Mousekingdom Blog

Mickey Mouse turns 80 today as he celebrates his very first oficial appearance in the Steamboat Willie short released on 18 November 1928. While this day will be remembered as Mickey’s Birthday, it wasn’t his very first short he appeared in. Before Steamboat Willie there was Crazy Plane and The Gallopin’ Gaucho, however it was Steamboat Willie that found its first distributor, hence making it the debut of Mickey. It is only after showing Steamboat Willie that the two previous works got the attention they deserved.

Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse after he and his co-creator Ub Iwerks lost all rights for his previous creation Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Universal Pictures and film producer Charles B. Minz. Once the success of Oswald was proven Minz hired all of Disney’s animators except Iwerks who refused to leave Disney. After that Disney worked on several ideas, including characters based on frogs, cats and dogs, but it was a Mouse that would change it all. First named Mortimer, his wife convinced him to change it to the more likely Mickey Mouse.

Today, 80 years later, we celebrate the birthday of the mouse that started it all. We wish Mickey Mouse a happy birthday, a great future and many more years to come. Thank you Mickey Mouse, thank you Walt Disney

For more on Mickey’s History visit the Mickey Mouse page on Wikipedia.

Picture Copyrights Disney

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 8:13 am and is filed under Disney Company, Disney Movies, Disney Theatrical, Disney in General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.