in to lemonade. We can all remember that the next time we face a lemon.
Happy Birthday Mickey!

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