Mickey Mouse's Fourth Birthday Find Organization Worldwide
700 Clubs Meet on Saturday Mornings an New Units Form Obverseas: Anniversary Is Observed in Series of Broadcasts
50 to 60 Makers of Novelities
200,000 Stors in Tie-ups with Theatres; $500,000 Studio Employs 60 to 70 Artists; Strip in 172 Newspapers
Mickey Mouse is a big boy now.
Since his birth on October 1, 1928, he has seen the growth of a production organization which for comprehensiveness has no parallel in the field of the screen cartoon. In those four years he has noted the development of a direct contact with the children of this and other countries until the numbers enrolled in Mickey Mouse Clubs are estimated as on the way to the million mark. And since midsummer, when he entered the United Artists household, has come a nationwide concentration of tieup connections with the makers of Mickey Mouse dolls, toys, wearing apparel and other articles.
The ramifications of active interest in the careers of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, as depicted by Walt Disney, are cited as follows :
Children members of more than 700 Mickey Mouse Clubs meet on Saturday mornings.
Approximately 15,000 exhibitors throughout the world show the cartoons at one time or another.
Publishers of 172 newspapers print a daily Mickey Mouse cartoon strip.
Fifty to sixty mercantile houses are engaged in the manufacture of Mickey Mouse novelties.
Some 200,000 retail stores sell these articles.
Mickey has his own studio in Hollywood, a plant estimated at $5 00,000 cost and employing in the neighborhood of 300 men and women, 60 to 70 artists.
The most marked concentration of exploitation came on July 15, when United Artists and 28 manufacturers of Mickey Mouse articles united forces, following upon the adoption of Mickey into the producer-member organization that made him a brother of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Joseph M. Schenck, Samuel Goldwyn and David Wark Griffith.
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