This was a very rare practice for cartoons at the time. To make it stand apart from the competition, Disney added synchronized sound to "Steamboat Willie," as well as a fully post-produced soundtrack. The cartoon was an immediate hit with audiences. Disney performed all the voices in the short, including Mickey's. Then Disney created a new black-and-white short for Mickey, the iconic " Steamboat Willie," which saw Mickey as the captain of a steam river sidewheeler. Finally, it was Walt Disney's wife, Lillian, who suggested that the mouse's name should be changed from "Mortimer" to "Mickey," and thus the legend was born.Īfter conceiving of the character, Disney created two shorts centering around Mickey in 1928 called " Plane Crazy" and " The Gallopin' Gaucho." Unfortunately, neither short managed to generate interest among distributors, and they were quietly shelved. Iwerks reworked and refined the sketch of the mouse that had been handed to him into the iconic design that's today known throughout the world. He took his rough initial sketch to his friend and business partner Ub Iwerks, the legendary animator who was responsible for many future innovations that the Disney company brought about in the industry. "He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood," Disney recalled in a 1948 essay. During one of his lowest moments - his studio, Laugh-O-Gram, had gone bankrupt, and his character, Oswald the Rabbit, had been taken from him – Disney conceived of the idea of a mouse character that would eventually become Mickey. These masks are really rare to find in the US and most of them are in museums.So what about the creation of Mickey Mouse? It's a well-known fact that Walt Disney came up with the design for Mickey Mouse during a train ride back from a business meeting that had not gone well. The masks that were made for the US was never handed out because chemical warfare never came on to US soil however they were used more in England. The US version had colors that more resemble Mickey’s colors:Įven Charlie McCarthy ( a very popular entertainment act) was fitted to wear a Mickey Mouse gas Mask! The British version of these was a solid color of blue or red: The different between the US and the British masks was the coloring of it. There was even a British version of this mask and they tried to market them as a fun game to play in order for children to keep this mask with them on all times and to put them on if the occasion arose. They even made a pouch with a cartoon Mickey Mouse on it:Ībout a thousand of these masks were made in the US. The mask was produced by a company called The Sun Rubber Company who usually made rubber items for schools and hospitals. The sizes range baby to toddler to kid to small adult all the way up to a stand adult size. The Mickey Mouse gas Mask came in five different sizes for about $3.75 each. In January 1942 Walt Disney was invited to Washington DC to meet with “civil and chemical warfare” teams to come up with a concept and design a gas mask that children would want to wear that would not be so scary as this: That is when the government decided to give Walt Disney a call! However when it came to protect children of potential chemical attack these standard gas masks were not the best.Ī lot of time these masks were too big to fit a child’s face and/or it just scared the kids into not wanting to put them on. The US had a scare that deadly chemicals would attack America so having gas masks in your emergency kits in your house was not uncommon. World War II was an extremely scary time for a lot of countries.
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