Mickey Mouse film series
Mickey Mouse (originally Mickey Mouse Sound Cartoons) is a character-based series of animated short films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The films, which introduced and star Disney's most famous cartoon character, were released on a regular basis from 1928 to 1953 with three additional installments in 1983, 1990, and 1995. Besides launching the careers of several well-known characters, the series is notable for its innovation with sound synchronization and character animation.
The name "Mickey Mouse" was first used in the films' title sequences to refer specifically to the character, but was used from 1935 to 1953 to refer to the series itself as in "Walt Disney presents a Mickey Mouse". In this sense, "a Mickey Mouse" was truncated from "a Mickey Mouse sound cartoon" which was used in the earliest films. Black-and-white films rereleased during this time also used this naming convention. Mickey's name was also used occasionally to present other films which were formally part of other film series. Examples of this include several Silly Symphonies, Don Donald (1937), and Goofy and Wilbur (1939).
Production
Mickey Mouse began production in April 1928 after the Disney studio lost the license to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The first two films, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, were previewed in theaters but failed to pick up a distributor. For the third film, Disney added synchronized sound, a technology that was still in its early stages at the time. Steamboat Willie debuted in New York in November 1928 and was an instant success. The revenues from the film provided the studio with much needed resources, and the studio quickly began to produce new cartoons as well as rereleasing sound versions of the first two.[1]
Production slowed towards the end of the 1930s as the studio began to focus more on other characters. The series was retired in 1953 with the release of The Simple Things, but was revived in 1983 and 1990 with two featurettes. The final film of the series, 1995's Runaway Brain, returned the series to its single reel format.
The cartoons were directed by 19 different people. Those with the most credits include Burt Gillett (34), Wilfred Jackson (18), Walt Disney (16), David Hand (15), and Ben Sharpsteen (14). Notable animators who worked on the series include Ub Iwerks, Norm Ferguson, Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Fred Moore. Mickey's voice is mostly provided by Walt Disney, with some additional work by Carl Stalling and Clarence Nash. By 1948, Jimmy MacDonald had taken over Mickey's voice. Wayne Allwine voices the mouse in the three most recent films.
