The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Read Online Free
Author: Jim Korkis
Tags: disney, walt disney, Mickey Mouse
brought him down and we thought of him as a mouse. Then I went back and thought of him as I originally did (as a young boy) and we went on from there. He was a little fellow is what he actually was, a little fellow.
In a 1956 interview, Ub Iwerks stated:
I don’t recall any special meetings or discussions on how Mickey should look… We decided to make Mickey the size of a little boy. We couldn’t have him mouse-sized because of scale proportions (in terms of being seen clearly on the screen with objects). We asked ourselves “What are people going to think?” The size must have been right — people accepted him as a symbolic character, and though he looked like a mouse he was accepted as dashing and heroic.
Disney Legend Ward Kimball elaborated upon the height issue in comments made during Mickey’s 40th birthday in 1968:
In the old days of cartooning, the characters didn’t have much relationship to reality. You could put almost anything into animation and the public accepted it. But whoever heard of a four foot tall mouse? That was the problem.
Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Clarabelle Cow and all the rest were drawn to scale. They were believable because they were of a relative size. Then along comes a mouse as big as they are and it stopped working.
The more we got into reality, the more ickey became an abstraction. When our pictures began to use psychology and realistic stories, Mickey Mouse became an outcast.
In the March 1931 issue of American Magazine , Walt Disney said:
In the beginning we thought we had to make the mouse very small in order to win the sympathy of the audiences. We have learned that we can make him as big as a horse. Sometimes we do.
And in a September 21, 1947, interview with the New York Times Magazine , Walt told Frank Nugent:
[Mickey was] three quarters the size of The Goof, about a head taller than The Duck and a third bigger than Pluto. He stands exactly level with Minnie.
During the first decade of Disneyland, there were no size limitations, and sometimes Mickey could be as tall as six feet. Since 1964, however, the Mickey found in the Disney theme parks stands about five feet tall.
Why Does Mickey Mouse Wear Big Shoes?
Mickey first wore shoes in Gallopin’ Gaucho (1928). In 1957, Walt told interviewer Bob Thomas:
[Mickey’s] legs were pipe stems, and we stuck them in big shoes to give him the look of a kid wearing his father’s shoes.
From an artistic perspective, that approach made Mickey’s feet more definitive against the background of a scene, and it also hid Mickey’s real feet so that he appeared more human and less animal.
It’s also the reason why Minnie’s high-heel shoes looked so big in the early cartoons.
Why Does Mickey Mouse Wear White Gloves with Only Four Fingers?
Walt told Bob Thomas:
We didn’t want him to have mouse hands, because he was supposed to be more human. So we gave him gloves. Five fingers seemed like too much on such a little figure, so we took away one. That was just one less finger to animate.
Every time Mickey’s gloveless black hand moved across his solid black torso, his hand just disappeared, so white gloves made it easier for audiences to see the animation and gave Mickey more expressiveness with his hands.
The three black lines that sometime appear on the backs of Mickey’s gloves represent darts in the fabric extending from between the digits of the hand, typical of the design style of a child’s glove from the 1930s.
Mickey first wore his white gloves on screen in The Opry House (1929), the fifth Mickey cartoon. Mickey starts without gloves, but about three minutes into the film, he dons white gloves to perform for an audience and has rarely removed his gloves since.
In an August 1933 interview with the Minneapolis Star newspaper, Walt recalled:
I evolved him [Mickey] out of circles. They were simple and easy to handle. Leaving the finger off was a great asset artistically and financially. Artistically, five
In a 1956 interview, Ub Iwerks stated:
I don’t recall any special meetings or discussions on how Mickey should look… We decided to make Mickey the size of a little boy. We couldn’t have him mouse-sized because of scale proportions (in terms of being seen clearly on the screen with objects). We asked ourselves “What are people going to think?” The size must have been right — people accepted him as a symbolic character, and though he looked like a mouse he was accepted as dashing and heroic.
Disney Legend Ward Kimball elaborated upon the height issue in comments made during Mickey’s 40th birthday in 1968:
In the old days of cartooning, the characters didn’t have much relationship to reality. You could put almost anything into animation and the public accepted it. But whoever heard of a four foot tall mouse? That was the problem.
Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Clarabelle Cow and all the rest were drawn to scale. They were believable because they were of a relative size. Then along comes a mouse as big as they are and it stopped working.
The more we got into reality, the more ickey became an abstraction. When our pictures began to use psychology and realistic stories, Mickey Mouse became an outcast.
In the March 1931 issue of American Magazine , Walt Disney said:
In the beginning we thought we had to make the mouse very small in order to win the sympathy of the audiences. We have learned that we can make him as big as a horse. Sometimes we do.
And in a September 21, 1947, interview with the New York Times Magazine , Walt told Frank Nugent:
[Mickey was] three quarters the size of The Goof, about a head taller than The Duck and a third bigger than Pluto. He stands exactly level with Minnie.
During the first decade of Disneyland, there were no size limitations, and sometimes Mickey could be as tall as six feet. Since 1964, however, the Mickey found in the Disney theme parks stands about five feet tall.
Why Does Mickey Mouse Wear Big Shoes?
Mickey first wore shoes in Gallopin’ Gaucho (1928). In 1957, Walt told interviewer Bob Thomas:
[Mickey’s] legs were pipe stems, and we stuck them in big shoes to give him the look of a kid wearing his father’s shoes.
From an artistic perspective, that approach made Mickey’s feet more definitive against the background of a scene, and it also hid Mickey’s real feet so that he appeared more human and less animal.
It’s also the reason why Minnie’s high-heel shoes looked so big in the early cartoons.
Why Does Mickey Mouse Wear White Gloves with Only Four Fingers?
Walt told Bob Thomas:
We didn’t want him to have mouse hands, because he was supposed to be more human. So we gave him gloves. Five fingers seemed like too much on such a little figure, so we took away one. That was just one less finger to animate.
Every time Mickey’s gloveless black hand moved across his solid black torso, his hand just disappeared, so white gloves made it easier for audiences to see the animation and gave Mickey more expressiveness with his hands.
The three black lines that sometime appear on the backs of Mickey’s gloves represent darts in the fabric extending from between the digits of the hand, typical of the design style of a child’s glove from the 1930s.
Mickey first wore his white gloves on screen in The Opry House (1929), the fifth Mickey cartoon. Mickey starts without gloves, but about three minutes into the film, he dons white gloves to perform for an audience and has rarely removed his gloves since.
In an August 1933 interview with the Minneapolis Star newspaper, Walt recalled:
I evolved him [Mickey] out of circles. They were simple and easy to handle. Leaving the finger off was a great asset artistically and financially. Artistically, five
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