The moment that marks the birth of Mickey Mouse today is not actually his birthday, and Mickey Mouse was actually someone else. Walt Disney had invented his mouse figure some time before November 1928 - but initially unsuccessful. The first Mickey movie flopped, and besides, Disney had just lost the rights to his rabbit character "Oswald the lucky rabbit". Walt Disney was in a crisis.

The rescue was a technical innovation: the soundtrack. Walt Disney recorded the first full-length animated film in 1928: "Steamboat Willy," starring Micky, who was initially called Mortimer. The premiere of this film is celebrated today as the birth of Mickey Mouse. What a guy that was, can be read in a several-pound XXL birthday book Taschen Verlag, the "Ultimate Chronicle," the subtitle.

The character of the mouse was quite different from the serious old-fashioned hero Micky, who still holds the role of moral apostle in comics. In "Steamboat Willy" Micky was a farm animal on a cattle freighter, he was an adventurer and womanizer, an anarchist. Micky was funny, reckless and did what he wanted.

The more successful, the more stuffy

And the ur-Micky had lust especially for women: In the first, initially unsuccessful as a silent film published strip "Plane Crazy" can be seen Mickey and Minnie while trying to fly a plane. After bumpy slapstick start Micky is intrusive and harassed Minnie, but does not want to be kissed. He tries to frighten her with a daring maneuver to get her around. Finally, Minnie can escape him only by jumping from the plane, her panties serve her as a parachute. Micky puts down a crash landing at the end, but that's quickly forgotten, because he laughs Minnie, who no longer fits the worn out panties. Walt Disney had come up with Mickey Mouse as a sex-obsessed ruffian.

DISPLAY

Daniel Kothenschulte (ed.), David Gerstein (author), JB Kaufman (author):
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse

The ultimate chronicle

BAGS; 496 pages; 150 euros

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But the anarcho mouse arrived. Disney put all his company assets in the little mouse. "Micky intrigued people, and he was a second Chaplin to the working class," says Daniel Kothenschulte, a film writer and birthday book editor. The more successful Micky became, the more stuffy he became. "On the one hand, to reach a larger audience - now including children.

photo gallery


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Photo gallery: Micky, the world star

In addition, Walt Disney, who always saw his alter-ego in Micky, also changed over the years in which his film empire grew. "A few years later, Walt Disney devised Donald Duck, who took on the less-than-acceptable qualities of Mickey.

For 90 years Mickey Mouse has been a huge success. Also, because Walt Disney was the first to comprehensively market his comic character. "Micky was a mascot, trademark and design object," says Kothenschulte. "And even then, merchandising products brought more money than the movies themselves. Fan merchandise was sold millions of times over."

"Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate Chronicle" painstakingly traces almost 500 pages of how the century figure developed. The authors have dug for several years in the Disney archives to see 1200 illustrations, first drafts, storyboards, posters. "Hardly any cultural product of the modern age is so anchored in the collective consciousness," says editor Kothenschulte. After his comprehensive chronicle, there remains only one question: What is to come for the centenary?