Mortimer Mouse might have been his name had not a happy change of mind decided on the more homely Mickey. He was then still an idea, for not even his pert button of a nose had come into being. He was not born, in fact, till 1928.
It was Walt Disney who thought of him. Walt himself, at that time a young man of twenty-eight, had not long before left his native Kansas City for Los Angeles to make animated cartoons. Felix and others, it is true, were already flitting across the screen. But Walt had his ideas, and meant to give the public something better still.
So he and his brother Roy went into business, and what they lacked in capital they made up for in enthusiasm, energy and ability. Walt, who cared not a cent for management and so left that to Roy, became the artist. He introduced a novel series known as the "Alice Cartoons," in which a real little girl had wonderful and amusing adventures with pen-and-ink animals. Then the Universal Film Company engaged him, and he originated the idea of Oswald the Rabbit.
It was while making Oswald one day that Walt thought of Mortimer, afterwards Mickey. Mice, he felt, were knowing little creatures and with other animals could be made to appear even more amusing than anything that had yet been put on the screen. The important thing, however, was to spend more money on such a production. Universal shook their heads, and Walt, with his last pay envelope and his great idea, went elsewhere.
With his first story, "Plane Crazy." starring Mickey Mouse, he worried producers in Hollywood, and even pursued them to New York. He was turned down everywhere. Walt had, in fact, struck a bad patch, for sound had just then been brought to the screen. Artistes and producers were wondering what to do next, while Al Jolson was sobbing his way to the front in "The Jazz Singer." Who on earth wanted to look at a mouse, and a silent one at that ?
Walt and Roy "went into conference," as they say over in the States. Somewhere or other they found eventually an independent producer with sound equipment, but the first two pictures failed to attract because they had not been drawn with any idea of making them with sound. Then "Steamboat Willie" was produced, and Mickey Mouse leapt at once into a popularity which rivalled that of the handsomest human star.
Each of his cartoons comprises five thousand drawings or more, and is evolved after weeks of painstaking work by a number of artists. The story is decided at a "gag meeting," at which the whole studio staff can offer their suggestions. When the best and funniest have been chosen, the scenario is written and then split up into sections, each of which is given to an artist.
These men work at tables, each of which has a sloping board with the middle portion cut out to admit a sheet of glass. Under this is an electric light to give transparency to the drawings that are lo be made.
Suppose Mickey is to move his arms. Over a completed drawing of him resting on the glass another sheet of paper is placed and a pair of arms only are drawn in a slightly different position from the first. On a third sheet of paper resting on the other two the arms are again drawn differently, and so on.
These and the innumerable other drawings made in the same way are then sent to the Inking and Painting Department. There every line is transferred on to sheets of transparent celluloid and the tracings then filled in where necessary. They are now ready for the camera.
This is suspended over a table and attached to a pedal arrangement. First a set of drawings representing the beginning of a movement are placed in position and an exposure taken. Then a second set of drawings replaces the first to show the next degree of movement, and this goes on until the whole action has been gradually filmed.
The sound film is made separately. When the two are put together Mickey Mouse is then ready to show you what a comical fellow he is.
V.E.G.
