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Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse

In a five dollar-a-month room over a garage which he proudly termedhis “studio”, a boy named Walt Disney used to sit at night and watchthe antics of a pair of little mice. After weeks of patient persuasion, hehad tamed them beyond the precincts of their hole in the base-board,across the floor and at last onto his drawing-board. There they sat upand nibbled bits of cheese in their paws or even ate from his hand. Ashe watched them, he sometimes wrote letters to his niece, aged six,daughter of his older brother who carried mail in Los Angeles. Theletters described the activities of the mice and were sometimesillustrated with drawings of them, doing funny, fantastic humanthings.

Walt Disney (his name is Walter, but no one but his mother everthinks to call him by it) first saw the light of day in Chicago onDecember 5, 1901. His mother is German, his father Irish-Canadian.The family was large; four sons already when Walt was born and asister later. Mr. Disney’s business, contracting, caused the family to move frequently, chiefly between Chicago and Kansas City. When Walt was four years old, his parents decided to make a try at country life, and the next six years, until Walt was ten, were spent on a farm in Marceline, Missouri. Here he grew to know and love the animals, cows, horses, ducks, chickens, pigs-the regular roster of farm beasts who now move through Mickey’s adventures and the Silly Symphonies to the marvel of all beholders. It was those five years, he believes, that did the most to shape his character. At any rate his unconscious absorption in the way animals looked and moved stamped his mind with impressions that have never failed him since.
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Creating Mickey Mouse

The cost of creating a Mickey Mouse reel of one thousand feet is perhaps greater, per foot of film, that that of making a full-length feature picture. This is taking into account the salaries of living stars, stage settings, and studio production costs. Between eight and ten thousand drawings, produced entirely by hand, are required for each film, and about eight weeks are spent between the time the idea is first accepted and the finished film reaches the United Artists distributing office. The production system is “staggered” however, so that a new film, either Mickey Mouse or a Silly Symphony is ready every two weeks.
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