MICKEY MOUSE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 305, 9 December 1936, Page 2

MICKEY MOUSE

ARTISTS SHARE PROFITS FULL-LENGTH CARTOON EVERY YEAR.

Mickey Mouse, the most consistently popular figure on the screen, has just celebrated his eighth birthday, and now his ambitious creator, Walt Disney, is contemplating the production of a full-length technicolour cartoon every year at a cost of £200,000. The story of the origin and development of Mickey Mouse is more interesting than that of any human star’s life story’. An account of Wall Disney’s work, and his plans for the future, are of widespread interest. “Adversity is the mother of invention, and Mickey Mouse came into being when it was necessary for me to do something," - Disney once said in his office in the Disney Studios, which employ nearly 500 artists, writers, directors, and other persons. “When I came to Hollywood in 1923 I owned one suit of clothes, a print of a cartoon called “Alice in Cartoonland,” and £B. My - brother, Roy, was ■the financier of the family. He possessed £50.” The two brothers built a studio over a garage and worked for months without attracting orders. They were then hired at a meagre- remuneration to manufacture the “Alice in Cartoonland” for a New York promoter. “We used children as models, and paid them 2s a day/’ Disney refcalled. “ ‘Alice’ lasted four days.”

Disney then took charge of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” for Universal. He quarrelled with the bosses. “Oswald” remained with Universal, for which he is sTiIT working.

The idea of a iffouse as hero of an animal cartoon came through Disney’s friendship with a tame mouse during his cartooning days in Kansas City. The mouse was first named Mortimer, and later Mickey. The first Mickey; Mouse film, “Plian Crazy,” cost £240 and was inspired by Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. It was not a success. Sound had just disrupted the film industry, and Mickey had to talk or die. He talked with Disney’s voice in “Steamboat Willie.” This cost his creator £l2OO, and panicked New York. To-day Mickey’, his girl friend Minnie, and the figures in the Silly Symphonies have contracts to appear at 11,000 theatres.

Little Pigs Successful.

The Disney studio produces an average of 20 shorts a year, each costing £lO,OOO with a filming schedule- of four to 12 months for -the eight minutes of screen fare embodied in each. The average Mickey Mouse or Silly Symphony grosses £16,000 in its first year, £BOOO in the second. The “Three Little Pigs,” the most successful to date of the r Disney productions, brought inj £-25,000 during the- first

year. Disney’s own personal income- from his films and by-products, including dolls, is reported to be £lOO,OOO an nually. But very little of it goes into his personal bank account. He puts it back into the business. Studio overheads are high. The annual pay roll is about £200,000. And at least an other £200,000 is spent on producing the shorts. “We are now expermenting on a full-length" technicolour feature, ‘Snow White and Seven Dwarfs,’ ” Disney said. 'l*We have been working on it a year, and at least another y'ear must ejlapse before it is ready to be released. The cost will be nearly £200,000, If it is a success, we will make one feature length cartoon a year.”All employees share in the profits. The atmosphere in ‘the studio is different from that of any other in Hollywood. There are no temperamental stars. Everyone in the studio contributes to .the “gag” file, assessed at £lO,OOO. Each artist earns -at least £3O a week, and works with a writer. More than 300 animators are employed to make the 15,000 to 20,000 action pictures comprising a short. The cartoons are sketched in pencil first, then inked in by’ a department of girl artists, and finally coloured, preparatory ito being photographed by technicolour cameras. In spite of .the still expanding business, Disney finds time for the lighter things of life. He owns a string of polo ponies, is hanpily married, the father of a. two-year-old daughter and is proud of the lar°;e swimming pool on his Toluca Lake estate.