Today is
Mickey’s birthday, isn’t it? Well, now days the birthday is considered to be November 18, 1928, the day of the "Steamboat Willie" premiere.
But according to the daily newspaper strips in 1935, September 28 is the big
day!
The event
starts with an ad in the newspapers a few days before:
The ad is
accompanied with a short article, telling us there will be a birthday party in
the comic strip September 28th. And then the article goes on with a lot of
bragging, so this is probably written by Disney’s publicity department. The
scans below are from Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935.
 |
| From Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935 |
 |
| From Sarasota Herald, September 26, 1935 |
The
birthday party is made as an epilog of the Gottfredson story "Race for Riches" (found in the Floyd Gottfredson Library
vol.3). The story pretty much ends September 26., and the next strip takes
place sometime later when Mickey & Co. is back home again. We can see
Mickey hinting about his party at the end of the September 27 strip.
 |
| Mickey Mouse daily strip, September 27, 1935 - drawn by Floyd Gottfredson |
And then on
September 28, we finally get the big party.
 |
| Mickey Mouse daily strip, September 28, 1935 - drawn by Floyd Gottfredson |
I’ve tried
to do a little research into why they used this date. Is it a story behind, or
did they just randomly choose one. Maybe it’s simply because "Race for Riches"
ended at this point, and a comic strip celebration could be done in-between the
next daily strip serial.
I got some
clues in "A Mickey Mouse Reader", which I bought earlier this year. It’s a
great collection of essays about Mickey Mouse, and highly recommended!
 |
| "A Mickey Mouse Reader" (2014), edited by Garry Apgar |
On pg.4 we
can read "Animation on Steamboat Willie was completed by late August 1928. The
soundtrack was recorded on September 30th. Which is why, throughout
the 1930s, the studio fêted Mickey’s birthday on or about October 1st. In the
1970s, The Walt Disney Company began celebrating the event on November 18th,
since it was on that date in 1928 that Willie premiered […]"
On pg.128
in the same book, there’s a transcript from an article by Cholly Wood titled "Mickey Mouse is 7 Years Old Today". It was originally printed in Bridgeport Sunday
Herald, September 29, 1935. I.e. the day after the birthday comic strip.
About
Mickey Mouse, the article say "The earth-spanning sprite was born—a few bold,
humorous strokes on a sheet of clean paper—out of the imagination of Walt
Disney, on Sept. 28, 1929"
I don’t
know if 1929 is a typo in the transcript or in the original article, but it
should probably be 1928. Or Mickey would be 6 years and not 7 as the title
says. But still, we know that this is not true. Work on Plane Crazy (with
Mickey) was done in the early 1928, and according to various Walt Disney
biographies, he got the idea for Mickey during a train ride in 1927. And who
actually did the character design for Mickey Mouse has been the subject for
debate, some sources suggest it was mostly Ub Iwerks. But I’m not going to go more
into that here. It would be interesting to know what source Cholly Wood had for
the date "September 28" though. But I suspect it's just from a 1935 press release similar
to the piece that was printed in Sarasota Herald.
Also, while
doing some searching in online newspaper archives I found this article in The
Ledger, September 10, 1978. Up to this date Nevada Library had been celebrating the
birthday on September 19th.
 |
| From "The Ledger", September 10, 1978 |
If anyone
know more about this, or can point me to sources for information about the
celebration of Mickey’s birthday, please make a comment!
Update October 4, 2015
Mickey's 7th birthday was not only celebrated in the USA and in the newspaper strip. The British magazine Person's Weekly had a two page article about Mickey's birtdhay in the October 5, 1935 issue.
The most interesting part is the introduction:
The most famous mouse in the world celebrates his seventh birthday on September 28. In this country it is being held on October 1st. Mickey programmes will be shown in many cinemas; several firms selling Mickey Mouse products are conducting campaigns; and the B.B.C. is broadcasting a Mickey programme.
So it sounds like a big celebration was held in the U.K. October 1st, 1935. I wonder if a surviving recording of the BBC program exists, that would be fun to hear!
Update October 4, 2015
Mickey's 7th birthday was not only celebrated in the USA and in the newspaper strip. The British magazine Person's Weekly had a two page article about Mickey's birtdhay in the October 5, 1935 issue.
 |
| Person's Weekly No.2358, October 5, 1935 |
The most interesting part is the introduction:
The most famous mouse in the world celebrates his seventh birthday on September 28. In this country it is being held on October 1st. Mickey programmes will be shown in many cinemas; several firms selling Mickey Mouse products are conducting campaigns; and the B.B.C. is broadcasting a Mickey programme.
So it sounds like a big celebration was held in the U.K. October 1st, 1935. I wonder if a surviving recording of the BBC program exists, that would be fun to hear!
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
Garry Apgar 16. oktober 2015 kl. 08.37:
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for your recent mention and recommendation of my anthology, "A Mickey Mouse Reader."
With respect to Mickey’s birthday, it is absolutely the case, as I said in the "Reader," that “throughout the 1930s the studio fêted Mickey’s birthday on or about October 1st.”
In chapter 3 of my forthcoming book "Mickey Mouse: Emblem of the American Spirit," due out on October 20th, I go into considerable detail about the recording of the soundtrack for "Steamboat Willie" in late September 1928, capped by an exhausting session in the wee small hours of Sunday, the 30th.
Incidentally, you very alertly spotted the erroneous date in that "Bridgeport Sunday Herald" article, “Mickey Mouse is 7 Years Old Today.” The text as originally published in that report is off by a year, and does indeed read “Sept. 28, 1929.”
Typos or mistakes like this are, of course, frequent in the popular press. The last sentence in that "Pearson’s Weekly" article you posted, for instance, also is wrong:
“Because member of the clubs are forbidden to smoke or drink, nobody has yet seen the screen Mickey drinking or smoking.”
In the second Mickey Mouse cartoon, "The Gallopin’ Gaucho," Mickey drinks beer and smokes cigarettes as well. An illustration on p. 91 of my new Mickey book shows him indulging in the latter.
The above comment ended up on the Grandpa Beagle page, so I moved it here.
ReplyDelete...
Thanks for the information. I just checked out the upcoming book usng the "Look inside" feature on Amazon. Looks like it's richly illustrated with old rare material, I think I'm going to get this book too! I noticed the 1926 birthday card with Mickey Mouse-like figures is in the book. I was actually going to write a line about that card in this blogpost, but I didn't remember where I had seen it before... (I know I've seen it in some book or article *somewhere*)