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at90 MICKEY MOUSE AT 90

LIFE Celebrates an American Icon

DISPLAY UNTIL 11/16/18

Walt Disney in his studio, 1955. TIME INC. SPECIALS AND MICKEY MOUSE greet visitors to the in front of Castle, Disney World. Mickey Mouse at 90 ORJAN F. ELLINGVAG/DAGBLADET/CORBIS/GETTY ORJAN F. Mickey Mouse at 90

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kostya Kennedy WRITER Steve Rushin DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Christina Lieberman CREATIVE DIRECTOR Gary Stewart COPY CHIEF Parlan McGaw COPY EDITOR Joel Van Liew PICTURE EDITOR Rachel Hatch WRITER Ryan Hatch WRITER-REPORTER Daniel S. Levy PHOTO ASSISTANT Alessandra Bianco PRODUCTION Richard Shaffer

TIME INC. BOOKS, A DIVISION OF MEREDITH CORPORATION SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCE Anthony Palumbo VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING Jeremy Biloon EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MARKETING SERVICES Carol Pittard DIRECTOR, BRAND MARKETING Jean Kennedy SALES DIRECTOR Christi Crowley ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BRAND MARKETING Bryan Christian ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FINANCE Jill Earyes ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL Andrew Goldberg ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, PRODUCTION Susan Chodakiewicz SENIOR MANAGER, FINANCE Ashley Petrasovic SENIOR BRAND MANAGER Katherine Barnet PREPRESS MANAGER Alex Voznesenskiy ASSOCIATE PROJECT AND PRODUCTION MANAGER Anna Riego Muñiz

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kostya Kennedy CREATIVE DIRECTOR Gary Stewart DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Christina Lieberman EDITORIAL OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Jamie Roth Major MANAGER, EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Gina Scauzillo

SPECIAL THANKS Brad Beatson, Brett Finkelstein, Melissa Frankenberry, Kristina Jutzi, Simon Keeble, Seniqua Koger, Kate Roncinske Copyright © 2018 Time Inc. Books, a division of Meredith Corporation Published by LIFE BOOKS, an imprint of Time Inc. Books • 225 Liberty Street • New York, NY 10281 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, CONTENTS who may quote brief passages in a review. Vol. 18, No. 16 • August 17, 2018 © BOARD OF TRUSTEES, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON 4 “LIFE” is a trademark of Time Inc., registered in Mickey’s Universe the U.S. and other countries. 8 A Mouse Is Born We welcome your comments and suggestions about LIFE Books. Please write to us at: LIFE Books, Attention: Book Editors 26 A Mouse Takes Off P.O. Box 62310, Tampa, FL 33662-2310 54 MICKEY & THE PRESIDENTS 58 The House That Mouse Built THIS PAGE: Look Mickey, a 1961 oil painting by Roy Lichtenstein. 74 MICKEY & SPORTS FRONT COVER: Mickey Mouse in 2008. 78 Thoroughly Modern Mickey KEVIN WINTER/GETTY BACK COVER: HULTON/ARCHIVE/GETTY 92 MICKEY & ART PAGES 92–93: Claes Oldenburg, Geometric Mouse– Scale C, 1971, anodized aluminum, 20 x 20 inches, Courtesy of Donna Leatherman LLC.

2 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 3 MICKEY’S UNIVERSE

With his galactic success (yes, he has been to outer space) the Mouse has touched the brightest stars. Elvis, Queen Elizabeth, FDR, even, well, kind of, Shakespeare

n the evening of April 1, 1975, in the showroom of the Las Vegas Hilton, Elvis Presley closed the pre-encore portion of his set with a song as familiar as any of his prodigious hits. “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E,” sang the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. “Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse, forever let us hold our banner high.” As adoring fans of two icons joined in, Elvis said, “I figured you’d know it.” Who doesn’t know the “Mickey Mouse March”? Who doesn’t know Mickey Mouse? And so Elvis sang on, now in unison with a sellout crowd: “M-I-C . . . See you real soon! K-E-Y . . . Why? Because we like you! M-O-U-S-E.” And in this way, the two most famous American entertainers of the 20th century were conjoined on stage:O Elvis and Mickey, Graceland and , blue suede shoes and bright yellow brogans­—if that indeed is what Mickey is wearing along with his red shorts with two white

buttons to match his white gloves. Who among us cannot conjure this image instantly? SOLOLOS/ISTOCKPHOTO/GETTY (2). BACKGROUND: LIBRARY/GETTY MARS: SCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO MERCURY, EARTH: JANRYSAVY/GETTY.

4 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 Known around the world, Mickey Mouse has crossed signed the Disneyland guest book in 1976, and, to paraphrase Every U.S. President since Harry Truman has met Mickey fourth (at best) behind animated films, amusement parks, paths with nearly every other celebrated figure of the 20th Olivier’s Hamlet, of the Mouse who proffered him the pen Mouse, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, who though and metric tons of merchandise, most notably wristwatches century, and he has been everything they have and much that day: We shall not look upon his like again. he never made it to Disneyland did present Walt Disney with and alarm clocks. they have not—orchestra conductor, train conductor, air- Gene Kelly would have danced with Mickey in 1945’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. When Elvis Presley met Led Zeppelin, the story goes, the plane captain, steamboat captain, castaway, cowboy, Arabian Anchors Aweigh had Walt Disney not denied MGM permis- In 1965, at the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at the New York King traded his expensive wristwatch for the cheap Mickey adventurer, football star, film star, rock star, immortal. He will sion to use his likeness. And so Kelly did a number instead World’s Fair, John Kennedy Jr., son of the slain President, Mouse watch worn by Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. And live forever, though he hasn’t forever (or, technically, ever) with Jerry, of animated series , for shook the mouse’s hand: Both wore smiles that appeared so Elvis and Mickey, America’s foremost entertainers, were been alive. It’s hard to imagine now, but Mickey Mouse didn’t MGM had felt compelled to have its own mischief-making permanent. Mickey’s influence has long extended far beyond joined at the wrist. The face on the wristwatch hasn’t a wrin- always exist. Someone—two people, actually—had to invent animated mouse, forever escaping the clutches of his cat the nation of his birth. As a young princess, Queen Elizabeth kle on it. The mouse on the timepiece is timeless, after all. him, which they did exactly 90 years ago. nemesis but never escaping the long shadow of Mickey. II—the monarch of the United Kingdom, and Mickey’s con- An oversize Mickey Mouse watch hangs on Andy’s bedroom “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing,” said Mickey Mouse, of course, has never had feline pursu- temporary, born two years before him—played with Mickey wall in , upraised arms forever at five min- one of those creators, Walt Disney, on The Disneyland Show, ers to concern himself with. He was never a mouse at all, and Minnie dolls made for her utes past 12 noon. which aired in October 1954, nine months before Disneyland but a man in mouse form. “When people laugh at Mickey by Dean’s Rag Book Company, Mickey has outlived count- opened to the public. “That it was all started by a mouse.” Mouse,” Disney said, “it’s because he’s so human.” When British maker of teddy bears and less contemporaries and admir- The Disney empire, someone observed that dolls. Like President Richard ers, from President Franklin even then, traversed Mickey was imbued with Nixon, Mickey went to China, Delano Roosevelt (described as continents, and is still Disney’s own personal- as the centerpiece of Shanghai one of his “devotees” in a 1936 fan personified—is still ity, he corrected him: “No, Disneyland. A delegation of letter from Eleanor Roosevelt) rodentified—by its uni- it’s the Mouse that has the children from Orange County, to U.S. congressman Stewart versally renowned mas- personality.” , presented the pope McKinney of Connecticut (who cot. The leader of the Along with such pop with a Mickey Mouse cap on kept a Mickey Mouse telephone band. Mickey’s head, com- icons as Marilyn Monroe World Youth Day in 2008, when on his desk, one reporter noted, prising three circles, is as and Michael Jackson Mickey turned 80, and those as “the appropriate instrument recognizable in silhouette and the Campbell’s ears bore the stitched inscrip- to receive calls from the govern- as any movie star, mon- soup can, Andy tion of his name, Benedict XVI, ment in Washington”). arch, or religious leader painted Mickey Mouse. a mouse-eared version of the The Mouse turns 90 this year, has ever been in the full BEN BUCHANAN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES The British press gave pope’s zucchetto, his ecclesias- so the majority of humankind light of day. Mahatma Gandhi a nick- tical skullcap. In , Mickey has never known a world with- No creature living or name: Mickey Mouse, for Mouse is called . out him, never known a time dead or never actually the way his ears stuck out. You could say Mickey has before the name Mickey Mouse born has been woven When singer Eartha Kitt been a cradle to grave obses- became the most popular write- into the fabric of public met Albert Einstein in sion: Consider that the Japanese in vote in American elections; life quite the way Mickey his home, the foremost emperor Hirohito is said to have before Mickey Mouse was, in Mouse has, even as he’s genius of the 20th cen- been buried in 1989 with the one poll, deemed more recog- literally woven into the tury was wearing a T-shirt Mickey Mouse watch he received nizable than Santa Claus; before and , 1985. carpet of Disney resorts emblazoned with the like- at Disneyland in 1975 and which MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY Mickey Mouse opened theme and concealed as infinite ness of Mickey Mouse. served as a kind of Rosebud parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Michael Jackson, 1971. “Hidden Mickeys” in wallpaper patterns and masonry and Years later, as the child front man of the Jackson 5, reminder of his own childhood, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and tiles. He is also hidden in plain sight throughout popular Michael Jackson was photographed in a Mickey T-Shirt. The when he was considered a deity Shanghai: Mouse meets Mao. culture, independent of his own countless films and songs same kind of shirt has been worn by John Lennon of the in Japan—he being Hirohito, not the Mouse, though Mickey Along the way “Mickey Mouse” was turned into an adjec- and novelties, a background hum whose volume fluctuates Beatles, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Axl Rose of Guns has also been mistaken for the divine. His image has been tive, one famously employed by Nelson Mandela to describe over the decades but is always there, the ambient noise of N’ Roses, and practically every other rock star of every era. spotted by those willing to see it in craters on the moon and a South African opposition party, and by Margaret Thatcher American life. In the offices ofRolling Stone, Jann Wenner, the magazine’s even on Mercury, the ultimate Hidden Mickeys. to describe the European Union parliament, and by Wayne Ethel Merman and Louis Armstrong, among many other founder, kept a framed picture of Mickey Mouse shooting In fact, Mickey gets a mention in “Life on Mars?” the Gretzky to describe the New Jersey Devils. The character giants of the age, sang his name in “You’re the Top,” in a lyric heroin. Mickey had become so identified with America itself David Bowie song from 1971. “It’s on America’s tortured of Fredo in The Godfather: Part II laments his lowly lot in penned by Cole Porter, placing Mickey in a continuum of that any irreverent depiction of him became an act of politi- brow / That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow.” And while the Corleone family, being put in charge “of some Mickey historical greatness—the Nile, the Colosseum, the Mona Lisa: cal subversion, a middle finger to the establishment. Over it’s an opaquely unflattering reference, the lyric does serve as Mouse nightclub.” “You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss the decades, Mickey would evolve from sharp-edged rogue a reminder of what a rock ’n’ roll touchstone Mickey Mouse The adjective is a pejorative, meant to belittle something “You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet to—as Disney himself acknowledged—corporate titan. has been, often used as a stand-in for America, his name as minor, ineffectual, or rinky-dink—an ironic development, “You’re Mickey Mouse.” mouse-checked by Eminem and Lil Wayne. for it is the very opposite of Mickey Mouse himself. Almost And if the Fifth Avenue department store Henri Bendel HE BEGAN LIFE AS A BARNSTORMING AND But then he cuts across every musical genre, from Cole since his creation he has held the world in the palm of his isn’t as famous as it once was, Mickey has proven, like became one of the most merchandised figures in the history Porter to . In , Mickey brought white-gloved, four-fingered hand. He’s a sorcerer—or at least Shakespeare, to be timeless, adaptable to every age—and of commerce. There is scarcely a major world figure of the Paul Dukas’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” to the masses. a sorcerer’s apprentice—keeping an audience spellbound for stage. The great Shakespearean actor Sir Laurence Olivier last century who was not touched in some way by the Mouse. And music isn’t even what he’s best known for. It’s a distant nine decades and counting. l

6 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 7 A MOUSE IS BORN Conceived on a cross-country train and imbued with movie star mojo, Mickey was precocious from the start

BEFORE T-SHIRTS AND TV, Mickey Mouse lived on paper as little more than a doodle. Like all of us, he’s aged . . . except in his case, in reverse. Partly to appeal to kids, Mickey’s features have become younger looking over time, his eyes enlarged and his smile widened—in other words, he’s become cuter. We should

all be so lucky. NOAH BERGER/POLARIS

8 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 9 BORN IN CHICAGO IN 1901, Walt Disney (left, at 1 year old) moved with his family to Marceline, Missouri, in 1906, where it’s said he developed his love of drawing. Main Street, U.S.A., at the Disney parks is modeled after downtown Marceline, pictured here. APIC/HULTON/GETTY

ickey Mouse was born on a westbound train, somewhere between Chicago and . It was in that vast open space that his creator, Walt Disney, had grown up (in Marceline, Missouri) and gone to seek his fortune as an animator (in Kansas City, Missouri). The streets of Marceline would, four decades hence, inform Disney’s vision for Main Street, U.S.A., at Disneyland. Missouri Mwas an unending source of inspiration. Precisely when Mickey Mouse was conceived is not a matter of historical record. As Neal Gabler wrote in Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination: “[Disney] had, variously, been sitting on a park bench when a mouse scampered by; or, while working for the [Kansas City] Film Ad Co., he had caught mice in his wastebasket, where they were feasting from scraps of lunches the office girls had thrown away, then built

a box for them and kept them as pets, naming one of CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP

10 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 11 BETTMANN/GETTY

them Mortimer; or, while bunking Universal, Disney was informed by at the Laugh-O-Gram office, he had the studio that it had hired away most heard a mouse running about; or, at of Walt’s staff and would produce some undefined time, he had heard a their own Oswald . Disney mouse scratching at his windowsill was invited to remain in Universal’s trying to escape and put him in a cof- employ, at a lower salary, but he and fee tin—the first of many mice he sup- a lone cohort—animator — posedly captured.” declined the offer. And so Walter Elias As with the origin stories of many Disney, in the company of his wife, early film stars (Lana Turner at the Lillian, boarded that westbound train, soda fountain, for example) leg- his proverbial tail between his legs. He ends have attached to Mickey’s birth. was 26 years old. Whatever his conception, the Mouse Requiring a new meal ticket, Walt was delivered onto a blank page in took out his sketch pad. Somewhere in March of 1928 as Disney traversed the the American west, he shortened and continent from to his rounded Oswald’s ears, diminished home in Los Angeles—moving east to him in stature and thickened him west in the direction of dreams, like so around the middle. In Los Angeles, he many pioneers before him. handed the sketch to Iwerks, an old A PRECURSOR TO MICKEY BY 17 months, Oswald the Lucky Walt had been in New York to nego- friend and sole remaining animator, Rabbit (opposite and above) was tiate a new (and he hoped more lucra- who refined Walt’s drawing. developed by Disney (top) as one tive) contract with Universal Pictures, And thus was born Mortimer Mouse. of the first cartoon characters which owned the rights to Disney’s Lillian, according to legend, didn’t with unique mannerisms and specific personality traits—in popular character Oswald the Lucky care for the name, thinking it preten- COURTESY EVERETT (2) Oswald’s case, he is playful and Rabbit, a round-faced, four-fingered, tious and too formal, and so Mortimer thoughtful. Oswald’s success (at pot-bellied bunny with a black nose, Mouse was stripped of his airs and his Universal Studios, owner of the rights to the character) inspired black eyes, a widow’s peak, and a ward- too-long name and became Mickey. Mickey’s creation. Safe to say, one robe consisting of a single pair of shorts. The child actor Mickey Rooney would ended up outpacing the other. But instead of getting a raise from later claim that the Mouse was named

12 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 13 EARLY STARS Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (left), Fred Astaire (center), and Charlie Chaplin (right) all helped inspire animator Ub Iwerks (opposite) in developing the Mouse. From the swashbuckling Fairbanks, graceful Astaire, and Chaplin, Mickey became the sum of many refined parts.

after him, but in fact something like the industry (Oscar turns 90 in 2019) and Lindbergh captioned “Lindy—Ace of opposite became true: Children would also the age of aviation. Both of these Aces.” Mickey tousles his hair to resem- be named Mickey after the Mouse. phenomena—cinema and commer- ble his hero’s and looks in the mirror, Of course, Mickey Mouse had not cial air travel—would quickly and dra- revealing a shiny set of teeth. yet been infused with the breath of matically shrink the world, making it Mickey boards his homemade plane. life. He was silent, inanimate, a pris- small enough for one creature to wrap He is given a horseshoe for luck by an oner of the page. That would change, his arms around it. eyelash-batting paramour—the screen FROM LEFT: COURTESY EVERETT; BOB LANDRY/ LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION; PHOTOFESTLIFE/THE with two contemporary influences. The Mouse made his theatrical debut debut of , whose full This was seven months after the release in a cartoon called “”— first name is later given as Minerva— of , cinema’s first full- introduced as “A Mickey Mouse Sound and together they head off into the length talkie, starring Al Jolson, and Cartoon”—that was animated by Ub wild blue yonder, where Mickey kisses 12 months after 25-year-old Charles Iwerks and test-screened only once, her against her will. As Minnie slaps Lindbergh captivated the world by at a theater on Sunset Boulevard in Mickey for his impertinence, and flying solo from New York to Paris in Hollywood, on May 15, 1928. Mickey jumps out of the plane to escape his his airplane Spirit of St. Louis. Mickey is appears on-screen reading a book called advances (she’ll use her bloomers to © BUENA VISTA PICTURES, COURTESY PHOTOFEST COURTESY PHOTOFEST PICTURES, © BUENA VISTA about the same age as the modern film How to Fly. He opens it to a portrait of softly parachute back to Earth), there

14 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 15 is a startling resonance, these nine decades later, with the #MeToo move- ment. In six madcap minutes, Mickey is established as a devil-may-care rogue, a jazz age personality, a character with an edge. And by today’s lights, certainly, a creep. This mouse, literally and figu- ratively, has teeth. In the end, his plane crashes. So did his movie. “Plane Crazy” was not a hit in its test screening and wasn’t immediately released. But a second Mickey Mouse cartoon followed. “The Gallopin’ Gaucho” was completed in August of 1928 as a parody of a Douglas Fairbanks adventure film calledThe Gaucho. But before “The Gallopin’ Gaucho” was

 “We thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something © , COURTESY PHOTOFEST (2) of the wistfulness of Chaplin—a little fellow trying to do the best he could.” 

released, it was set aside so that Walt, inspired by The Jazz Singer could try his hand at a talkie himself, in this case a fully sound synchronized car- toon, the first of its kind. This would be “.”

LINDBERGH HAD SHRUNK THE world, rendering it small enough—

MARY EVANS/WALT DISNEY PICTURES/RONALD GRANT/EVERETT “PLANE CRAZY” (OPPOSITE), and putting it in the proper mood— the first Mickey Mouse film for a benign conquest by a charming shot, was actually the third American hero. Jolson, in The Jazz to be released. Appearing in Singer, had revolutionized film, though theaters in 1929, it features Mickey in his best Charles many film executives didn’t yet recog- Lindbergh impression, piloting nize the importance of sound. an absurd flight—at one Disney did. In creating Mickey, he point carrying a cow—with a resistant Minnie Mouse in tow. cited other silent film stars as inspira- Lindbergh is seen here in New tion, chief among them Charlie Chaplin, York in 1927, before he piloted with his Little Tramp character. “We the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop flight from New York thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that to Paris. would have something of the wistful-

ness of Chaplin—a little fellow trying BETTMANN/GETTY

16 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 17 © WALT DISNEY CO./COURTESY EVERETT DISNEY CO./COURTESY © WALT (2) GRANT/EVERETT DISNEY/RONALD EVANS/WALT MARY

to do the best he could,” Walt said. was no Douglas Fairbanks. He was a “Steamboat Willie” made its debut Mickey has not yet put white gloves on The New York Times review called Iwerks, though, had more Fairbanks hero to boys because of airplanes and at the Colony Theatre on Broadway his black mitts, but he is otherwise rec- “Steamboat Willie” “an ingenious than Chaplin in mind. Fairbanks “was what he had accomplished flying the at 53rd Street in Manhattan on THE FIRST-EVER SOUND ognizable as the Mickey of today. He piece of work,” eight minutes that had the of his day, always win- Atlantic. But Mickey wasn’t Lindy—he November 18, 1928, a date that would cartoon had Mickey behind doesn’t speak, but his laugh proves con- the audience applauding. Enthusiasm ning, gallant, and swashbuckling,” was Doug Fairbanks.” become fixed in Disney lore as Mickey the wheel of a riverboat in tagious. In the darkness of the Colony radiated outward from that one the- “Steamboat Willie” (1928), an ater, like ripples on a pond. Within Iwerks noted. “Mickey’s action was in By the time “Steamboat Willie” was Mouse’s birthday. From the very begin- eight-minute short that critics Theatre, as the audience at one of the that vein. He was never intended to completed (with Walt doing the voices, ning—the title card, on which Mickey is and audiences immediately showings howled around him, Disney two weeks, “Steamboat Willie” was be a sissy, he was always an adventur- including Mickey’s laugh), Mickey tipping his hat to a smitten Minnie—he adored. Mickey stars alongside watched the screen through tears. exhibited at New York’s Roxy Theatre, ous character. I thought of him in that Mouse was poised to become the sec- is a dashing screen star. Minnie as the pair turn a goat The main feature that night—Gang the world’s largest theater at the time. (who has eaten Minnie’s sheet respect, and I had him do naturally the ond American aviator to bewitch The film opens on Mickey, whistling music) into an instrument, at War, starring Jack Pickford and Olive Its reception, and the shorts that fol- sort of thing Doug Fairbanks would do. the world and gain lasting renown. at the wheel of a steamboat. As in “Plane one point cranking its tail and Borden—would go down in history lowed (including “Plane Crazy” and “Some people got the idea that in Fairbanks’s film career went into Crazy,” Mickey’s costars are a menagerie causing the goat to belt musical only for its opening act. “Steamboat “The Gallopin’ Gaucho,” now both notes—high comedy in the late ‘Plane Crazy,’ Mickey was patterned decline with the advent of sound, but of barnyard animals: A cow with a swol- 1920s that holds up pretty well Willie” was instantly a smash. He was retrofitted with syncopated sound) after Lindbergh,” Iwerks continued. in a way, through Mickey Mouse, he len udder, squawking chickens, and today. (Spoiler alert: Mickey’s born on a train, yes, but Mickey came accorded Mickey (and by extension “Well, Lindy flew the Atlantic, but he would remain a star forever. high-heeled Minnie, batting her lashes. not the boat’s true captain.) to life on a riverboat. Disney himself) a level of artistic

18 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 NOT YET 30 YEARS OLD, Disney began building his empire at his Hyperion Avenue offices in Los Angeles, with Mickey as his leading man. Here, man and mouse posed in front of the offices in 1929. Right: Mickey greeted passersby from atop the studio building.

prestige that transcended cartoons. for the Central New Jersey Home News. “Critics came to see in Mickey Mouse “Mickey is as adorably funny as ever in a blend of Charlie Chaplin in his cham- ‘Steamboat Willie,’ the Mickey Moose pioning of the underdog, Douglas sound cartoon.” Fairbanks in his rascally adventurous By the time that review appeared, spirit, and Fred Astaire in his grace and on November 24, 1929, Mickey had a freedom from gravity’s laws.” So reads true voice, and things to say. In “The the catalogue in the Museum of Modern Karnival Kid,” released that year, the Art, where “Steamboat Willie” is hon- Mouse makes a joyous exclamation— ored as an important piece in the 20th “Hot dogs!” It’s about as all-Ameri- century canon, alongside Dalí’s melting can as first words can be. Eighty-nine clocks and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. years later, “Hot dog, hot dog, hot It was still in theaters a year after diggity-dog,” is still the catchphrase release, and its breakthrough in sound for , on the was hardly its only virtue. “The new- , whose logo contains est sensation in cartoons . . . ‘Steamboat the outline of Mickey’s head. The years Willie’ is perhaps the funniest car- in between those “hot dogs” have been, toon ever made and it keeps the audi- to put it mildly, quite a run. ence roaring from beginning to end” In 1929, when Mickey first spoke, went a typical review, in the Wilkes- and the stock market crashed, and

MARC WANAMAKER/BISON ARCHIVES (2) Barre Record. Such was the universal the jazz age that the Mouse seemed acclaim for “Steamboat Willie” that to embody came to an end, a man even reviewers who had never seen the approached Disney in the lobby of a film—or perhaps didn’t quite compre- New York hotel and asked for the right hend what they were seeing—praised to put the Mouse on children’s writing it without reservation: “Mickey Moose! tablets. Needing the money, Walt and Just the mention of Mickey’s name is Roy Disney (Walt’s brother, who was a assurance that the theater party will cofounder and partner in their produc- be a success,” wrote the correspondent tion company) agreed to a fee of $300.

20 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 21 AFTER “STEAMBOAT WILLIE,” Mickey Mouse went on to star in some 120 animated shorts, with Walt providing his voice until 1946. At left, an animator works on cels for a film. In addition to character voices, the film soundtracks included music captured in studio, shown here.

And thus began the marketing of Mickey merchandise that would never abate. There quickly followed to Disney’s door a parade of doll makers, toy makers, and clothing manufac- turers. By 1930, a for was appearing in newspapers around the world. In the very first strip, drawn by Ub Iwerks, Mickey is in bed, dreaming of flight. But of course he was already soaring.

FROM A STUCCO STUDIO AT 2719 HYPERION AVENUE IN the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, a staff of 55 artists, animators, and writers was now turning out 20-odd pictures a year, in addition to the books and comic strips and other Mickey ephemera the world craved. “It undoubtedly is the smallest studio to turn out a product of world-wide inter- est,” wrote a reporter in 1930, and atop that Mission-style building was a billboard identifying the ten- ants within: “Walt Disney Studios Mickey Mouse and Sound Cartoons.” At the top of the sign, Mickey waved to passing motorists. Walt Disney was turning 29 years old and Mickey Mouse was two. The man didn’t yet have any children, but it was time for the Mouse to start a family. BILD/GETTY (2) EWING GALLOWAY/ULLSTEIN

22 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 23 MUSIC AND SINGING IN EARLY films have a certain charm to them, often thanks to a live and occasionally uneven chorus providing the vocals. Metaphorically at least, Mickey Here, Walt, second from left, and Minnie produced their first off- and Ub Iwerks, to the right of spring in 1930. In a cartoon called “The Mickey, joined the choir. Chain Gang,” Mickey is a fugitive, pursued by a pair of forlorn blood- hounds who escape their leashes and end up in jail with the Mouse. One of these dogs would appear again, as Minnie’s pet, Rover, before getting a new name—and a lasting identity—as Mickey’s faithful companion in “.” This time, the dog was called , for the ninth planet, newly discovered a year before the cartoon’s release, in May of 1931. Soon after, a tall, vest-wearing canine named Dippy Dawg arrived, in “Mickey’s Revue.” He was quickly rechristened and reshaped. His full

 Disney was 28 and Mickey Mouse was two. The man didn’t yet have any children, but it was time for the Mouse to start a family.  name has been given variously as George Geef and Goofus D. Dawg, but for decades he has answered only to Goofy. And though Goofy is a rustic bumpkin whose signature exclamation is “Gawrsh,” he does wear clothes and walks upright, as distinct from Pluto, who wears only a dog collar and walks on all fours. Why one dog is anthropo- morphized while the other is a domes- ticated pet is a question long debated by metaphysicians and theologians of the Disney cosmology. Goofy’s shoes looked ill-fitting, with a hole in the sole, and his fedora was squashed—squawrshed?—so that he seemed the physical embodiment of Depression-era American make-do. It was as if Mickey Mouse, Hollywood star, was accumulating an entourage. l ARCHIVES MARC WANAMAKER/BISON

24 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 25 “,” AN animated short from 1935, was the first Mouse film in color. Like earlier shorts,it was well-received by critics. Esquire wrote that “[no] works produced in America at the same time in all the other arts can stand comparison with © WALT DISNEY PICTURES, COURTESY PHOTOFEST COURTESY PHOTOFEST DISNEY PICTURES, © WALT this one.”

A MOUSE TAKES OFF A seminal parade float, an Oscar-winning turn, a far-flung club of devotees, and merchandise galore: There was no stopping Mickey

26 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 27 DAILY HERALD ARCHIVE/SSPL/GETTY

y 1931,” notes Bob Thomas, in Walt Disney: An American Original, “ had a million members, and Mickey was known in every civilized country in the world.” That fan club had branches meeting at theaters across the nation every Saturday to screen Mickey’s films. The Mouse had become, among many other things, a wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s in London, proof of his growing fame. And that fameB was unmistakably global. In the 1931 film Around the World in 80 Minutes, Douglas Fairbanks, the greatest male star of the silent era, circles the globe to show life in Asia. © WALT DISNEY CO./COURTESY EVERETT DISNEY CO./COURTESY © WALT The film contains an animated sequence in which Mickey Mouse dances to Siamese music. The Mouse that Disney THE 1929 ANIMATED FILM “THE inhabitants, who then turn the kids—like these British children scary creatures and often harsh Haunted House” found Mickey place into a party. The dialogue watching a Mickey film in 1934, consequences. Considering had based on Fairbanks was now required by Fairbanks in a world of trouble—stuck, in the short, voiced by Disney, opposite—were the intended many of the most popular Disney to reflect his glory back at him. after seeking shelter from bad includes Mickey screaming audience and enjoyed many of films in the following decades weather, in an abandoned house out “Mammy!” like Al Jolson in Disney’s films, the overtones and and those made today, it’s clear Mickey was bigger now than Fairbanks, but in fairness, and forced to play music for its 1927’s The Jazz Singer. While themes were often dark, with that some things never change.

28 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 29 MICKEY WENT TO LONDON, where, in 1931, hundreds of would-be voters braved chilly temperatures to watch a the Mouse was bigger than any star in Mickey Mouse short as part of cinema, bigger than any star cinema a campaign stop by Sir William had ever seen. , founded Ray, a conservative politician in England. by stars of the previous decade, includ- ing Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, signed a deal with Disney to distribute 18 Mickey Mouse shorts and 13 Silly Symphony cartoons for the 1932–1933 season. “United Artists is an organi- zation only for the biggest stars,” said studio boss Joseph Schenck. “Mickey Mouse, however, is different. Disney has created a character whose type has never been equaled in motion picture history.” In recognition of the Mouse’s sin- gular status in worldwide cinema, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts

 Mickey was the biggest star in cinema. Indeed, said a studio boss, he was “a character whose type has never been equaled in motion picture.” 

and Sciences awarded Walt Disney its first ever “special” Oscar, for the cre- ation of Mickey Mouse. Walt also won an Oscar—this one also the first of its kind— for best animated short sub- ject for his film “,” the first film produced in the full- color three-strip process. At the ceremony, Academy president Conrad Nagel said “Hollywood owes more to Disney for its relief from the stress of depression than to any other cinema agency.” And while the ensuing applause was nice, Walt and Roy Disney—constantly FOX PHOTOS/HULTON/GETTY cash-strapped to fund their next film— were eager to capitalize financially on Mickeymania. Toward that end, they were called in 1932 by Kansas City marketing and advertising executive Herman (Kay) Kamen, who proposed

30 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 31 33 CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 CONTINUED ON PAGE So swift and thorough was Mickey Mickey was So swift and thorough THAT SAME YEAR, 1934, IN A DISNEY DISNEY A IN 1934, YEAR, SAME THAT Silly Symphony cartoon called “The Symphony Silly character title the Hen,” Little Wise of the troubled watch company turned company watch troubled the of buoyed later, decades (Three around. Mouse Mickey the its success with by thriving was Ingersoll timepieces, Timex.) name: brand new its under to enormous riches The deal brought Kamen, who and to Disneys, the Timex, Azores the in crash plane a in killed was in 1949. six 1934, by that conquest, Mouse’s Colony at the his debut after years colos- an inflated he was Theatre, (and astride sus astride Manhattan Macy’s the in float a world)—as the Not every parade. Day Thanksgiving was brand Mickey’s extending at effort became were that a success, but those everywhere. known Nevertheless, the Disney brothers brothers Disney the Nevertheless, merchandising the Mouse on mani- on Mouse the merchandising hair- to wallpaper from products, fold brushes. By one account, Kamen had - over his into savings life his sewn jour- a two-night train coat, taken awake stayed and Los to Angeles, ney thwart to journey the throughout asleep in his he fell As a result, thieves. Roy. and Walt meeting with 50-50 split Kamen—a a deal with struck struck Kamen quickly of profits—and Ingersoll-Waterbury the a deal with of Waterbury, Company Watch put would Ingersoll Connecticut. on wristwatches likeness Mickey’s were The watches watches. and pocket Century Chicago 1933 the at introduced Exposition so sold and of Progress of depths (in the and so quickly well wristwatch the Depression, Great the watch pocket and the $2.95, for went and a half) fortunes cost a buck the that

IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON TO TO UNCOMMON NOT IT WAS and Minnie see folks in Mickey the country, costumes around and time and what better place than while out for a New on the Ocean City, stroll in 1932? boardwalk Jersey, Indeed, the face of Disney’s budding kingdom—donned with Walt, above, by children, becoming in 1935—was center, ubiquitous. HAYNES ARCHIVE/POPPERFOTO/GETTY ARCHIVE/POPPERFOTO/GETTY HAYNES

COURTESY EVERETT NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE/GETTY

IN 1934, MICKEY MOUSE MADE “Parade was so large this year cover of Time magazine, having his debut in the Macy’s it took an hour to pass,” wrote garnered international fame. Thanksgiving Day Parade, a photographer. (The 2017 The very next year, he and the his figure floating above parade took three hours.) In gang decided to try their luck Manhattan’s West Side from December 1954, Walt Disney opening a small theme park in 110th Street to 34th Street. and his characters graced the Southern California.

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YOU KNOW YOU’VE MADE IT when someone in Germany has transformed your face into a camera (right). And Mickey wasn’t a selfish mouse; he brought his entourage with him—Goofy and pals rode, er, drove the merchandise wave all the way to the bank. BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33 seeks help in planting her corn. First in 1934, the Mickey vehicle “Orphan’s Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Pluto have the hen asks Peter Pig, who declines, Benefit,” in which Donald is intro- become known as the Sensational Six, and then she asks a in a sailor duced by Mickey onstage at a benefit for the foundational characters of every suit. And while he also refuses to help, an audience of orphans. “Introducing Disney film, park, sun hat, and T-shirt, something in the bird’s voice, and his ,” Mickey says, “reciting though in the early animated shorts apparent fealty to the U.S. Navy, cap- ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’” and Clarabelle tured the imagination of the public. As From the start, Donald had issues Cow are also briefly incandescent. Peter Pig and faded with anger management, impulse con- Together, Donald and Daisy into obscurity, Donald Duck would trol, and enunciation. It would be six spawned their own extensive fam- join Minnie Mouse, Pluto, and Goofy more years (in “Mr. Duck Steps Out”) ily tree of relatives and even fore- as another star in Mickey’s firmament. before Donald got his . bears, most prominent among them Where Mickey wore pants and As with Mickey and Minnie, Donald the nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie nothing else, Donald dressed in a and Daisy are nearly identical, save for and the parsimonious sailor suit without the pants. The pair the addition of long lush lashes, and a McDuck, who enjoys diving into and first appeared on-screen together in bow in hair or feathers. As an extended swimming through his vast reservoir the Duck’s second star turn, released animated family, Mickey, Minnie, of gold coins, something Walt Disney MARK KAUFFMAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY

36 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 MICKEY’S BEEN LIVING ON OUR wrists since the 1930s. Still popular today, some timepieces list for around $29.95 on Disney’s website, and others, like one women’s gold Invicta, complete with 49 diamonds and of course the Mouse himself, will only set you back $859.95. THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES/COURTESY EVERETT

was not yet able to do. beginning to wane. The medium that By the late 1930s, Mickey Mouse made him famous, cinema, was by now was not simply the alias of movie stars one of dozens of platforms on which signed into hotel registries, he and Mickey performed. Walt had for three Donald were a household reference in years been consumed by the production the movies themselves. Asked by the of and the , constable in Bringing Up Baby who Disney’s first feature-length film, at a his accomplice was in a robbery, Cary cost of nearly $1.5 million. After it was Grant replies: “Mickey-the-Mouse and finally released, in 1937, to popular- Donald-the-Duck.” ity and acclaim—it briefly became the “Make note of their names,” says the highest-grossing film in history—Walt officer to a doctor. “Now you’re begin- turned his gaze back to Mickey. ning to talk. We’re getting someplace.” He set about producing a cinematic The policeman is an imbecile, the comeback of sorts, originally conceived INGERSOLL/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES audience knows, because he doesn’t as a Silly Symphony set to classical recognize the names of the most rec- music, before it eventually grew into ognizable figures on earth. a full-length feature. Disney hired Bringing Up Baby was released in British conductor 1938, and despite Mickey’s global ubiq- to conduct the music in the film, which uity Walt Disney feared that Mickey’s aspired to finer art than Mickey’s usual

popularity on the big screen was . Indeed, Mickey would be MARK KAUFFMAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY

38 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 NOT NEARLY AS REVERED OR remembered as his younger the only recognizable Disney charac- brother Walt, Roy Disney still ter in the film, and his scene would be made plenty of hay in his day— based on a poem by the German writer he is credited with cofounding the Disney company and served Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In it, as president and chairman of the Mouse is apprenticed to a wizard the board. It was Roy who in named Yen Sid—Disney in reverse. 1923 lent Walt $250 to help open the Hollywood office. Like the film stars he had eclipsed, Mickey was now headlining a “major motion picture.” At the dawn of a new decade, 12 years after “Steamboat Willie,” this film too would premier at the Colony, now rechristened the Broadway Theatre: Fantasia was “a completely revolutionary medium of screen expression,” as the Brooklyn Eagle called it. The 125-minute film was made up of eight animated segments. Mickey was in only that one scene, but

 The Disneys met a marketing executive who proposed merchandising the Mouse on products, from wallpaper to hairbrushes. 

what a scene it was, as the sorcerer’s apprentice, enchanting a broomstick— and a hushed theater. Walt Disney’s concerns about Mickey’s dipping pop- ularity on screen were allayed. Fantasia was a reminder that in little more than a single tumultuous decade, Mickey Mouse had bewitched the world.

FROM THE MOMENT HE FIRST ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION appeared on a screen, Mickey reflected the times. During the Christmas sea- son of 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression, “Mickey’s Good Deed” found Mickey and Pluto busking for change with a stand-up bass beneath a bent street lamp. When Mickey and Pluto approach the Elite Restaurant for a meal, they find that the cup in which they thought they’d been collect- ing coins has been filled by passersby

40 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 41 RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE/MARY EVANS RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE/MARY

with nuts and bolts. They trudge into increasingly desperate ways: Rifle, the snow forlorn and unfed, but not jumping from a bridge, noose. For better before Pluto licks the restaurant’s pic- and worse, in papers and on-screen— ture window. and, yes, on those wristwatches mark- Earlier that year, Mickey partici- ing the passage of time—Mickey was pated in the “Barnyard ,” reflecting the American experience. concurrent with the 1932 Summer And so it was only natural that Olympics in Los Angeles. As with Mickey Mouse was pressed into ser- live-action films, animated shorts vice during World War II. Mickey, were used during the Depression to Minnie, Donald, and Pluto urged bolster hopes and boost consumer Americans to buy war bonds, among spending. In 1933’s “Confidence,” the many other things. Children’s gas Great Depression descends on a town masks had Mickey’s face painted on dump in the form of an evil spirit. Our them in an effort—not altogether suc- hero, Disney’s prodigal son Oswald cessful, it must be said—to make any the Lucky Rabbit, abandons a run imminent chemical gas attack look on the bank to travel to Washington, benign. Fun, even. D.C., where President Franklin D. But Mickey’s most enduring con- Roosevelt (in cartoon form) tells tribution to the war effort was a series him: “Confidence can lick this whole of animated films in which he and his Depression . . . Smile, grin, laugh right pals exhorted Americans to pull their FANTASIA DEBUTED IN 1940 TO out loud, and watch the golden sun- weight during World War II. In “Out critical acclaim and remains one shine scatter every cloud.” It’s not hard of the Frying Pan into the Firing Line,” of the highest-grossing films of all HART PRESTON/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION to remember that Mickey and Oswald made for the Conservation Division of time, with estimates around $760 million in today’s dollars. Here, share a biological father. The physi- the U.S. War Production Board in 1942, audiences gathered for the Brazilian cal resemblance of the two characters, Minnie is making bacon and eggs, and premier in Rio de Janeiro in 1941. even then, remained uncanny. about to pour the skillet drippings into Across eight animated segments, over a thousand artists and And yet the same Mickey Mouse, in Pluto’s dish, when the radio blares: technicians contributed to the film, another medium, had a far grimmer “Don’t throw away that bacon grease! along with a 100-man orchestra, led experience in the Great Depression. Housewives of America, one of the by conductor Leopold Stokowski One installment of his syndicated most important things you can do is (with Mickey, in the film), opposite. newspaper comic strip depicted to save your waste kitchen fats. Bacon Mickey trying to take his own life, in grease, meat drippings, frying fats . . . a

42 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 43 BETTMANN/GETTY

skillet of bacon grease is a little muni- was not classified 4-F by the U.S. tions factory. Meat drippings sink Axis Army and made the recruiting short warships.” “” (1942). He hec- Saving fat—glycerine—for use tors Americans into paying their taxes in explosives was something every in “The Spirit of ’43” (1943), costar- American could do. Instead of eat- ring that captain of industry, Scrooge ing it, Pluto brings the bacon grease McDuck. “Now what are you going to to an Official Fat Collection Station. do?” asks the narrator, as a profligate Mickey’s only appearance in the hoodlum blows his money on ciga- short was in a framed portrait that rettes, every puff sending up a swastika- Pluto gazes upon: the Mouse in GI shaped cloud of smoke. “Spend for the WALT DISNEY HOLDS THE gear, fighting abroad with his fellow Axis? Or save for taxes? Just remember: individual record for most American men. Every dollar you spend for something , winning 32 On posters, in films, in advertise- you don’t need is a dollar spent to help gold statues between 1931 and 1968. In 1939, ments, Mickey urged the saving of the Axis.” presented Walt with one regular scrap metal, rubber, paper, and rags. An animated starred and seven smaller customized He urged constant vigilance in a series in “Stop That Tank!” a Disney propa- statues for his work on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, of slogans: “Keep Awake,” “Remember ganda film that depicts the Führer as above. Opposite: Disney holds Pearl Harbor,” “It CAN Happen Here!” an effeminate buffoon, consigned by four of his Oscars at the awards

Despite his webbed feet, Donald Duck Canadian anti-tank rifles to a fiery hell, ceremony in 1954. GEORGE SILK/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

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where he weeps before the devil. Satan Walt stopped voicing the mouse and looks to camera and laughs, mock- instructed a Disney sound-effects man pouting: “Adolf says it isn’t fair.” named Jimmy Macdonald to take over. The films paralleled the war. In He would be Mickey’s falsetto spokes- “” (1944), Donald para- man for the next three decades. THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES/COURTESY EVERETT chuted into Asia to fight the Japanese. Of course, Mickey would also con- Indeed, POWs held by Japanese captors tinue to speak for himself in speech at the Santo Tomas internment camp in bubbles in his popular comic books, the Philippines reported that “Mickey during the golden age of comic books Mouse” was the name the locals gave in the 1950s. In one of those, “Mickey to Japanese currency. “The name still Mouse and the Medicine Man” (1951), puzzles me,” said one, “for the Filipinos Mickey and Goofy are sales reps flog- love Mickey Mouse,” while they didn’t ging an amphetamine-like wonder love the Japanese money. drug called Peppo. And indeed, despite Throughout the war, Mickey Mouse the approaching domestic upheaval was a frequent stand-in for America of the civil rights movement, and the around the world. “As American troops continuing injustice of Jim Crow, post- LIKE THE UNITED STATES, invaded the Normandy beaches in war America in pop culture remained Mickey couldn’t avoid France that June,” wrote Neal Gabler a long green fairway of Eisenhower- World War II either. Walt helped design a gas mask for in Walt Disney: The Triumph of the era prosperity, a nation made happy children, top, and the Mouse American Imagination, “at Allied head- by some over-the-counter wonder made his rounds in the sky, quarters the code name for the opera- drink—Peppo—that promised a bliss- on missions all over Europe, opposite. His buddy Donald tion was ‘Mickey Mouse.’” ful escape. Duck, meanwhile, was busy With the end of the war came Soon, Mickey would be among the messing with Adolf Hitler in the end of an era for Mickey. In 1946, most popular stars of the small screen, “Der Fuehrer’s Face.” POPPERFOTO/GETTY CONTINUED ON PAGE 51 46 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 47 © WALT DISNEY CO./COURTESY EVERETT

EARLY ON, WALT DISNEY’S to help the government however Disney created the film Victory and nine out of every 10 of his view of World War II was akin to he could, mostly through Through Air Power, a 65-minute employees contributed in some that of the youngest members propaganda posters (above), Technicolor documentary that way. A price was paid. By 1945, of his worldwide audience—he comics (opposite), and films crashed at the box office. (It still Disney’s wartime productions didn’t really have a clue what was featuring Mickey and the gang earned a Oscar nomination for and their disappointing box going on. “What war?” he asked that reminded Americans there the film’s musical score.) In all, office numbers had left the earnestly when questioned how were enemies who needed to be Disney’s studio reportedly made studio cash-strapped. “We’re the overseas fighting might stopped. Hitler was a frequent more than 400,000 feet of film— through with caviar,” said a sour affect the studio. After Pearl target, and the American flag a that’s 68 continuous hours—to Walt. “From now on, it’s mashed

Harbor, however, Walt went all-in constant source of pride. In 1943, support the U.S. Army’s efforts, potatoes and gravy.” THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES/COURTESY EVERETT

48 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 49 MARC WANAMAKER/BISON ARCHIVES ARCHIVES MARC WANAMAKER/BISON

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 46 as well. In 1955 the ABC television net- Hollywood luminaries. “The stars of work debuted the Mouseketeers’ own Walt Disney’s daily ABC-TV show, The show called The Mickey Mouse Club. Mickey Mouse Club, are so popular that The unknown child performers of the even monthly rumors sweep the coun- program—Cubby, Annette, and numer- try that they have been demolished in a ous others—quickly became household car crash,” reported the United Press in names. Their theme song, written by 1957, noting that only Bing Crosby had the show’s adult host, , been previously honored with similar became an earwig for the ages— rumors spread in the hope of inducing “Who’s the leader of the club that’s mass hysteria. made for you and me? M-I-C, K-E-Y, Other Hollywood stars of the time, M-O-U-S-E, Mickey Mouse.” such as James Mason and Dorothy The closing lines were even more McGuire, told the wire service that familiar: “M-I-C (See ya real soon), their children pined to appear on the K-E-Y (Why? Because we like you), program with their heroes and her-

DISNEY/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK M-O-U-S-E . . .” sang oines. Mickey Mouse had endeared THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB— the theme in his lounge act. Chicago himself to American children in their with its original Mouseketeers, seen above with Walt—began in Blackhawks fans would serenade their own living rooms, on a medium dwarf- October 1955 and gave rising star player, Stan “Mouse” Mikita, with ing all others. The Mickey Mouse Club teen stars such as Annette a chant of “M-I-K, I-T-A, M-O-U-S-E, proved so popular that 10 million chil- Funicello (opposite) a chance to jump-start their careers on a Mikita Mouse.” dren watched it. one-hour variety television show The Mouseketeers themselves Along with its success, the Disney that first aired on ABC. received more fan mail than most studio didn’t expect its multipart

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show about the adventures of American frontiers- man Davy Crockett to become an instant national sensation. The show’s star, Fess Parker, was elevated to fame in the span of a few weeks. By one estimate, Disney sold $300 million dollars’ worth of Davy Crockett coonskin caps, lunch boxes, and wrist- watches before the end of 1955. TV sold coonskin caps and Mickey Mouse ears, and made Mouseketeer a film star, a pre- Beatles who set off a frenzy wherever she went. Checking into the Hotel Loraine in Madison, Wisconsin, Funicello received 200 phone calls, over- whelming the switchboard. Fan mail came “in five- foot stacks” for the teen from Utica, New York, who THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB’S as a toddler had moved to Southern California with humble roots were on full display in the 1950s, with her mother and auto mechanic father. A 12-year-old Walt often showing up on boy in Chicago wrote to her: “This probably sounds set (opposite, top) as the crazy but I dream about you every night. Some nights youngsters were just finding LOOMIS PICTURE COLLECTION (2) DEAN/LIFE/THE their footing. Among the I can’t sleep for thinking about you.” hundreds of hopefuls in 1955, Mickey Mouse had lifted Minnie and Donald and the studio chose only a few kids Goofy to stardom, and now he was producing liv- to join the Club. But the show ing, breathing idols through The Mickey Mouse Club. wasn’t a get-out-of-school-free card; California law required In doing so, he further cemented Walt’s stature as a all juvenile performers to captain of industry as well as an artist. And that all attend at least three hours of happened almost concurrently with perhaps the school per day, above. And it’s tough to ignore an obvious most dramatic extension of Mickey’s empire, one that commonality in the early would symbolize so much about America in the 1950s, Mickey Mouse Club years: All the the self-described Happiest Place on Earth. l Mouseketeers were white.

52 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 53 MICKEY AND MINNIE ALWAYS outshine any guest, no matter which commander-in-chief may be present. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Reagan greeted the pair at . Ronald Reagan, of course, was no stranger to showbiz—the 40th President appeared in dozens of films before turning to politics. Mickey &

the Presidents THE WHITE HOUSE? BEEN THERE. CONNECT WITH A DOZEN DIFFERENT COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF? DONE THAT.

ong before Disney World had a Hall of Presidents—a display featuring animatronic avatars of all 45 U.S. commanders-in-chief, orating robotically in an air-conditioned simulacrum of Independence Hall in Philadelphia—Mickey Mouse was in regular proximity to the occupant of the Oval Office. The Mouse was born during the Coolidge administration, and almost from the moment of his debut, Mickey was proposed as a presidential candidate Lhimself. Irving Caesar, the Broadway lyricist who wrote “Tea for Two,” had a novelty song during the Hoover administration and the Depression that went: “He’ll show us all what can be done when he’s in Washington / So let’s give the good old White House to tricky, wacky, wicky Bolsheviky Mickey Mouse.” Instead, the White House went in 1932 to one of Mickey’s most ardent fans, Franklin Roosevelt. “Mr. Roosevelt’s favorite moving picture is ‘Mickey Mouse,’” a wire service reporter wrote from Washington, D.C., in 1933. “At the executive mansion [in] Albany [when he was governor of New York], ‘Mickey Mouse’ was always the concluding picture at the private movie show and that rule obtains at the White House.” Roosevelt sometimes playfully called Raymond Moley, his economic adviser, “Mickey Mouse” and eagerly awaited each new Mickey release. Often an advance print was sent straight from the Disney film laboratory to the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Walt Disney, calling FDR “one of the devotees of Mickey Mouse,” a creature who provided them both with “many delightful evenings.” BETTMANN/GETTY

54 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 55 USC LIBRARIES/CORBIS/GETTY BETTMANN/GETTY

Harry Truman, FDR’s successor, was a colossal moments on the world stage. It frequently used pejorative of the Ronald celebrate his Points of Light volunteer fan too, and would visit Disneyland with was at Disney World, in 1973, speaking Reagan administration. The President’s program in 1991. Two years later, when a his wife, Bess, as a former President. on national TV to a convention of political strategist Lyn Nofziger often reporter from Reuters posed a question Dwight D. Eisenhower likewise waited newspaper editors, that President wore a Mickey Mouse tie, and Reagan in a press conference to President Bill until he was out of office. Richard Nixon announced to America: retained a genuine fondness for Mickey, Clinton, the President complimented In July of 1961, as the cold war “I am not a crook.” Nine years later, in his former show-business colleague. The the man on his Mickey Mouse necktie. escalated—just after the Bay of Pigs exile, Nixon visited the Magic Kingdom President and First Lady were greeted “Great tie!” he said. “I wish the American and before the Cuban Missile Crisis— again, posing with Mickey Mouse and by Mickey and Minnie—who were people could see that tie.” So the reporter removed the tie and gave it to the newspaper of the Communist party declaring, somewhat less famously: IN SIMPLER TIMES, THEN VICE decked out in Uncle Sam and Colonial in East Germany, Freiheit, alleged that “You haven’t seen the world until you’ve President Richard Nixon, regalia—for the Memorial Day parade Clinton, who put it on, knotting Mickey Mickey Mouse was a U.S. secret agent, seen Disney World.” wife Patricia, and family at Disney World in 1985. Alighting from and the presidency together once again. serving at the behest of the Kennedy President Jimmy Carter hosted members (above) took a spin their limousine, the First Couple were By then it was clear that Mickey— administration. In this conspiracy a 50th birthday party at the White in Disneyland in the sum- embraced by the cartoon First Couple, unencumbered by age or term limits— theory, Mickey was urging communist House in 1978 for Mickey, who came mer of 1955; ten years later, then surrounded by reporters. might be the historical figure to meet John Kennedy Jr. and Mickey kids to clip coupons from Mickey Mouse skipping into the East Room holding discussed official business “Is this the first time you’ve kissed the most U.S. Presidents. The honor comics and mail them in to Disney, hands with 11-year-old Amy Carter, at the World’s Fair (opposite, a mouse?” one journalist asked the of the meetings belonged not only to complete with their parents’ names and the First Daughter, as a band played top). In 1978, Mickey headed President after he’d given Minnie a peck. him, but to the Presidents themselves. addresses—ostensibly for membership “Heigh-Ho.” The President was merely to the White House (opposite, “This mouse, yes,” Reagan replied. In 2012, Barack Obama visited Disney in the Mickey Mouse Club but really returning a favor, for three months bottom) to celebrate his 50th To which his wife, Nancy, said with mock World and gazed at the statue of Walt birthday with President Jimmy as a census for West-loving, would-be earlier, Mickey had hosted Amy for a Carter, who, coincidentally, consternation: “I’ll see you inside.” and Mickey that greeted him. “It’s great defectors. visit to at Disney World. was at the time enjoying an President George H.W. Bush joined to meet a world leader,” the President

In truth, Mickey was present for Mickey Mouse was a favorite and approval rating of 50 percent. AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK Mickey on stage at Epcot Center to said, “who has bigger ears than me.” l

56 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 57 ALLAN GRANT/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION PICTURE COLLECTION ALLAN GRANT/LIFE/THE

THE HOUSE THAT MOUSE BUILT

It was time for Mickey’s spiritual reach to take physical shape. In America, and the world

SOME 70 MILLION PEOPLE tuned in when on July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, a first-of-its-kind theme park that cost Walt Disney $17 million to build. Construction took one year and one day to complete.

58 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 uch like his fan Queen Elizabeth II, Mickey Mouse required a residence commensu- rate with his power and reach, his exalted status in the world. It would not quite be a kingdom—well, not yet, anyway—but a $17 million showcase for his achieve- ments and ambitions. And so, on July 17, 1955, on 160 acres previously occupied by orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim, California, DISNEYLAND’S UNVEILING DisneylandM opened. wasn’t all roses—what the telecast didn’t show was many With the actor Ronald Reagan emceeing in the park, of the park’s rides not ready for use, ’s Flight and a nationwide television audience watched the very first Rocket to the Moon among them, disappointing loads of Main Street Parade, featuring a brand-new troupe of child kids. And, with the park expect- performers called the Mouseketeers. There was a Mickey ing just 15,000 guests, officials weren’t prepared when nearly Mouse Club Theater, showing 3-D cartoons, and a Mickey double that number showed. Many had counterfeit tickets, Mouse Club Circus, with live animals beneath a big top. and some nonpaying patrons ABC’s 90-minute special coverage of the big day simply jumped fences to take a spin on a teacup (above) or ride opened with a shot of Mickey’s head, rendered in flowers, the train (right). DEAN/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION (2) LOOMIS

60 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 61 CONDUCTOR MICKEY TAKES WALT and others for a ride in Disneyland (opposite). And while you were always guaranteed a Mickey sighting at the park, it also wasn’t that unusual to see Walt, here in 1960, driving through town. ALLAN GRANT/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

in front of the Disneyland and Santa Fe between the United States and the hand. When Princess Grace of Monaco railroad station. “That’s Mickey Mouse,” Soviet Union, a bit of news went out visited that same World’s Fair pavilion said host Art Linkletter, “the inimitable over the Associated Press wire. A with her daughter Princess Caroline, little character that started this whole 10-year-old boy in West Berlin had tried the younger royal also met Mickey. It story with Walt Disney, 25 years ago, 120 times to send his Mickey Mouse did not go unnoticed that she curtsied perhaps the most popular motion pic- comic books to his 10-year-old cousin a to him. ture star in Hollywood.” few miles away in East Berlin, where the Two years after it opened, books were banned. Under a new agree- WALT DISNEY DIED ON DECEMBER 15, Disneyland had received 10 million ment that allowed families divided by 1966, a month after having part of his visitors, nearly half of them from out- the Berlin Wall to visit one another at left lung removed. He was 65, and the side California, and had become the Christmastime, Lutz Graue and Ralph world lionized him for “having brought number-one tourist attraction in the Altmann were reunited for the holidays. more pleasure to more people than any United States. The former Ingersoll The first thing Lutz told Ralph after two man who ever lived.” watch company—now named U.S. and a half years apart? “I’m sorry you He won 32 Oscars, more than any Time, and rebranded as Timex in didn’t get the Mickey Mouse comic other person in history. His most 1969—presented Walt with the 25 mil- books I sent you.” famous offspring—“the little fellow that lionth Mickey Mouse watch in produc- This was a month after President won the world”—was Mickey Mouse, tion. The Mouse remained relevant, Kennedy had been assassinated in for whom Disney received his first emblematic of the tumultuous times, Dallas, and it was 16 months before John Academy Award. Mickey, inevitably, at once part of the culture and a some- Kennedy Jr. visited Mickey at the Pepsi- received a still-living eulogy alongside time target of the rising counterculture. Cola Pavilion at the New York World’s his creator, described as “the mouse that Two days before Christmas of 1963, Fair, delight lighting up the boy’s face roared” who united the world by “tran- near the height of cold war tensions as he shook the Mouse’s white-gloved scending race and nationality.” ARCHIVES MARC WANAMAKER/BISON

62 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 63 THE ICONIC STRUCTURE OF Disney World in Orlando, , stands at 189 feet tall with 27 towers. And, wouldn’t you know, its grandfather clock always reads 11:59 p.m. (Hmm, wonder why?) Opposite, Julie Andrews (you know, ) danced on Main Street as part of the park’s grand opening in 1971. NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY NBCU PHOTO

Many obituaries acknowledged a midlife crisis, this would have seemed Wally Schirra wore a Mickey Mouse that the greatest living embodiment to be the time. Some of the coverage of watch on Apollo 7 while in orbit. Goofy of the Disney empire was unmistak- his birthday celebration had the elegiac and Mickey also presented two Soviet ably Mickey Mouse. It was the royal quality of Walt’s obits from two years cosmonauts with Mickey Mouse wrist- right of primogeniture, the passing of earlier. There was much use of the past watches at Disneyland. the crown to the firstborn child.Miami tense: “Mickey Mouse was a television When half a million people gath- News cartoonist Don Wright drew hit, too, with the long-running Mickey ered at Woodstock in 1969, in a mass Mickey, a single tear falling from his Mouse Club for a whole new genera- celebration of youth, some cultural left eye, surrounded by other Disney tion,” went one account. “Today, Mickey observers would note that it was Walt characters, including , Jiminy Mouse is not seen too often on theater Disney who started that youth cul- Cricket, , and Donald Duck, in screens nor on television. But down ture, decades before the birth of rock mourning. in Disneyland a bigger-than-life-size ’n’ roll. “Even Bob Dylan, leading trou- Ad still, as ever, Mickey remained Mickey—a costume with a man named badour of the Woodstock generation, a symbol of America. In 1968, with the Paul Castle inside—cavorts to the agreed in song that the trick is not Vietnam war and its protests in news- delight and joy of small fry.” (as some radical youths of the sixties casts every evening, and the assassi- Mickey, in fact, remained far more insisted) to mistrust anyone over the nations of Martin Luther King Jr. and than a man in a costume; he was more age of thirty, rather to remain ‘forever Robert Kennedy casting a pall over the than the $175,000 display that celebrated young’,” wrote film historian Douglas country, an animated short created his birthday at Donaldson’s department Brode in From Walt to Woodstock: How by Milton Glaser and Lee Savage that store in downtown Minneapolis; more Disney Created the Counterculture. YALE PICTURE COLLECTION JOEL/LIFE/THE looked aesthetically almost identical to than the gala celebration and giant cake If Disney’s Peter Pan was the apothe- “Steamboat Willie” became an under- and 40 character parade at Disneyland; osis of eternal youth, of forever young, ground hit. In it, Mickey Mouse enlists more than the television special devoted it was Mickey Mouse who somehow in the Army, is shipped to Vietnam and, to him on NBC; more than the 300 mil- remained ageless, even in middle age. seconds after disembarking his skiff, lion books he had sold and more than dies in combat, all in the span of little the 68 million guests who had visited FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICAN more than a minute. Disneyland by the start of the year. children growing up in the 1970s, the That same year, Mickey turned 40, Indeed, in 1968, Mickey slipped the gloomy prospect of returning to school and if he was ever to suffer a malaise or surly bonds of Earth itself. Astronaut on Monday morning was softened on

64 LIFE MOSES 65 wistfully: “Boy, they don’t build mice the way they used to.” And it was true. Mickey’s role was now solidly established as a kind of elder statesman, still an enormous star—like Hope himself—but one whose most famous work was perhaps behind him. In July of 1971, three months before opened, Ub Iwerks died of a heart attack in Burbank, California. He was 70. On his death he was lauded for his many achieve- ments, including his contributions to the design of iconic Disneyland attrac- tions It’s a Small World, , and . But the first sentence of every obituary identified Iwerks as a creator of Mickey Mouse.

NC COLLECTIONS/ALAMY So neither Iwerks nor Walt Disney were there for Disney World’s first day. When the great park opened to the public, among the many dignitaries in attendance were Roy Disney and Walt’s widow, Lillian Disney Truyens, who was now remarried to a California real estate developer. As the Florida Today Sunday night by The Wonderful World Bob Hope went on the show and told correspondent noted in her report, of Disney, broadcast on NBC immedi- jokes in the atrium of the Contemporary “Mrs. Truyens almost seemed overshad- ately after dinner. In the warm bath of its Resort Hotel—delivering a monologue owed by her husband’s most famous title sequence, Wonderful World opened from the monorail platform—he intro- character, Mickey Mouse.” Indeed, with waving her wand over duced himself in that NBC special as an there were three Mickey Mouses— everything Disney—Cinderella Castle, “ex-Mouseketeer.” three Mickey Mice?—at the grand the spinning teacups, the monorail, So broad was the Disney empire— opening, not including the audio-ani- the animatronic Abe Lincoln, and, and at the same time such a self-con- matronic Mickey, in a tuxedo, conduct- of course, Mickey Mouse, wearing a tained world—that Hope could perform ing an orchestra of Disney characters. straw boater and carrying a cane and an entire act about the Disney universe. This attraction, in , was tap dancing across the screen, into our He complained that Donald Duck was called the , and living rooms, “in living color.” his roommate at the Contemporary. the orchestra played a litany of greatest On one of those Sunday nights “Did you ever try bathing with a duck hits, among them “Heigh-Ho,” “Whistle in the fall of 1971, the program was who was playing with his rubber man?” While You Work,” and “When You Wish devoted entirely to the grand open- He insinuated that his room-service Upon a Star.” ing of Disney’s new park, in Orlando, waiter, Pluto, had tainted his water. Mickey was literally in coattails, fac- IF ANY TENSIONS REMAINED ing a menagerie of creatures who had Florida. “Just a few miles away from And above all, he marveled, in a hotel between the Soviet and Cape Kennedy, where men point their with a train passing through its lobby, American flight crews for the ridden his to great fame, and he might space vehicles toward the stars,” said at everything that Mickey Mouse had 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, have now entered a long period of rest- host Julie Andrews, “Walt Disney wrought. “This is the biggest vacation Mickey Mouse, complete with ing on his laurels, as Elvis was doing in his own space suit, surely decided to launch his final dream.” complex entertainment in the world,” helped assuage any lingering Las Vegas, playing crowd favorites. That dream was now Disney’s big- Hope said. “And to think it all started awkwardness, above. In 2009, Like Elvis, Mickey was woven into gest attraction, rendering Disneyland with a gentle mouse, a bad-tempered Mickey greeted over 1,000 the sequined fabric of the culture. immigrants from more than 100 tiny by comparison. Walt Disney duck, and seven mixed-up dwarfs.” countries at the park (oppo- It was difficult to tell where Mickey World put Mickey on a grander Flanked by two young women in site), all of whom had just been ended and America began. In 1973, the scale, before a larger audience. When Disney World uniforms, Hope said, sworn in as U.S. Citizens. chairman of the Republican National RICARDO RAMIREZ BUXEDA/ORLANDO SENTINEL/POLARIS

66 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 67 Committee, George H.W. Bush, called the Watergate break-in that would soon bring down Richard Nixon’s presidency a “Mickey Mouse” affair. Meaning, that is, not serious. Agriculture secretary Earl Butz agreed, calling Watergate “Mickey Mouse stuff,” consigned to “footnotes a hundred years from now.” By the next election year, 1976, Nixon had resigned. Meanwhile America was celebrating its 200th birth- day and Mickey, Donald, and Goofy played the fife and drum and carried a flag throughout the bicentennial at Disneyland and Disney World in a spec- tacle called “America on Parade.” That same year, with the old black-and-white “Mickey Mouse Club” still rerunning in syndication throughout America, a

 During his 50th birthday festivities at Disney parks, Mickey was usually seen dressed in a tuxedo, like or the Monopoly man.  new Mickey Mouse Club held auditions in Hollywood. The reboot debuted on January 17, 1977, with a racially diverse cast and the old familiar theme song set to a disco beat. “Everybody’s movin’, to the Mousekadance,” went the disco tune. “Can you feel it groovin’, Do the Mousekadance.” The new Mouseketeers were the halftime entertainment of Super Bowl XI in Pasadena, California. While the Oakland Raiders and Minnesota Vikings retreated to their locker rooms, singers wearing sweat- NOPE, NOT JULY 4TH, JUST ers embroidered with Mickey’s face your typical evening in Magic exhorted the crowd of 103,438 to “Give Kingdom Park at Disney World. me an M, give me an I, give me a C, give The Most Magical Place in the World sits on 107 acres, nearly me a K . . .” And the crowd complied. the size of Vatican City in Rome. Mickey’s face covered the NFL shield logo at midfield. Hundreds of red, DAN ANDERSON/MOMENT EDITORIAL/GETTY

68 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 69 white, and blue balloons in the shape of Mickey’s head were released into the sky and the new Mouseketeers marched off the field in their mouse ears, their hope as buoyant as the balloons now soaring off into the stratosphere. Before the year was out, their bright new show was cancelled, a victim of high production costs. Even so, in its short run, the new Mickey Mouse Club had sold half a million copies of a cast album and won its afternoon time slot and demonstrated the enduring popu- larity of its animated star.

BY THE TIME MICKEY CELEBRATED his 50th birthday in 1978, with year- long festivities at the Disney parks, he was usually seen in a tuxedo, like James Bond or the man on Monopoly cards. He was the subject of a traveling exhibit by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, his cartoon cels—original art- work on transparent sheets, used in ani- mation—were now considered fine art, highly collectible and valued at auction. In New York, Mickey’s image hung in the Museum of Modern Art. He was given a star on the . And that was just the start of the 50th birthday hoopla. From Hollywood, the Mouse departed Union Station in a private Amtrak car called the Mickey Mouse Special for a transcontinental whis- tle-stop tour, Los Angeles to New York. He was traveling by the same mode of transportation on which he had been created a half century earlier, in the opposite direction. It was a sentimental journey, with stops in Kansas City, Missouri, where Walt Disney’s first studio was; Walt’s birthplace of Chicago; the White House, THE GLOBE-TROTTING MOUSE where Mickey was received by the First

now has houses all over the KASAHARA KATSUMI/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY world, opening his Tokyo Daughter, 11-year-old Amy Carter; and Disneyland digs in 1983. By finally the Broadway Theatre in New 2017 the park was Disney’s York City, formerly the Colony, where third most visited, welcoming more than 16 million visitors “Steamboat Willie” had premiered a per year. In 2012, the heart- lifetime ago. There, Mickey appeared breaker hung with some gal with the Broadway cast of The Wiz pals during a Coming-of-Age before returning to Los Angeles via Day ceremony at Disneyland. Washington, D.C., where he was feted at the Library of Congress.

70 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 71 CHINA’S SHANGHAI DISNEY Resort, (opposite), opened in 2016; admission is three quarters the cost of prices stateside. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s park, pictured here, opened in 2005 and is now slated for a $1.4 billion upgrade and expansion. PEI XIN XINHUA/EYEVINE/REDUX

The trip had about it the air of a a studio sign that made it official: ON Sweatin’ to the Oldies franchise. valedictory, a kind of lifetime achieve- THE AIR. Fireworks lit up the sky and Mickey, it turned out, was in great ment award, a victory lap of a grateful the famous three-circle silhouette that shape, regardless of his age. When nation. Indeed, the MoMA exhibi- make up Mickey’s head now doubled as opened in 1983, as tion was called a “retrospective,” as if the Disney Channel logo. the first Disney park outside the United Mickey were nearing a coda, as if he The first program, airing at seven States, it was selling 10,000 pairs of might now be put out to pasture at a.m. Eastern, was an original animated Mickey Mouse ears every day. “They’re a retreat for retired actors. This was, series called Good Morning, Mickey! the most popular item,” an employee of course, a running theme through- It’s perky theme (“Today’s gonna be said that year. “ The manufacturers out Mickey’s middle age. Except new great, we’ve got the world on a plate”) can’t keep up with demand.” technology was emerging—cable TV— jump-started the day for young view- In the final decade of the century, that would give him yet another new ers, setting them up for Mousercise, a on 4,800 acres 15 miles east of Paris, the life, and introduce the Mouse—once live-action aerobics program in which $3.75 billion Euro Disney opened. It was again—to yet another generation. all the humans dressed like Olivia soon renamed Disneyland Paris, and The premium channel launched on Newton-John in her “Physical” video, became the focus of picketing French April 18, 1983, counted down by Donny then in heavy rotation on MTV. Mickey farmers angered by American agricul- Osmond, on a headset, as Donald, himself wore a track suit while doing ture trade policies. As one of them told Goofy, and Chip (or possibly Dale) an energetic dance step. He felt the reporters: “It’s public amusers, with manned the desk at Mouse Control, burn by doing deep knee bends. The their big ears, that will sell expensive calling to Earth Station Mickey, a sat- 1980s were off and running. chemical sandwiches to the city folk.” ellite in space, beaming the brand-new Mousercise, the TV show, followed Disneyland Paris ensured that 24 Disney Channel into American homes. the wild success of the Mousercise hours a day, somewhere in the world, Once again, Mickey wore a tux, in a record album, making Mickey a rival there is a Disney park open. Mickey theater full of chanting children, as he to Jane Fonda and her workout videos, Mouse never sleeps, and the sun never threw an enormous switch lighting up or Richard Simmons’s soon-to-launch sets on the Disney empire. l HOFFMANN/LAIF/REDUX KATJA

72 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 73 PERHAPS THE GREATEST bonus of becoming a world champ—going to Disney World, as they say. A day after the New York Giants ruined the New England Patriots’ perfect season in Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012, Giants quarterback Eli Manning celebrated with Mickey at the Magic Kingdom. Mickey &

Sports HIS CAREER AS A JOCK WELL ESTABLISHED, THE MOUSE HAS HOBNOBBED WITH, AND INSPIRED, SOME ELITE ATHLETES

ong before 1987, when New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms became the first Super Bowl winner to say he was going to Disney World, Mickey Mouse had been palling around with famous athletes. At the Dermer clothing store in Fresno, California, in 1933, for example, you could buy, for 79 cents, a boys’ sweatshirt bearing either the face of Babe Ruth or Mickey Mouse. Mickey has posed for photographs with another Yankee Lgreat, Joe DiMaggio. In one, Joe holds a giant baseball, while Mickey wields an oversize Louisville Slugger, evidently unaware that the great DiMaggio was not a pitcher. Young children in the 1950s—when both luminaries were at the forefront of pop culture, frequently appearing on TV— couldn’t help but confuse Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mantle. (Much like the confusion engendered by the coexistence of Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra.) Mouse and Mantle finally met, in 1994, at Disneyland, and the Mouse may have known a thing or two about Mantle’s game. Five years earlier, Willie Mays, Mantle’s rival for center field supremacy in 1950s New York, had given the Mick—Mouse, not Mantle—some batting tips at Disneyland. Today, of course, it’s customary for World Series winners to visit Mickey in his domain—Houston Astros stars José Altuve, Carlos Correa, and George Springer did after winning in 2017. Mickey Mouse has become as much a part of professional sports championships in North America as bejeweled rings and Gatorade showers. It’s a rite of passage, the trip to Disney World or Disneyland, almost always consummated by a photo with the Mouse. After the GENE DUNCAN/DISNEY PARKS/GETTY GENE DUNCAN/DISNEY PARKS/GETTY

74 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 75 BILL RAY/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION PICTURE COLLECTION BILL RAY/LIFE/THE EVANS IMAGNO/MARY BETTMANN/GETTY

first of his five Super Bowl wins, in 2002, and even race-walking. But the main Bulls superstar Michael Jordan playing trophy from the latter. Today’s athletes name long before the Mouseketeers New England Patriots quarterback event is a cross-country race, a sort of the role of Mickey Mouse. “They have wear Mickey on their sleeves (the later did. And all the while Goofy calls Tom Brady rode on a Disney World quadrathalon with Mickey running, characters: Mickey Mouse, Goofy. Our Oklahoma City Thunder star and haute the dramatic action from the radio box: parade float with Mickey, who wore pole-vaulting, rowing, and cycling. In characters are called Magic and Michael,” couture mannequin Russell Westbrook “Mickey made a touchdown. What a his customary football helmet (it can’t the end, he’s carried from the finish line Stern said. Michael and Mickey posed for has rocked a Comme des Garçons shirt game. What a game!” quite conceal his ears) and college letter in the cup he’s just won, congratulated a photograph together on the golf course emblazoned with Mickey’s image). And In one scene, Mickey, literally sweater with a self-referential M on the by Minnie. one summer, Mickey in plus fours, a tam- they wear him under their sleeves (At flattened by a tackler, sits up dazed and front, not unlike the M of Brady’s own In “Mickey’s Polo Team” (1935), o’-shanter, and a golf sweater, leaning on the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, hears only cries of “Cuckoo, cuckoo, Michigan Wolverines. a team called the Mickey Mousers his driver, while Michael (in panama hat) Jéssica Quintino of Brazil’s handball cuckoo.” This was 1932, decades before THE GREEN BAY PACKERS IN Ten years later, when the Giants (Mickey, “The Goof,” , and prepared to hit a low iron. 1967 before Super Bowl I called squad showed off a tattoo of Minnie the National Football League would defeated Brady’s Patriots in the Super Donald Duck) competes against a squad When Wayne Gretzky broke Gordie the Kansas City Chiefs a Mickey kissing Mickey, on the back of her left confront its own issues with concussions Bowl, Mickey wore a similar outfit riding of movie stars (Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Howe’s all-time National Hockey Mouse team, causing the Chiefs upper arm). and brain trauma—“Touchdown Mickey” a Disney parade route alongside Giants , and Charlie Chaplin). In League scoring record in 1989, the to embrace the name, left. Minnie kissing Mickey after one of demonstrates how little has changed in quarterback Eli Manning. Mickey is as the star-studded stands at the polo 28-year-old was paraded down Main (Kansas City, uh, lost, 35 to his athletic triumphs is a trope of Disney professional sports. As a suited, cigar- 10.) In 1932, Mickey checked front-running as a mouse can get. pitch, presumably in Beverly Hills, are Street at Disneyland by Donald, Goofy, out the Los Angeles Memorial cartoons. In “Touchdown Mickey,” the chomping pig howls with laughter at He has been a frequent competitor W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Harold Lloyd, and Mickey, whose name Gretzky had Coliseum (above) before the Mouse is a fleet-footed football hero, the unfolding scene, Mickey scores the on-screen. “Barnyard Olympics” Greta Garbo, and Shirley Temple. invoked six years earlier in an attempt to Olympic Games—no, he wasn’t playing for Mickey’s Manglers against game-winning touchdown and is carried (1932), features animated boxing The star power of Hollywood was a disparage fans of the New Jersey Devils. competing—and, like the the much bigger Alley Cats. It is a high- off the field while Minnie congratulates (the ref gets punched in the kisser), kind of model for the National Basketball All appeared forgiven. Packers did, NHL great Wayne scoring affair, 96 to 96, with a minute him with a kiss. Gretzky called the New Jersey diving (the Olympians are lined up on Association under former commissioner After Woods won the 1999 left. While Pluto pulls a water wagon to Watching it today, one half expects Devils a “Mickey Mouse the ladder as if at a municipal pool), David Stern, who told team owners that Disney Classic, he and Mickey played operation on ice,” so Devils fans the bench, a rooting section—“Roosting Mickey to turn to camera and announce, wrestling (on a filthy old mattress), the league was like Disney, with Chicago cat and Mouse, the former accepting his let him have it. Section”—of spells out Mickey’s “I’m going to Disney World.” l

76 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 77 THOROUGHLY 78 young at heart, the Mouseyoung at adapted heart, LIFE Mature though in ever years, MODERN MODERN MICKEY MOUSEAT 90 easily to changing times to changing easily MICKEY

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-   The All New Mickey Mouse Newas The All Mickey 80, in 2008, a from California from California World Youth Day Youth World MMC, MMC, For many years now, in the Disney Disney in the now, years many For re- Indeed, when When Mickey turned When Mickey delegation of children delegation of children Mickey Mouse ears on Mouse Mickey presented the pope with presented saw yet another incarnation, airing as incarnation, another yet saw from Club, Mouse New Mickey The All child show’s of this Many 1994. to 1989 and TV, become movie, would stars - millen new the for stars recording Timberlake, Justin including nium, Spears, Britney , JC and Russell, Gosling,Keri Ryan - fran the still was Mickey Chasez. decades, he didn’t As in previous chise. Disney on the star in programs merely - discover own, his he created Channel, talent. new ing himself as a break-dancing, beat-box- break-dancing, a as himself ’90s. of the child ing “Hidden and properties, parks been embedded in have Mickeys” and wall- iron and wrought wallpaper have carpet. Mickeys Hidden to-wall moon been on and spotted the on even shaped uncannily in craters Mercury divine the at hinting Mouse, the like man see the you Where eternal. and the on Mouse see the others Moon, in the moon. the park’s the for opened at Disneyland Mickey in 2005, anniversary 50th helmet—wel and suit space Mouse—in ribbon- the to Armstrong Neil comed and Disneyland “Space travel cutting. Armstrong born of imagination,” were . said, gazing out over came to be known to its legion of to beClub came to known a hip-hop opened with update offans, with song, replete theme classic the remaking Mickey scratches: record

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STHANLEE B. MIRADOR/SIPA USA/AP Gaga have photographed been in Marilyn Manson, Rihanna, andLady ears for the camera. Twiggy, Madonna, and women have happily donnedthe them on,countless other famous men them.he got And while hedidn’t put tical skullcap. smiled when Benedict to the pope’s zucchetto, hisecclesias- name, XVI, a kind of Benedict analog bore the stitched ofhis inscription held inSydney, Australia, andthe ears ears onWorld Youth Day, which was sented the with pope Mickey Mouse from Orange County, California, pre- turned 80, adelegation ofchildren millennium. In 2008, when Mickey major figures continued into the new parade float. history ofthe 20th century onasingle rate ofafew hour, milesper abrief the fighter made their way atastately And sothe Mouse, the astronaut, and Parade alongwith Muhammad Ali. Aldrin atthe Tournament ofRoses Years earlier, Mickey hadjoinedBuzz Mickey’s connectionsto the world’s including a clock, a telephone, place with Mickey Mouse memorabilia— T-shirts. Hisapartment was festooned practically lived in his Mickey Mouse three separate Olympic Games.Stones who for competed the United States in world-record holderinthe highjump, ied by Stones, athree-time Dwight torial affection mostzealously- embod their Mickey Mouse T-shirts. Dave Grohl have photographed been in Wilson, Freddie Mercury, Axl Rose, and Mickey Mouse Brian ears. JohnLennon, He didn’t merely star Those stars were continuing a sar- the Disney Channel, the Disney he created hisown. Mickey wasstill in programs on the franchise.  of herlash,don’t you girl?” saidPerry. “And itwith shedoes aneffortless bat another iconcelebrating her90th year. Let’sdots. forget not that Minnieis Minnie, in a red dress with white polka star Katy Perry, who was attired like and Tommy Jones—andby Lee pop now flanked by those ofSharon Stone own staronHollywood Boulevard is were joinedby Mickey himself—whose on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They Mickey’s better half, Minnie, with a star chairman Igerpresented andCEOBob as Timex watches. This year, Disney Mickey Mouse Rolex watches aswell worn since the Depression). There are Mickey Mouse watches that have been Scrooge McDuck. possibly richer onasteamboat—is than decades after hisbirth onatrain—or the rightrole model; Mickey, somany job was upward mobility, hechose mats, anddishes.For anathlete whose Apple MICKEY IS NOW MANIFEST ON

watches (an update of those 85

87 ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY E. ALBERTO

TODD ANDERSON/DISNEY/GETTY MICKEY AND THE GANG AREN’T MICKEY AND THE GANG AREN’T to change their usually keen but wardrobe, Lucas was visionary George in 2010, of an exception worthy Mickey In early 2018, above. down and Minnie took a walk with Boulevard Hollywood (opposite), singer Katy Perry it. and they liked He is everywhere in the popular popular in the He is everywhere responsible for roughly $5 billion in in billion $5 roughly for responsible $4 bil- year, sales every merchandise outside his came from lion of which year, The following country of birth. Epic game, video a introduced Disney - rei was Mouse the which in Mickey, him from to jaibreak magined, an effort his benign return image and corporate as a mischief- his salad days him to like “peoplescamp. But, making don’t one of Mickey,” mess with you it when Associated the told creators game’s the Disney be to true. and it proved Press, six its video-game in 2016, closed studio even release, Mickey‘s Epic after years in viral and vital remains Mouse the as His name is still uttered analog ways. States, United the around children by of (a variation rhyme playground in the starts: eenie-meenie-minie-moe) which Donald house. a built Mouse, “Mickey the messed it up. Who will pay Duck, con-se-quen-ces,Duck?” or Mouse - MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 MICKEY MOUSE AT an Clubhouse, Mouse Mickey LIFE From 2006 to 2016, Disney pro Disney 2016, 2006 to From By 2009, Mickey Mouse was was Mouse Mickey By 2009, Donald Duck has a star on the Walk of Walk Donaldhas a star on the Duck too. Fame duced duced two age children for show animated reruns. to air in that continues five, to the to gateway the remains Mickey stores, Disney parks, theme Disney the cruises. On Clubhouse, and Disney and Minnie, Sensational Six—Mickey Goofy Pluto, and Donald Daisy, and the when years 70 nearly for together problems episodefirst aired—solve Mouseketools their summoning by The call “Oh Toodles!” siren the with band alternative-rock song, by theme Might Be Giants, is burned into They 21st-century of many brainpans the the “It’s children: of young parents inside,come Clubhouse, Mouse Mickey Sensational the (In 2017, fun inside.” it’s Six began starring in a spin-off, Mickey Racers.) and the Roadster 86

Montreal, 2015. Utah, in2012and street art in and DJdeadmau5inPark City, Opposite, from top:musician for kidsduringWorld War II?) (Is thiswhatWalt hadinmind Here, GasMousk, bySamHayles. Mickey has foundhisway back. by artists,itmakes sensethat GIVEN THAT HEWAS CONCEIVED SAM HAYLES HAYLES SAM

BARRY BRECHEISEN/GETTY tion Mickey Mouse wristwatch that agift hadbeen “he checked his watch—a vintage, collector’s-edi- the sleeve ofhisjacket,” Brown writes ofLangdon, “Pullingback Roberttrained Langdon. symbologist lion copiesworldwide, isthe brilliant Harvard- VinciCode,whichDa has soldmore than 80mil- Doody. Howdy Muhammad Ali,Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, and house, aswell asWarhol portraits ofMarilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol Mickey Mouse picture hanginginhis My hero!’ .Hewas the little brother I always wanted.” went berserk. on the Istood chair screaming, ‘My hero! big head,my sister saidshehadto holdonto me. I Mickey Mouse cameonthe screen andthere was his was the emblemofhappiness andfunniness.When erature, the film version of Sendak’s classic of children’s lit the late Maurice Sendaktoldin2009, Newsweek when “Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!” the mostmiserable idealever revealed,” itreads inpart. newspapera German of the 1930s. “Mickey Mouse is mice. Theepigraph that MausIIistaken opens from portrayal depictsNazisascatsandJewish as people set during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s postmodern won the Pulitzer Prizefor hisgraphic novel Maus, culture, inhighartandlow. In1992, ArtSpiegelman The protagonist ofDanBrown’s 2003 novel, The The fashion designerTommy Hilfigerhadan “Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child,” Where theWildThingsAre, was released. “He -

MEUNIERD/SHUTTERSTOCK 89 DISNEY CHANNEL/GETTY 91 l demonstrate man’s ingenuity. The The ingenuity. man’s demonstrate it contained instructions that capsule The air years. not be 5,000 opened for with out of it and replaced drawn was articles the hopes that in the nitrogen civilization the for might be preserved electric to an finds it. In addition that in U.S. and $2.91 of cards, a deck razor, cup child’s Mouse Mickey a currency, people the that so inside, placed was to even is, that face a find will 6939 of familiar. them, - per- And it may always be so. At the 1939 1939 be the At so. always it may And was , who first came first who Timberlake, Justin was per- as a child attention public’s the to Mouse New Mickey All The on former earlier, 41 years that recall You’ll Club. incarna- previous XI, a at Super Bowl Club Mouse Mickey tion of the The halftime show. at the formed years, all these after remains, Mouse bothand star maker. star a time cap York, in New Fair World’s might that buried full of items sule was And, 90 years after after And, 90 years HERE, MICKEY AND MINNIE MAY HERE, MICKEY AND MINNIE MAY Donald and be trying to show to be an “Adorable Daisy how in a 2014 episode Couple,” Mickey of Disney Channel’s Mouse. Mouses met, the they first of what a fine example remain looks like. relationship a strong Americans taking relationship not as mice? It’s advice from goofy as it sounds. The halftime performer at 2018’s at 2018’s The halftime performer vital in many ways. Disney debuted debuted Disney ways. vital in many in time in 2018, mouse ears rainbow is also But Mickey pride month. gay for from Drawings in history. mummified along with now, are Willie” “Steamboat original star-spangled banner and the hat, in stovepipe Lincoln’s Abraham National Institution’s Smithsonian the History. of American Museum most- LII, one of the Super Bowl in America, TV programs watched In Mickey’s 90th year, he remains remains he year, 90th Mickey’s In his home, the Mickey Country House Mickey the his home, now which a park World, at Disney 20 million visi- than more receives theme other any than more a year, tors world. the in park amusement or billion a $5.5 , was It openedin 2016. in China park, making and in the 20 years nearly Mickey the after years opened 82 debuted short “Shanghaied” Mouse 1934. houses in American movie in MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 MICKEY MOUSE AT LIFE ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY: MICKEY MICKEY SAY: TO IS WHICH OF ALL from his parents on his tenth birthday. birthday. tenth his on parents his from drew dial often its juvenile Although any owned odd looks, Langdon never had Disney watch; other the magicto been introduction his first now and Mickey and color, of form to reminder daily as Langdon’s served at heart.” young stay 90 Mouse built a house—did he ever build house—dida built ever he Mouse of replica a house—and not the ’S FACE CAN BE SEEN a lot of places if you look long enough—crop circles, cookie cutters, mirrors. Or, in one case, in an anodized-aluminum sculpture by pop artist Claes Mickey & Oldenburg.

Art SOME OF AMERICA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS HAVE SET OUT TO CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF THE MOUSE

oy Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey in 1961, inspired by an illustration in a Donald Duck children’s book. In the illustration, as in Lichenstein’s painting, Mickey stifles laughter as Donald Duck hooks his own backside while fishing from a pier: “Look Mickey,” Donald says, in oil, on a canvas that now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., “I’ve hooked a big one!!” Had he ever. RLook Mickey (which graces the contents page of this special edition) is now considered a milestone in modern art, in part because Mickey himself is so fraught with meaning. “He’s such an American symbol,” Lichtenstein said of Mickey, CLAES OLDENBURG, GEOMETRIC MOUSE-SCALE C, 1971, COURTESY OF DONNA LEATHERMAN LLC

92 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 93 © 2018 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS/ARS, NY/RONALD FELDMAN GALLERY, NY KEITH HARING ARTWORK © FOUNDATION

 “and such an anti-art symbol.” Uncle Sam, and Santa Claus) who are as a sunken treasure recovered from Mouse that it was perhaps inevitable Perhaps that should be anti-Art, instantly recognizable around the a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea “He’s such an that he would become not just art— with a pretentious capital A, because world. Five years later, Haring printed and covered in coral. This notion of from artists painting him, and artists Mickey not only began as art but Warhol’s head on Mickey’s body, a Mickey in decay was also illustrated by American symbol,” said painting other artists as him—but an became that rare prominent work of art kind of centaur of his heroes, a piece cartoonist Robert Crumb, who drew Roy Lichtenstein of art museum in its own right. And so that inspires countless other prominent he called Andy Mouse. Again, Mickey IT WASN’T ENOUGH TO BE THE the Mouse as a wizened Hollywood sculptor Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse best and brightest to get the works of art. represented something larger to Andy Warhol treatment—you actor, in a black-and-white head shot Mickey, “and such an Museum was an exhibition inside a The pop artist Keith Haring cited Haring than merely the Mouse. He was, had to be fascinating, too. that he had autographed for a fan: “All anti-art symbol.” freestanding museum, built in the Walt Disney and Andy Warhol as Haring said,“ultimately a symbol of Mickey was an obvious choice in all it’s been a great life! Your Pal, shape of Mickey Mouse’s noggin. his heroes. Warhol created a screen America more than anything else.” for the famous artist’s 1981 Mickey Mouse.” Perhaps that should Visitors could literally go inside Mickey print of Mickey Mouse in 1981, inlaid “Mickey Mouse represents painting (above). Warhol From Japanese mass-market Mouse’s head and see the treasures and protégé Keith Haring paid be anti-Art, complete with diamond dust, in a series called happiness and the joy of being a homage to Warhol and maestro Takashi Murakami to British ephemera within, a fitting experience Myths—Mickey being one of several kid,” according to the British artist Mickey with his 1986 work street artist Banksy, so many artists with a pretentious for a figure that looms so large in the characters (among them , Damien Hirst, who sculpted Mickey Andy Mouse (opposite). have painted (and weaponized) Mickey capital A. American imagination. l

94 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90 95 Behind the Scene

MICKEY IS IN THE BUILDING! You can’t beat the commute, but the Mouse works long hours at the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, where Land after Land is touched by his high spirit, by the great smile that remains, even when no one is watching. RENÉ BURRI/MAGNUM

96 LIFE MICKEY MOUSE AT 90