Today is Mickey Mouse’s birthday! At least that’s what the Disney company says. There’s plenty of room to argue about it. What happened on November 18, 1928 was that Steamboat Willie was released, starring Mickey and Minnie. It was a big hit, but it was really Mickey’s third film.
Mickey’s first film was called Plane Crazy, and it was a flop. It was nearly an even bigger flop, because until just before it was finished, the star, Mortimer Mouse, decided to adopt the stage name Mickey. He was convinced by Walt Disney’s wife Lillian to change it; she felt “Mickey” was a friendlier name than “Mortimer.” The human actor Mickey Rooney — who hadn’t yet adopted his stage name “Mickey Rooney” — later claimed that he met Walt Disney and Mortimer at the Warner Brothers studio and that he was the the one who advised Mortimer to use “Mickey” instead. This claim didn’t stand up to basic scrutiny, though, because neither Disney nor Mickey worked for Warner Brothers, and their offices weren’t even close by.
Mickey lived in the Disney office at that time — he was just an average, itinerant mouse who couldn’t afford his own place. Walt put him up and even provided daily meals, but according to multiple sources, this wasn’t an attempt to set Mickey up for stardom or even to establish a professional relationship. Walt was just a nice guy who didn’t hesitate to help a down-on-his-luck mouse.
Mickey and Walt (and Ub Iwerks) weren’t deterred by the poor reception of Plane Crazy; they immediately started work on another Mickey vehicle, The Gallopin’ Gaucho. That resulted in another yawn by the public, and Disney couldn’t even find a distributor for the movie. Disney and Iwerks were undeterred; whatever anybody else saw in Mickey, their discerning eyes saw star quality.
Earlier in 1928, Buster Keaton had released a comedy film called Steamboat Bill, Jr. It wasn’t a huge success, but it’s still remembered for what might be Keaton’s most famous stunt. He was standing in front of a house when the entire front wall fell right toward him. The stunt was that he just stood still, and happened to be standing exactly where the attic window came down, so it passed right around him. Disney, Iwerks, and Mickey put their heads together and decided to try filming a parody of the Keaton movie. Reportedly Mickey was initially uncomfortable with the idea, feeling it might be considered derivative, but Disney pointed out that Keaton had based his movie on prior art too — in that case it was the song Steamboat Bill, a hit by Arthur Collins back in 1911.
Maybe it was the connection with the song that gave one of them — or all three of them — the idea, but Steamboat Willie quickly became a musical. That way they could showcase Mickey’s previously unknown talents as a musician and dancer. “We have the technology,” Disney never said, referring to the sound cartoons just released by Fleischer Studios. But the Disney crew took it further, synchronizing the action with the music. This is especially evident in the Turkey in the Straw segment; Mickey’s dance moves are a perfect match to the tune. Since The Jazz Singer had been released to theaters the previous year, the majority of venues across the country had already installed the sound equipment they would need.
The third time proved to be the charm; Steamboat Willie was a big hit and Mickey was one of those overnight successes that take a long time to appear. His career was launched and he became a rival to the current box-office champion, Felix the Cat. Although everyone’s immediate assumption — pumped up by the celebrity gossip columnists of the day — was that inter-species animosity and professional rivalry led to friction, if not outright feuding, between the two superstars, no real instances of conflict have ever been recorded. In fact, neither Mickey nor Felix have ever been known to speak a word of criticism about the other.
Steamboat Willie went on to be included in the National Film Registry, both as an early representation of Mickey’s work and for its technical innovations. Nobody was taking very good notes in those days, but it’s possible that Mickey himself assisted on the technical side. After all, he went on in later films to show real aptitude for reconfiguring mechanical devices on-screen. For example, he was able to instantly refit ordinary cars for flight. In another case, the 1937 feature Clock Cleaners, he along with costars Donald Duck and Goofy, had a number of misadventures inside the mechanisms of a large mechanical timepiece.
It’s not entirely clear when the Disney Company concluded that November 18 would be the best choice for celebrating Mickey’s birthday. You might argue that it just represents his debut — and you could counter that it doesn’t even represent that, because he’d appeared in two previous (but relatively unseen) films. But the best argument for the choice is probably that Mickey has never shrunk from living his life in public. Throughout his whole career, he’s been totally committed to Disney’s various ventures. Mickey is a company mouse, and any other anniversary date would have to be in the name of that other guy, Mortimer.
