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Mickey as he appeared in the 1930s
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"Mickey's popularity skyrocketed," writes Charles Solomon, the well-known animation historian,
and the loveable mouse soon eclipsed Felix the Cat as the world's favorite animated character.
"A Mickey Mouse cartoon" appeared on theater marquees with the title of the
feature, and "What, no Mickey Mouse?" entered the popular lexicon as a synonym
for any disappointment. Between 1929 and 1932 more than one million children
joined the original Mickey Mouse Club. Mary Pickford, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Benito Mussolini, the Nizam of Hyderabad, and King George V of England were
all Mickey fans. As Mickey's star blazed ever brighter, he spawned a number
of offshoots -- Walt and Ub started a newspaper comic strip. Carl Stalling
wrote Mickey a theme song, "Minnie's Yoo Hoo." ("I'm the guy they call little
Mickey Mouse. Got a sweetie down in the chicken house ... .") It, too, became
popular from coast to coast.
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As the studio cranked
out Mickey Mouse cartoons, Walt moved forward on an entirely different
front. Up until this time, popular cartoons were based on individual characters
and had predictable plot lines. Walt's new series -- to be called Silly Symphonies
-- would break the mold. They would be animated pieces, generally set
to classical music, that would give his animators a chance to experiment
endlessly. The first was "The Skeleton Dance." The cartoon, suggested
by songwriter Carl Stalling, featured macabre dancing skulls and bones twirling
their way through a graveyard on a moonlit night. Though Pat Powers initially
said he couldn't sell the new cartoon, Walt prevailed, and soon the Silly
Symphonies were profitable -- and moving the state of animation forward.
Walt set up a unit of animators, separate from those who focused on
Mickey Mouse, to devote their time to Silly Symphonies.
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"The Skeleton Dance," the first Silly Symphony cartoon
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Walt and Ub Iwerks
with the star they created
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Though business was booming,
checks from Pat Powers were smaller than anticipated and arrived erratically.
In late 1929, Roy visited Powers and came to one positive conclusion: "That
Powers is a crook. He's a definite crook." Walt defended Powers at first.
"You don't believe in people," he told Roy. Of course Roy was right. Powers
had been withholding cash to make the Disney brothers desperate. And finally
he announced his intention to take over the Disney studio. His ace in the
hole: He had seduced Ub Iwerks -- Walt's star animator -- into jumping ship
in exchange for a cartoon series of his own. Powers had decided that Ub was
really the secret to Walt's success. Walt was terribly disappointed. But he
didn't consider yielding. And the studio went on without Ub, who gave up a 20% interest in the
Disney company that would be worth billions of dollars today.
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Meanwhile, Mickey and the Silly Symphonies forged on. Mickey acquired a body of supporting players who became stars in their own right, including Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy. When Walt decided it was time to experiment with color, he took a nearly finished cartoon, "Flowers and Trees," and redid it entirely in beautiful Technicolor. Roy argued that this was expensive and might not work. But Walt won out, and "Flowers and Trees" -- in color -- won an Academy Award in 1932. Mickey debuted in color in "The Band Concert" in 1935. The studio began using storyboards -- wooden boards on which hundreds of sketches could be placed -- to make sure that the plot of cartoons flowed. "Three Little Pigs" was a milestone in character development. And "The Old Mill" gave Walt a chance to experiment with techniques for adding depth to cartoons -- something that would be required for his next big leap forward.
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"Flowers and Trees," the 29th Silly Symphony, was the first done in color
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