World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Souris, Michael Maus or Miguel Ratonocito who appears on the screen, he can still command shouts of delight from the audience, for Disney, even more than Chaplin, has discovered the secret of international appeal. That is not to say that he may not lose itsatire, especially of the American scene, will not be universally understood, and satire, if it becomes bitter, may in the end prove his undoing, just as it nearly proved the undoing of Clair; but so long as he retains his kindliness, his simplicity and his wonderful sense of fun, he and Mickey Mouse will remain two of the world's most beloved characters. There are other cartoonists in the cinema, and much of their work is good and not a little excellent, but they all must realise that Disney is their master in ingenuity, in fantasy and in the personality of the characters he creates. It would be absurd to contrast Stinkie the Skunk or Oswald the Rabbit with Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse; they are but nonentities compared to the inhabitants of Disney's little world. Only Pop-Eye The Sailor has the individuality of a Disney character, but PopEye is only one, and Disney has created a dozen personalities equally unique, such as the Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf, the Goof, and that most well-meaning and effusive of hounds, Pluto. The standard he has set for himself is so high, with little masterpieces like Lullaby Land, Three Little Pigs, The Band Conceit, and the truly exquisite Water Babies, that he must inevitably fall far below this standard, by comparison, in much of his work. His present output of eighteen pictures a year — nine Mickey Mouse cartoons and nine Silly Symphonies — makes sustained brilliance quite impossible. We could wish that they might be limited to half that number, but the demands of cinemas all over the world make that impossible. But mediocrity is a dangerous canker in any artist's work. It may spread and one day envelope the whole. Granted that, to a degree, it is inevitable, its presence is yet alarming. Disney and his studio are a part of a commercialised, money-making industry which has little time for fantasies and fairies unless they have box-office appeal. To the writer nothing in the cinema is more saddening than the knowledge of the enormous vested interests paraded behind the friendly, goodnatured little figure of Mickey Mouse. Over three hundred firms in Europe and America have used Mickey to increase sales turnover, and have found his power in this respect amazingly successful; Mickey Mouse books have been wonderfully successful, the story of the Three Little Pigs being published in three different languages, while the Mickey Mouse Weekly has a circulation which would shame many a famous periodical. Connected to the Disney organisation, especially to the commercial side, are many very shrewd financial brains. They could not tell you anything about the artistic value of a Silly Symphony, but they know to a sixpence the trade value of Mickey's face on a firm's goods. The ugly shadow of the dollar looms up behind that cheery little form. To understand Disney's work, it is necessary to know something of his life and character, since the reasons for his love of simplicity, of fantasy and of animals become easy to understand when considered in the light of his childhood and upbringing. He has been described as "a small town man, who has read very little, seen very little, heard very little." That is an important point to be remembered when discussing the satirical side of his work. Here is no city "slicker" who may delight in gibing at the weaknesses of his fellows, for he is still essentially "a small town man" whose delight is in simple things. Of slight build and average height (5ft. 8in. to be exact), with light brown hair and dark brown eyes, he is a shy, unimposing figure with little love for the limelight and personal publicity. His is a dual personality, for besides being himself, he is also Mickey Mouse. To him these are two entirely different entities. When he adopts that funny, squeaky voice and nervous little laugh, bashfully courting the tantalising Minnie or sternly telling Pluto to behave, it is not Disney that speaks but Mickey himself. He ceases to be Disney but becomes instead a small mouse with a kindly heart and goodwill to all men. Actually the two are not so very different. Mickey, when all is said and done, is not a very imposing fellow, any more than is Disney, and although he is far more quickwitted and ingenious than Pluto or the Goof, he has never had Donald Duck's swagger, bounce and conceit. You could probably impose upon both, but both have determination and neither know when they are beaten ; fate has given each of them some hard knocks, and both have always come up smiling. Disney has always, and probably will always, be "broke." All the money he earns goes back into the business. His brother Roy is his financial adviser, and he it is who handles the business administration of the studio. Yet despite his lack of interest in money matters, Disney has a strange knack of being right, a fact of which his studio is now well aware, since the making of both coloured Silly Symphonies in general and the Three Little Pigs in particular were both strongly opposed by members of his staff. Walt Disney was born in Chicago on December 5th, 1901, of an Irish-Canadian father and a German-American mother. He has three brothers and one sister, none of whom have ever evinced any interest in art. Possibly he inherited his love of fantasy and his imagination from the mixture of German and Irish in his blood, the Grimm tradition in his mother allied with the nimbleness of Irish thought, although neither of his parents were in any way artistically inclined, but whatever the reason, Disney as a boy had always but two ambitions — either to become an artist or to go on the stage. His grammar school days started in a country school in Marceline, Missouri, and were continued at Benton Grammar School in Kansas City, spiritual home of the Middle West, and later at the McKinley High School in Chicago. In Kansas City, from the age of nine to fifteen, Disney delivered newspapers from 3.30 to 6 a.m. every morning before going to school, but despite these long hours he found time to interest himself in matters apart from work and education, and while at Benton he did Charlie Chaplin impersonations at neighbourhood theatres, and won cash prizes amounting to a dollar or even two! Like Rene Clair, admiration for Chaplin has played an important part in his screen career. Much of his early life seems to have been spent alternating between Kansas City and Chicago. In the McKinley High School he attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts night school, and studied cartooning under Leroy Gossitt, then of the old Chicago Herald staff. In 1917, he began work as a newsboy and general pedlar on a train running out of Kansas City, selling peanuts, candy and magazines, and balancing precariously on the steps of the train as it pulled in and out of the stations. In the summer of 1918, when the war had brought about a shortage of labour, Disney got a job in Chicago as a postman, but in September of that year he joined the American Red Cross as a chauffeur, after a wholesale rejection by the Enlistment offices for being too young (he was still not yet seventeen), and, after a short period of training, was sent to France, where he stayed for a year. By the autumn of 1919 he was back in Kansas City, and it is here, with his employment by the Gray Advertising Company of that city, drawing hens and eggs for agricultural catalogues, that his career may be said to begin. Within a few months he had been "fired", but after one or two reversals he started work for the Kansas City Slide Co., making animated advertising films, and experimenting in his spare time in a little homemade studio in his father's garage. His employer at the slide company, A. V. Cauger, gave his blessing to these nocturnal experiments, and in due course the very first Disney cartoon, Red Riding Hood, came into being in these restricted surroundings. History does not relate what that cartoon was like — an enterprising cinema-owner could cause something of a flutter if he could discover a print of it and show it to-day — and we do not know how it compared with the Red Riding Hood of the Silly Symphonies. Was the Big Bad Wolf as ferocious and cunning as his poloplaying successor, did his jaws drip and his teeth gnash as alarmingly, and was his discomfiture in the end as complete? And did any of those who saw that early work ever pause to consider what the future of this young man might be? Did any foresee a Disney studio in Hollywood making cartoons that lasted only seven minutes on the screen, yet which cost £10,000 to make and were shown in cinemas all over the world? Probably not, for although Disney threw up his regular job when Red Riding Hood was completed, and although he did get some encouragement from certain firms, and formed a company of his own to produce fairy tale cartoons, by the summer of 1923 he was practically penniless and his future in Kansas City seemed blank. In August he shook its dust from his feet and set out for Hollywood with his train-fare, an old suit (full of holes), a sweater and about forty dollars in cash. Another young man had gone West to seek his fortune. With him went his brother Roy, a comparative plutocrat with no less than 250 dollars to his credit. Ill