Introducing Mickey Mouse

It's November 18th, 1928, at the Colony Theater in New York City.

As the lights dim, the packed audience slowly hushes and looks toward the big screen.

Among them is 27-year-old Walt Disney, who wipes his sweaty hands on the front of his pants.

It's a big day for Walt.

For the last nine years, he's been working in the new industry of animation.

He hasn't had much success so far, but a few months ago, Walt embarked on a radical project, an animated short film with synchronized sound.

And today, it's being screened for the first time.

Walt holds his breath as the curtain pulls back and the projector flickers to life.

On screen, a cartoon mouse whistles as he spins the wheel of a steamboat, steering it down a river.

At first, there's no reaction from the audience, and Walt isn't sure whether that's a good sign or not.

But when the mouse sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry, the audience finds its voice.

The audience starts to laugh.

Then they roar as a female mouse is hoisted onto deck using a crane hooked to her underwear.

Then they cheer as the leading mouse defeats the steamboat's captain, a grumpy cat.

A worried look on Walt's face banishes.

With a broad grin, he's certain now that this short film is going to be everything he hoped for.

From his childhood in Missouri to the bright lights of Hollywood, Walt Disney's journey will be a remarkable one.

But he won't make it to the top of the film business alone.

At Walt's side will be one of the most famous and iconic characters ever created.

A cartoon mouse who was first introduced to the world in the groundbreaking short film Steamboat Willie on November 18th, 1928.

From Noiser and Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day.

On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 18th, 1928, introducing Mickey Mouse.

It's around 1907 in Marceline, Missouri, 21 years before the premiere of Steamboat Willie.

Six-year-old Walt Disney grabs hold of his younger sister Ruth's hand, tugging her out the door and into the backyard.

It's a beautiful sunny day and the siblings look for something to play with.

Walt wanders across the grass to the corner of the house and spots something that wasn't there earlier, a bucket.

Walt peers inside to find the bucket half full of tar.

Off to one side are a few brushes.

So Walt picks one up and dips it in the tar, smiling as the thick gooey substance drips off the bristles.

Then Walt takes the brush and dabs it on the side of the house.

Ruth stands back at first, but Walt encourages her to join in.

And before long, Walt and Ruth have painted a series of figures on the pristine white woodwork.

Walt tells Ruth that it's their family, and he's even included their pet pig, Porker.

But Walt and Ruth's artistic endeavors only come to an end when their mother calls them inside for dinner.

But when they walk into the kitchen with black tar on their hands and clothes, it leads to a scolding they don't soon forget.

Walt and Ruth spend the rest of the evening scrubbing the woodwork clean, but the stain only disappears when their father eventually covers it with a fresh coat of white paint.

But despite the punishment, Walt's passion for visual art doesn't diminish.

He continues to develop his skills, and more than a decade later, they help him secure his first job.

But it's not as an artist or animator.

Instead in 1918, 17-year-old Walt uses his talents to alter the date on his birth certificate and then join the Red Cross as an ambulance driver.

He's shipped to France, but by the time he arrives there, World War I has come to an end.

So Walt spends much of his time in Europe doodling.

Eventually, some of his paper drawings are published in an army newspaper, and that helps convince Walt that he really can make a career out of art.

When he returns to America, he decides to try his luck in a fast-growing industry, where he thinks his drawing skills would be in high demand.

Just over 20 years ago, the invention of celluloid film led to a new art form, Motion Pictures.

And alongside live-action productions, a thriving industry in animated films has developed as well.

After serving as an apprentice at one animation studio and making commercials for another, Walt decides to start his own company in Kansas City.

But he soon finds that moviemaking is competitive and it's difficult to make a profit.

Walt creates animated shorts based on fairy tales, but the money he makes from them is barely enough to pay the bills.

His drafty studio is infested with mice, and the rodents use Walt's discarded drawings to make their nests.

And in 1923, at age 21, Walt runs perilously short on cash.

He decides to make one last attempt to make it big and closes his Kansas City studio to move to Hollywood, the center of America's film industry.

The gamble soon pays off.

Just a few months after arriving in California, Walt sells a series of short comedy features based on Alice's adventures in Wonderland.

And with his reputation growing, Walt then decides to create a new character.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is different from anything produced by animators before.

Walt gives Oswald a distinctive way of moving, and his quirky mannerisms give him an instantly recognizable personality.

The rights to Oswald are soon snapped up by Universal Pictures, and Walt signs a contract to produce 26 cartoons for the studio.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit soon proves popular among theatergoers, too, but that doesn't mean he's a success for Walt.

In February 1928, Walt begins negotiations for a second batch of Oswald cartoons, but Universal Pictures offers him 20% less than he earned on the first contract.

Walt is furious at what he sees as Universal's heavy-handed negotiating tactics, and he refuses to sign on principle.

But since Universal owns the rights to Oswald, it's a take-it-or-leave-it deal, and Walt's decision is a costly one.

Without Oswald, his business has lost its best source of income.

With his company on the edge of failure, Walt tries to replicate Oswald's success with a new character.

And inspiration strikes in the form of a memory from a few years back, the mice scurrying around his waste paper basket back in Kansas City.

Soon Walt will sketch the first image of what will become his most famous character, and by the end of the year, Mickey Mouse will have made his debut on the big screen in Steamboat Willie.

But Walt will learn from his mistakes of the past, and he will fight to retain control of his new creation, a decision that one day will transform Walt's company from an animation studio into an entertainment empire.

It's November 21st, 1928, at the Disney Studios in Los Angeles, California, three days after the premiere of Steamboat Willie.

Walt Disney walks over to his desk, nervously eyeing the copy of Variety Magazine that his secretary left for him.

Walt lowers himself into the seat and opens the cover, searching the contents for a review of Steamboat Willie.

After coming up with the idea for Mickey Mouse, Walt set his team the task of creating an animated short film for the new character.

And within weeks, the animators transformed Walt's early sketches into a short film.

But Walt wanted Mickey Mouse to make a splash when he was first unveiled, so he decided to add an extra element, synchronized sound.

In 1928, movies with sound are still a new phenomena.

It's been only a year since the premiere of The Jazz Singer, the first feature film to incorporate synchronized sound.

And after that was a hit with audiences, Walt wanted this new technology in his short film too.

So he signed a deal with distributor Cinephome to screen Steamboat Willie with synchronized sound.

Now Walt is desperate to find out whether the critics agree with his decision.

Walt flips through the pages of the Variety magazine until he finds what he's looking for.

His eyes scan the text and then he smiles.

The reviewer has nothing but praise for Steamboat Willie and remarks on the laughter that rippled through the audience throughout the screening.

Other publications also recommend Steamboat Willie to the viewing public, with several pointing out that Walt's film doesn't just look good, it sounds good too.

With critics agreeing that Steamboat Willie is a hit, moviegoers soon flock to theaters to see it, and Walt is eager to capitalize on its success.

Over the next few months, he focuses on producing more Mickey Mouse animated shorts, and with each film more successful than the last, Walt soon decides that his company deserves a greater share of the profits from the Mickey Mouse animations, and he tries to renegotiate his contract with distributor Cinephone.

The talks don't go well, though.

Cinephone's bosses claim that they have a binding agreement with Walt and refuse to budge.

When Walt declares his intention to withdraw from the deal, Cinephone responds aggressively, poaching several of Walt's best animators to start their own company, and threatening to sue for the rights to make more Mickey Mouse cartoons themselves.

The stress is unbearable for Walt, and in October 1931, he has a breakdown.

Walt takes several weeks off to recover, but when he gets back to Los Angeles, he has renewed energy and optimism.

He leaves Cinephone behind and signs a new distribution deal with Columbia Pictures instead.

This time, he makes sure the contract is watertight.

There's no treacherous small print, and the deal makes it crystal clear that Mickey Mouse belongs to Walt.

With Mickey secure, over the next few years, Walt adds other popular new characters to his stable, including Pluto, Goofy, and Donald Duck.

Then Walt embarks on his first feature-length animation, a remake of the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

But Snow White is a big gamble for Walt.

Making feature films is expensive.

Initially, he budgets $250,000 for the production, around 10 times the cost of a typical Mickey Mouse short.

But even that's not enough.

Walt wants his first feature-length movie to be the best-looking animation ever made.

He insists on multiple rewrites of the script.

He demands full color throughout.

And he has his animators take classes on human anatomy to make the human characters as realistic as possible.

But all these changes mean the budget balloons out of control.

So to get the film finished, Walt mortgages his house and borrows $250,000 from the bank.

When the final cost is calculated, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has set Walt back $1.5 million, six times more than he first predicted.

Many industry insiders suspect that the film will bankrupt Walt in his studio.

But when it premieres on December 21, 1937, any doubts are quickly dispelled.

The audience jumps to its feet and gives Walt a staining ovation as the credits roll.

By the end of its run in theaters, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will have grossed almost $8 million and become the most successful synchronized sound motion picture to date.

Walt will be celebrated by Hollywood's elite and featured on the cover of Time magazine.

But his most cherished recognition will come when the organizers of the Academy Awards decide to honor Walt in a special way, with a unique award for a unique achievement.

It's February 23rd, 1939, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, a year after the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Amid rapturous applause, 38-year-old Walt Disney walks out from the wings and joins 10-year-old actor Shirley Temple in the middle of the stage.

They are both here for the Academy Awards, the most prestigious night in Hollywood.

Walt's no stranger to the Oscars.

Over the past few years, he's won several awards for his animated shorts.

But when the Academy judges met to discuss the latest awards, they realized that Walt's feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had no other full-length animations to compete against.

But they still wanted to recognize Walt's pioneering work, so they decided to give him an honorary Oscar instead, and now they've asked Hollywood's most famous child star to present it.

As the crowd's applause dies down, Shirley enthusiastically begins telling Walt that boys and girls around the world will be happy that the father of Mickey Mouse is about to receive this award.

Then Shirley whips away a cloth that's covering the Oscar.

And much to the amusement of the audience, it isn't just a single golden statue.

Next to the main award are seven tiny replicas, one for each dwarf.

The success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will spur Walt to produce dozens more animated feature-length films.

By the time he dies in 1966, Walt Disney will have won a record 22 Academy Awards, and he'll have grown his small animation studio into a global multimedia empire.

Today, the Walt Disney Company remains one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

And although Walt and all the artists that came after him have brought many iconic characters to life, the face of the company remains Mickey Mouse, who had his public debut when Steamboat Willie hit movie theaters on November 18, 1928.

Next, on History Daily, November 19, 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech dedicating a new cemetery at Gettysburg.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily.

Hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Mohamed Shazi.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Rob Scrag.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.