Mickey Bradley Dan Gordon Popular Books

Mickey Bradley Dan Gordon Biography & Facts

Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white gloves. Mickey was created as a replacement for a prior Disney character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The character was originally to be named "Mortimer Mouse", until Walt Disney's wife, Lillian, suggested "Mickey". Mickey first appeared in two 1928 shorts Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho (which were not picked up for distribution) before his public debut in Steamboat Willie (1928). The character went on to appear in over 130 films, mostly shorts (also featuring characters such as his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, and friends Donald Duck and Goofy), as well as features such as Fantasia (1940). Since 1930, Mickey has been featured extensively in comic strips (including the Mickey Mouse comic strip, which ran for 45 years) and comic books (such as Mickey Mouse). The character has also been featured in television series such as The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–1996). Inspired by such silent film personalities as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Mickey is traditionally characterized as a sympathetic underdog who gets by on pluck and ingenuity in the face of challenges bigger than himself. The character's depiction as a small mouse is personified through his diminutive stature and falsetto voice, the latter of which was originally provided by Walt Disney. Though originally characterized as a cheeky lovable rogue, Mickey was rebranded over time as a nice guy, usually seen as a spirited, yet impulsive hero. Mickey also appears in media such as video games as well as merchandising and is a meetable character at the Disney parks. He is one of the world's most recognizable and universally acclaimed fictional characters. Ten of Mickey's cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which, Lend a Paw, won the award in 1941. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Creation Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character that was created by the Disney studio but owned at the time by Universal Pictures. Charles Mintz served as a middleman producer between Disney and Universal through his company, Winkler Pictures, for the series of cartoons starring Oswald. In a February 1928 meeting with Mintz to renew the Oswald contract, Disney was met by a disappointing budget cut proposal, along with Mintz's revelation that several of the most important Disney animators were coming over to his studio. Among the few who stayed at the Disney studio were animator Ub Iwerks, apprentice artist Les Clark, and Wilfred Jackson. A new character was workshopped out of necessity and in relative secret. Various myths exist of Walt Disney's inspiration for Mickey (including some which were likely ghostwritten), such as that the starving artist drew inspiration from a tame mouse (or pair of mice) at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, or that he undertook a romantic search for inspiration on the train ride home from his disappointing meeting with Mintz. At Disney's behest, Iwerks sketched new character ideas based on various animals such as dogs and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney. A female cow and male horse were rejected, as was a male frog. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney, reputedly based on Disney's own designs (similar to those he included on family birthday cards). These inspired Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney. "Mortimer Mouse" had been Disney's original name for the character before his wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it. It has been speculated that Disney saw the name on a similarly named Performo toy. Additionally, actor Mickey Rooney claimed that during his time performing as the title character of the Mickey McGuire film series (1927–1934), he met Walt Disney at the Warner Bros. studio, inspiring Disney to name the character after him; however, Disney Studios was located on Hyperion Avenue at the time, with Disney conducting no business at Warner Bros. The first feature-length movie with dialogue sequences, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, was released on October 6, 1927. Several additional talkies followed, and movie theaters began installing the necessary equipment. Walt Disney reputedly discussed making sound cartoons in late May 1928. After composer Carl W. Stalling initially voiced Mickey for the 1929 talkie shorts The Karnival Kid and Wild Waves, Disney himself provided the shy, falsetto voice—a large part of the character's onscreen persona. Design Mickey's original design strongly resembled Oswald the Rabbit, save for the ears, nose, and tail. Ub Iwerks designed Mickey's body out of circles (distinctly, the ears) to make the character easy to animate. Upon his creation, Mickey's features shared similarities to a number of his cartoon predecessors with large eyes and mouth on a black body (e.g. Oswald and Felix the Cat). From early 1929, Mickey also wore white gloves (similar to those appearing on later characters, e.g. Bosko and Bimbo). Several sources state that this scheme evolved from blackface caricatures used in minstrel shows. Additionally, Mickey's original black hands could not be seen if they passed in front of his torso. This limitation encouraged animators to base their poses on silhouette, much in the manner of Charlie Chaplin films. Minnie Mouse was designed similarly to Mickey, with only superficial details being different. In the 1930s, animator Fred Moore tried giving Mickey's body more of a pear shape to increase his acting range; Walt Disney liked this adaptation and declared, "that's the way I want Mickey to be drawn from now on." Moore maintained that the character should always be drawn from a pleasing angle, ears included, as opposed to depicting Mickey as a realistic 3D character. Mickey's eyes were originally large and white with black outlines, with the tops able to deform like eyebrows; the pupil was circular (with a triangle cut out in poster close-ups to simulate reflected light). Starting with Steamboat Willie, the bottom portion of the black outlines was removed, often making the pupil placement look strange. The pupils began to be treated as stationary, dotlike eyes, requiring the entire head to be moved to make Mickey look around. During the production of Fantasia in the late 1930s, Fred Moore redesigned Mickey with small white pupilled eyes, with the redefined facial area being given a light skin color. Distinct, lined eyebrows were eventually added. Besides Mickey's gloves and shoes, he typically wears only a pair of shorts with two large buttons in the front. Before Mickey was seen regularly in color animation, Mickey's shorts were.... Discover the Mickey Bradley Dan Gordon popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mickey Bradley Dan Gordon books.