This interview was conducted by Bob Thomas while working on his biography of Harry Cohn, King Cohn (G.P. Putmam’s Sons, 1967).
It was unearthed by Todd James Pierce.
When I first made Mickey Mouse, I showed it to all the major studios, trying to get one of them to release it. Nobody was interested. I showed it to a man at Columbia—not Harry Cohn—and he said he liked it but wasn’t going to buy it. “This is what I’m looking for—an identifiable product,” he said, and held up a package of Life Savers. “But if you will only release my cartoons, they will become an identifiable product,” I said. “Not interested,” he told me.
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