Fun fact

[Mouseketeer1955]

I watched a documentary about Disney, and some of the facts that they talked about were really interesting.

I originally posted this question in another area of the forum and it looks like it may have been removed.

So the question is, who created Mickey Mouse ?

[Mouseketeer1955]

Wow, nearly 12 hours, and 21 viewers, but no guess ? The question must be harder than I thought.

Here's a hint, it's the same person that created Oswald the Rabbit.

[Ezra]

More than one person claimed to have "created" Mickey Mouse.
However, if you ask who designed Mickey Mouse, there's a more specific answer. So... let's repharse the question:

Who designed Mickey Mouse?

[Mouseketeer1955]

Actually, creation is the most accurate. Mickey went through several design changes, he was first modeled after a famous actor. Do you know who he was ?

Oswald the Rabbit is a good clue. When you find out who created Oswald, you will have discovered who created Mickey.

[Ezra]

Allright, I'll answer the question as is. Who created Mickey Mouse?

1) Walt Disney famously claimed to have invented Mickey Mouse while on a train home from New York, where he had been informed that Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit had been stolen out from under him.

2) Ub Iwerks claimed that Mickey Mouse was completely his idea.

1 & 2) A collaborative effort between Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.
No-one ever seems to claim this as "correct", but the best evicence is the copyright marks on the first few Mickey Mouse cartoons. Beneath the copyright but, the title card reads "Walt Disney" on the left corner of the screen and "Ub Iwerks" on the right hand corner. (This was recently a news item, the question of weather Mickey legally belongs to The Walt Disney Company or to the Iwerks family. However, Leslie Iwerks makes no claim against Disney's ownership.)

The "correct" answer depends on who you ask.


Other questions:

Who originally designed Mickey Mouse?

Ub Iwerks drew the very first Mickey Mouse drawings, and was the sole animator of Mickey for the first several years. Iwerks drew Plane Crazy, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to begin production, single-handedly. The work was kept secret to everyone but Disney because several animators who had recently been hired out from under Disney were still in office, completing the last Disney Studios Oswald.

Who inspired Mickey Mouse?

1) As with Oswald, Ub Iwerks drew his inspiration for Mickey Mouses adventures from the works of silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks.

2) Walt Disney felt Mickey Mouse should be more of a "Little Tramp" character, inspired by the silent comedy of Charlie Chaplin. Mickey's disposition would eventually shift in that direction.

[Mouseketeer1955]

Excellent. In the 1999 Walt Disney Production, "The Hand Behind The Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, Ub Iwerks is credited with creating Mickey Mouse after Walt Disney was told that Oswald the Rabbit was stolen from him. Disney and Iwerks were very close, so who created Mickey Mouse really didn't matter to them. The point was to get a new character created to replace Oswald. Iwerks thought about new characters as he considered dogs and cats. But everyone was doing dogs and cats, so Iwerks created Mickey. Now, as for Mickey Mouse belonging to Iwerks or Disney, since Iwerks was actually working for Walt Disney in his company, legally, the intellectual property goes to the Disney company, but that's a conversation for another day.

[Wedbliss]

I'll add my two cents:

In 1927 Walt Disney's cartoons had improved in quality to the point where his distributor, Charles Mintz, was able to negotiate a contract with a major studio. That studio was Universal. The only catch was they wanted a new character. Thinking that there were too many cats on the market (Julius the Cat had become a major character in Disney's Alice Comedies) Universal asked for something different. They specified in the contract Mintz signed on March 4, 1927 that 26 cartoons be made using a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Universal owned the character from the very beginning although Disney may not have entirely understood that.

I think that it's very possible that Iwerks did most of the design work on the Oswald character. He was a fairly stock animated character of that day with long ears as his distinguishing feature. I'm sure Walt Disney had his usual input into Oswald's design and personality. In that way Oswald's creation wasn't much different from the creation of any other Disney character. Walt had final say, the artists did the drawing.

A year after Disney signed the Oswald contract he made Ub Iwerks a partner in the Disney Brothers Studio. Ub started contributing $35 a week until he had paid for a 20% stake in the company.

When Universal and Mintz decided that Disney wasn't necessary to the continued success of Oswald, they simply took what was their's and left. Oswald wasn't stolen, he never belonged to Disney in the first place. Where Mintz played a bit dirty was in luring away most of Disney's best animators.

Now Disney needs a new character and here is where the story gets murky. Ezra gave an excellent analysis of Mickey's creation. There is no doubt in my mind that the first drawing of Mickey was made by Iwerks. In that sense, he designed him. The question that may never be answered was who first suggested a mouse. Was it Walt? Was it Ub? Given how Disney characters were created in later years I think it's plausible that the idea of a mouse came up in a brainstorming session with Walt, Ub and maybe Roy in the room. Ub took the idea, came up with the Mickey design and Walt approved it. Mickey is essentially just a rounded Oswald with round mouse ears instead of rabbit ears. The design was very simple. The idea that any one person created Mickey might be looking in the wrong direction. Mickey was a team effort.

I am inclined to believe that Mickey's name was Mortimer at first. Lillian Disney told a story in McCalls magazine in 1956 about how she was a nervous wreck due to the precarious financial position that the Disney brothers were in 1928. When Walt read her the scenario for Plane Crazy her anxiety got the better of her and she told Walt that Mortimer was a terrible name. According to this account, Lillian said that Walt came up with Mickey as a name in order to placate her. She didn't claim she came up with the name, only that she insisted the mouse not be named Mortimer. This sounds plausible to me.

As far as who owned Mickey Mouse, he was the property of the Disney studio. Ub Iwerks was a partner at that time, so he would have shared in the ownership. However in 1930 Iwerks sold his 20% of the studio back to Walt and Roy thereby surrendering any stake in the character.