Mouse - A True Story

Feb 27, Read story The true story of Mickey Mouse by katykay (Attack on Titan) with reads. We all know the famous character Mickey Mouse.
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After seeing this instant classic the first time on TV, I launched a years-long search for the video only VHS existed at the time that extended to England, Austria, Hungary, and Checkoslovakia--no luck. And now it's available on Amazon. Now my hunt has begun for a DVD version, for durability. In short, this is the story of the creation of the song Silent Night, and the significant contribution by the musically-inclined churchmouse, Anony Mouse. None of the magical story is animated--even the mice are real. In my opinion, this ranks with all the best traditional programs, bar none.

Featherston on December 14, What a terrific family movie! Lynn Redgrave tells the story in a gentle yet interesting manner. A music educator for 33 years, I'd lost our school VHS. By Anne on July 28, One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful. One person found this helpful. By Keith Kanne on December 18, I loved this story years and years ago when my daughter was about 7 or 8 years old. Now that she has children of her own, I have bought the story for my grandchildren to enjoy as their mother did.

By Darlene Smith on December 8, Saw this when my children were young it is delightful. Such a cute story and I love listening to Lynn Redgraves. By Amazon Customer on October 16, Torregrosa on December 27, I discovered this movie quite accidentally several years ago while channel "surfing" and spent months trying to find my own copy. This movie tells the tale of the origin of the Christmas carol "Silent Night" from the perspective of a little mouse called A. Narrated by Lynn Redgrave, this warm family movie tells the tale of how the Christmas song was written but almost forgotten except for the efforts of A.

Nonny Mouse and his mouse organization. Set in Austria, this is the perfect holiday movie to watch with the entire family.

Do You Know The Real Origin Story Of Mickey Mouse?

Nothing objectionable, no violence. By Harold Poley on November 12, The true story of the famous carol Silent Night starts in a little town in Austria where a chain of strange events happened on Christmas Eve In Silent Mouse, Lynn Redgrave reveals a curious story of mice and men told in live action, and remarkable photography with a real mouse.

The film was shot entirely on location in Austria and Czechoslovakia. The music brings together some of Europe's most famous ensembles, choirs and orchestras. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations.

Disney was dismayed at the betrayal by his staff but determined to restart from scratch. The new Disney Studio initially consisted of animator Ub Iwerks and a loyal apprentice artist, Les Clark , who together with Wilfred Jackson were among the few who remained loyal to Walt. One lesson Disney learned from the experience was to thereafter always make sure that he owned all rights to the characters produced by his company. In the spring of , Disney asked Ub Iwerks to start drawing up new character ideas.

Iwerks tried sketches of various animals, such as dogs and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney. A female cow and male horse were also rejected.

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They would later turn up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. A male frog was also rejected. It would later show up in Iwerks' own Flip the Frog series. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney.


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Throughout the earlier years, Mickey's design bore heavy resemblance to Oswald , save for the ears, nose, and tail. Disney employees John Hench and Marc Davis believed that this design was part of Mickey's success as it made him more dynamic and appealing to audiences. Mickey's circular design is most noticeable in his ears.

In animation in the s, Mickey's ears were animated in a more realistic perspective. Later, they were drawn to always appear circular no matter which way Mickey was facing. This made Mickey easily recognizable to audiences and made his ears an unofficial personal trademark. The circular rule later created a dilemma for toy creators who had to recreate a three-dimensional Mickey.

In , animator Fred Moore redesigned Mickey's body away from its circular design to a pear-shaped design. Colleague Ward Kimball praised Moore for being the first animator to break from Mickey's " rubber hose , round circle" design. Although Moore himself was nervous at first about changing Mickey, Walt Disney liked the new design and told Moore "that's the way I want Mickey to be drawn from now on. Each of Mickey's hands has only three fingers and a thumb. Disney said that this was both an artistic and financial decision, explaining "Artistically five digits are too many for a mouse.

His hand would look like a bunch of bananas.

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Financially, not having an extra finger in each of 45, drawings that make up a six and one-half minute short has saved the Studio millions. The use of white gloves would prove to be an influential design for cartoon characters, particularly with later Disney characters, but also with non-Disney characters such as Bugs Bunny , Woody Woodpecker , Mighty Mouse , and Mario.

Mickey's eyes, as drawn in Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho , were large and white with black outlines. In Steamboat Willie , the bottom portion of the black outlines was removed, although the upper edges still contrasted with his head. Mickey's eyes were later re-imagined as only consisting of the small black dots which were originally his pupils, while what were the upper edges of his eyes became a hairline.

This is evident only when Mickey blinks. Fred Moore later redesigned the eyes to be small white eyes with pupils and gave his face a Caucasian skin tone instead of plain white. This new Mickey first appeared in on the cover of a party program, and in animation the following year with the release of The Pointer. Some of Mickey's early appearance, particularly the gloves, and facial characteristics, evolved from blackface caricatures used in minstrel shows.

The real story behind that creepy, viral Mickey Mouse YouTube video

Besides Mickey's gloves and shoes, he typically wears only a pair of shorts with two large buttons in the front. Before Mickey was seen regularly in color animation, Mickey's shorts were either red or a dull blue-green. With the advent of Mickey's color films, the shorts were always red. Disney had Ub Iwerks secretly begin animating a new cartoon while still under contract with Universal. The cartoon was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

Iwerks was the main animator for the short and reportedly spent six weeks working on it. In fact, Iwerks was the main animator for every Disney short released in and Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising also assisted Disney during those years. They had already signed their contracts with Charles Mintz, but he was still in the process of forming his new studio and so for the time being they were still employed by Disney.

This short would be the last they animated under this somewhat awkward situation. Mickey was first seen in a test screening of the cartoon short Plane Crazy , on May 15, , but it failed to impress the audience and, to add insult to injury, Walt could not find a distributor. Though understandably disappointed, Walt went on to produce a second Mickey short, The Gallopin' Gaucho , which was also not released for lack of a distributor. Steamboat Willie was first released on November 18, , in New York. It was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

Although it was the third Mickey cartoon produced, it was the first to find a distributor, and thus is considered by The Disney Company as Mickey's debut. Willie featured changes to Mickey's appearance in particular, simplifying his eyes to large dots that established his look for later cartoons and in numerous Walt Disney films.

The cartoon was not the first cartoon to feature a soundtrack connected to the action. Fleischer Studios , headed by brothers Dave and Max Fleischer , had already released a number of sound cartoons using the DeForest system in the mids. However, these cartoons did not keep the sound synchronized throughout the film.

For Willie , Disney had the sound recorded with a click track that kept the musicians on the beat. This precise timing is apparent during the "Turkey in the Straw" sequence when Mickey's actions exactly match the accompanying instruments. Animation historians have long debated who had served as the composer for the film's original music. This role has been variously attributed to Wilfred Jackson, Carl Stalling and Bert Lewis, but identification remains uncertain.

Walt Disney himself was voice actor for both Mickey and Minnie and would remain the source of Mickey's voice through for theatrical cartoons. Audiences at the time of Steamboat Willie' s release were reportedly impressed by the use of sound for comedic purposes. Sound films or "talkies" were still considered innovative. The first feature-length movie with dialogue sequences, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson , was released on October 6, Within a year of its success, most United States movie theaters had installed sound film equipment.

Walt Disney apparently intended to take advantage of this new trend and, arguably, managed to succeed. Most other cartoon studios were still producing silent products and so were unable to effectively act as competition to Disney. As a result, Mickey would soon become the most prominent animated character of the time.

Walt Disney soon worked on adding sound to both Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho which had originally been silent releases and their new release added to Mickey's success and popularity. A fourth Mickey short, The Barn Dance , was also put into production; however, Mickey does not actually speak until The Karnival Kid in when his first spoken words were "Hot dogs, Hot dogs! By , Felix would lose popularity among theater audiences, and Pat Sullivan decided to produce all future Felix cartoons in sound as a result.

In Mickey's early films he was often characterized not as a hero, but as an ineffective young suitor to Minnie Mouse. The Opry House March 28, was the first time in which Mickey wore his white gloves. Mickey wears them in almost all of his subsequent appearances and many other characters followed suit. The three lines on the back of Mickey's gloves represent darts in the gloves' fabric extending from between the digits of the hand, typical of glove design of the era. Although Mickey and Minnie still maintained their anthropomorphic characteristics, they were depicted as the size of regular mice and living with a community many other mice as pests in a home.

Mickey and Minnie would later appear the size of regular humans in their own setting. In appearances with real humans, Mickey has been shown to be about two to three feet high. The Barnyard Battle April 25, was the only film to depict Mickey as a soldier and also the first to place him in combat. The Karnival Kid was the first time Mickey spoke. Before this he had only whistled, laughed, and grunted. His first words were "Hot dogs! Mickey's Follies introduced the song "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" which would become the theme song for Mickey Mouse films for the next several years.

The "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" song sequence was also later reused with different background animation as its own special short shown only at the commencement of s theater-based Mickey Mouse Clubs. Shortly before the release of the film, Iwerks left to start his own studio, bankrolled by Disney's then-distributor Pat Powers. Powers and Disney had a falling out over money due Disney from the distribution deal. It was in response to losing the right to distribute Disney's cartoons that Powers made the deal with Iwerks, who had long harbored a desire to head his own studio.

The departure is considered a turning point in Mickey's career, as well as that of Walt Disney. Walt lost the man who served as his closest colleague and confidant since Mickey lost the man responsible for his original design and for the direction or animation of several of the shorts released till this point. Later Disney Company reissues of the early cartoons tend to credit Walt Disney alone.

Disney and his remaining staff continued the production of the Mickey series, and he was able to eventually find a number of animators to replace Iwerks. As the Great Depression progressed and Felix the Cat faded from the movie screen, Mickey's popularity would rise, and by The Mickey Mouse Club would have one million members. Despite being eclipsed by the Silly Symphonies short the Three Little Pigs in , Mickey still maintained great popularity among theater audiences too, until , when polls showed that Popeye was more popular than Mickey.

About this time, story artists at Disney were finding it increasingly difficult to write material for Mickey. As he had developed into a role model for children, they were limited in the types of gags they could make. This led to Mickey taking more of a secondary role in some of his next films allowing for more emphasis on other characters. The tempestuous duck would provide Disney with seemingly endless story ideas and would remain a recurring character in Mickey's cartoons.

Mickey first appeared animated in color in Parade of the Award Nominees in , however, the film strip was created for the 5th Academy Awards ceremony and was not released to the public. Mickey's official first color film came in with The Band Concert. The Technicolor film process was used in the film production. Here Mickey conducted the William Tell Overture , but the band is swept up by a tornado.

It is said that conductor Arturo Toscanini so loved this short that, upon first seeing it, he asked the projectionist to run it again. In , The Band Concert was voted the third-greatest cartoon of all time in a poll of animation professionals. By colorizing and partially redesigning Mickey, Walt would put Mickey back on top once again, and Mickey would reach popularity he never reached before as audiences now gave him more appeal.

However, by , the more manic Donald Duck would surpass the passive Mickey, resulting in a redesign of the mouse between and that put Mickey at the peak of his popularity. Together, Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy would go on several adventures together.

Mickey Mouse

Mickey was redesigned by animator Fred Moore which was first seen in The Pointer Instead of having solid black eyes, Mickey was given white eyes with pupils, a Caucasian skin colored face, and a pear-shaped body. In the 40's, he changed once more in The Little Whirlwind , where he used his trademark pants for the last time in decades, lost his tail, got more realistic ears that changed with perspective and a different body anatomy.

But this change would only last for a short period of time before returning to the one in " The Pointer ", with the exception of his pants. In his final theatrical cartoons in the s, he was given eyebrows, which were removed in the more recent cartoons. In Mickey appeared in his first feature-length film, Fantasia. His screen role as The Sorcerer's Apprentice , set to the symphonic poem of the same name by Paul Dukas , is perhaps the most famous segment of the film and one of Mickey's most iconic roles.

The segment features no dialogue at all, only the music. The apprentice Mickey , not willing to do his chores, puts on the sorcerer's magic hat after the sorcerer goes to bed and casts a spell on a broom, which causes the broom to come to life and perform the most tiring chore—filling up a deep well using two buckets of water. When the well eventually overflows, Mickey finds himself unable to control the broom, leading to a near-flood. After the segment ends, Mickey is seen in silhouette shaking hands with Leopold Stokowski , who conducts all the music heard in Fantasia.

Mickey has often been pictured in the red robe and blue sorcerer's hat in merchandising. It was also featured into the climax of Fantasmic! After , Mickey's popularity would decline until his re-emergence as a daily children's television personality. The last regular installment of the Mickey Mouse film series came in with The Simple Things in which Mickey and Pluto go fishing and are pestered by a flock of seagulls. In the s, Mickey became more known for his appearances on television, particularly with The Mickey Mouse Club.

This was followed up in with The Prince and the Pauper. Throughout the decades, Mickey Mouse competed with Warner Bros. Disney and Warner signed an agreement stating that each character had the same amount of screen time in the scene. Similar to his animated inclusion into a live-action film on Roger Rabbit , Mickey made a featured cameo appearance in the television special The Muppets at Walt Disney World where he met Kermit the Frog.

The two are established in the story as having been old friends. The Muppets have otherwise spoofed and referenced Mickey over a dozen times since the s. His most recent theatrical cartoon short was 's Get a Horse! Mickey has recently been announced to star in two films. Since June 28, , Disney Channel has been airing new 3-minute Mickey Mouse shorts, with animator Paul Rudish at the helm, incorporating elements of Mickey's late twenties-early thirties look with a contemporary twist.


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In August , ABC television announced a two-hour prime time special, Mickey's 90th spectacular , in honor of the iconic characters 90th birthday. The program will feature never-before-seen short videos. The show will be produced and directed by Don Mischer. A large part of Mickey's screen persona is his famously shy, falsetto voice. From onward, Mickey was voiced by Walt Disney himself, a task in which Disney took great personal pride.

However, by , Disney was becoming too busy with running the studio to do regular voice work which meant he could not do Mickey's voice on a regular basis anymore. It is also speculated that his cigarette habit had damaged his voice over the years. MacDonald voiced Mickey in the remainder of the theatrical shorts and for various television and publicity projects up until his retirement in , although Walt would reprise Mickey's voice occasionally until his passing in , such as in the introductions to the original — run of The Mickey Mouse Club TV series, the "Fourth Anniversary Show" episode of the Disneyland TV series that aired on September 11, and the Disneyland USA at Radio City Music Hall show from Stalling was the very first person to provide lines for Mickey in the short The Karnival Kid.

Clarence Nash voiced Mickey in the short The Dognapper since Walt was traveling in Europe at the time and was unavailable to record his lines for Mickey for that short. Along with Disney, J. The short film Mickey's Christmas Carol marked the theatrical debut of Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse, who was the official voice of Mickey from until his death in He said, 'Just remember kid, you're only filling in for the boss.

From Walt, and now from Jimmy. Bret Iwan , a former Hallmark greeting card artist, is the current voice of Mickey. His first video game voice-over of Mickey Mouse can be heard in Kingdom Hearts: The Power of Two and the remake of Castle of Illusion. Mickey first appeared in comics after he had appeared in 15 commercially successful animated shorts and was easily recognized by the public.

Walt Disney was approached by King Features Syndicate with the offer to license Mickey and his supporting characters for use in a comic strip. Disney accepted and Mickey made his first comic strip appearance on January 13, The first week or so of the strip featured a loose adaptation of " Plane Crazy ". Minnie soon became the first addition to the cast.

The strips first released between January 13, , and March 31, , has been occasionally reprinted in comic book form under the collective title "Lost on a Desert Island ". Animation historian Jim Korkis notes "After the eighteenth strip, Iwerks left and his inker, Win Smith, continued drawing the gag-a-day format In early , after Iwerks' departure, Disney was at first content to continue scripting the Mickey Mouse comic strip, assigning the art to Win Smith.

However, Disney's focus had always been in animation and Smith was soon assigned with the scripting as well. Smith was apparently discontent at the prospect of having to script, draw, and ink a series by himself as evidenced by his sudden resignation. Disney then searched for a replacement among the remaining staff of the Studio. He selected Floyd Gottfredson , a recently hired employee.

At the time Gottfredson was reportedly eager to work in animation and somewhat reluctant to accept his new assignment. Disney had to assure him the assignment was only temporary and that he would eventually return to animation. Gottfredson accepted and ended up holding this "temporary" assignment from May 5, , to November 15, Walt Disney's last script for the strip appeared May 17, The storyline was completed on September 20, , and later reprinted in comic book form as Mickey Mouse in Death Valley.

This early adventure expanded the cast of the strip which to this point only included Mickey and Minnie. Among the characters who had their first comic strip appearances in this story were Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, and Black Pete as well as the debuts of corrupted lawyer Sylvester Shyster and Minnie's uncle Mortimer Mouse. The Death Valley narrative was followed by Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers , first printed between September 22 and December 26, , which introduced Marcus Mouse and his wife as Minnie's parents.

Starting with these two early comic strip stories, Mickey's versions in animation and comics are considered to have diverged from each other. While Disney and his cartoon shorts would continue to focus on comedy , the comic strip effectively combined comedy and adventure. This adventurous version of Mickey would continue to appear in comic strips and later comic books throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.

The next artist to leave his mark on the character was Paul Murry in Dell Comics. While the stories at Western Publishing during the Silver Age emphasized Mickey as a detective in the style of Sherlock Holmes , in the modern era several editors and creators have consciously undertaken to depict a more vigorous Mickey in the mold of the classic Gottfredson adventures. In , he appeared in the Italian fantasy comic saga Wizards of Mickey. He became very popular in Egypt and got a comic book with his name.

The comics were re-released by "Nahdat Masr" in and the first issues were sold out in less than 8 hours. Since his early years, Mickey Mouse has been licensed by Disney to appear on many different kinds of merchandise. Mickey was produced as plush toys and figurines, and Mickey's image has graced almost everything from T-shirts to lunchboxes. Largely responsible for Disney merchandising in the s was Kay Kamen — who was called a "stickler for quality.