Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse!!
By Darthstich
Today Mickey Mouse celebrates his 80th Birthday!! On this day way back in 1928, the cartoon Steamboat Willie premiered. Though this is widely considered, even by the Disney Corporation, the first Mickey Mouse Cartoon, it is actually his third appearance. His actual first appearance was in Plane Crazy which came out May 15th of that same year. This is not considered to be the first Mickey cartoon because, at the time, Walt Disney could not find someone to distribute the film, as he couldn’t with the second Mickey cartoon, The Gallopin' Gaucho. The first two Mickey cartoons not only lacked a distributor but they also didn’t have sound, which is most likely the difference that gave Steamboat Willie the extra boost it needed to get picked up by a distributor and released in several theaters. Since then, Mickey Mouse has become a household name, a worldwide icon, and the face of everything Disney. Walt has been reported saying that Mickey was his alter ego, probably due to the fact that in early Mickey cartoons with voiced characters, Walt himself provided the voice of the oh so famous Mouse. Mickey Mouse was also the first cartoon character to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on his 50th birthday in 1978.
In the past 80 years, Mickey has been in just about every type of role imaginable. His more famous alter egos in his cartoons are a tailor in the Brave Little Tailor cartoon short,
A sorcerer in the segment from Fantasia known as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,
And a Musketeer in his most recent feature film Mickey, Donald, and Goofy: The Three Musketeers.
Some of his more recent, more humorous, not cartoon based depictions are King Mickey in the Kingdom Hearts Video game series,
Troy Bolton, from High School Musical, in recent bean bags toys,
And, one of my personal favorites, a Jedi Knight in promotions for the Disneyworld event, “Star Wars Weekends.”
In an episode of the “Kids WB” cartoon show "Tiny Toons Adventures," it is said that a cartoon character ages a day for every day a film of that character is not watched. If this is the case, then Mickey Mouse has not aged one minute. Walt said of his Mouse friend, “When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity." Mickey Mouse is the essence of everything Disney. Without his popularity, everything Disney, as we know it at least, would not exist, whether it is the parks, the films, or even the millions of fan forum sites out there
. I would like to leave you with these final words from the man behind the Mouse, Walt Disney, "I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse." Happy 80th, Mickey!!