The Disney Company is not celebrating Mickey Mouse’s birthday today.
According to Chris Curtin of Synergy and Special Projects: “We particularly worry about this when it comes to children, whose understanding and appreciation of our characters can be undermined by suggesting they have real-world ages. As a company, we feel our characters are timeless and therefore don’t mark the passage of time. We do, however, celebrate anniversaries of real-world events, as they can be effective marketing tools — especially with adult fans who like the idea that Disney has been around a long time.” (examples: the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s birth in 2001, Animal Kingdom’s 5th anniversary, etc.).
That is why the Disney Company is saying that it is not Mickey Mouse’s 75th birthday but that the Company in a smaller fashion is celebrating “75 Years WITH Mickey”. That was not always the case. During the past seventy-five years, celebrating Mickey’s birthday was a major event for the Disney Company and resulted in much publicity and many financial rewards and of course, many appreciative Disney fans.
In the September 30, 1933 edition of FILM PICTORIAL, Walt Disney stated “Mickey Mouse will be five years old on Sunday. He was born on October 1, 1928. That was the date on which his first picture started so we have allowed him to claim this day as his birthday.”
Mickey Mouse’s seventh birthday was celebrated on September 28, 1935 and his fortieth on October 28, 1968. Up until the 1970s, Mickey’s birthday was celebrated anywhere between September and December whenever there was a new Disney cartoon being released or to stage a birthday party event at a theater which usually included the theater booking a program of several previously released Disney cartoons.
Dave Smith established the Disney Archives in 1970 and with Mickey’s Fiftieth birthday coming up in 1978, it was Dave who determined that the official date should be the premiere of STEAMBOAT WILLIE at the Colony Theater in New York. After checking through correspondence, reviews from New York newspapers and finally finding a program from the Colony Theater listing the Mickey Mouse cartoon, it was determined that Mickey’s official birthday would be November 18, 1928. (That also makes it Minnie’s official birthday as well.)
In 1933, Mickey’s fifth birthday was celebrated by a Hollywood testimonial party where the speakers included Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Will Rogers. Mickey’s seventh birthday was promoted as “Mickey Mouse’s Lucky Seventh Birthday” and the Disney Studio encouraged theaters to book Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons as a special program. In fact, every available print of Disney cartoons were in use during the celebration. Theaters served birthday cake, held costume parties (with free admission for any patron dressed as a Disney character), and there were even adult dinner parties held in cities like New York and London.
Disney historian Jim Fanning has pointed out that for Mickey’s seventh birthday that “a special song-a fox trot-was composed in honor of the birthday boy: MICKEY MOUSE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY. (‘There’s Minnie dressed in her Sunday best, and Donald Duck with his quack, quack, quack…’). It was recorded by Guy Lombardo and his orchestra.”
Mickey’s eighth birthday was also a big celebration with theaters offering prizes for Disney costumes, coloring and essay contests. The prizes? Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck dolls from Charlotte Clark and her crew personally autographed by Walt Disney! Radio City Music Hall hosted a week long salute by running three Disney cartoons as part of every show.
Over the years, it addition to birthday celebrations at theaters, the Disney Studios produced two animated shorts spotlighting Mickey Mouse’s birthday.
In THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (January 7, 1931) directed by Bert Gillett, this black and white cartoon finds Mickey’s friends (including Minnie, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow) surprising Mickey with the gift of a piano for his birthday. Mickey and Minnie sing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” and there is some wild dancing. Lots of generic animal friends join in the celebration.
In MICKEY’S BIRTHDAY PARTY (February 7, 1942) directed by Riley Thompson in beautiful technicolor and featuring some classic Mickey animation by Freddie Moore has Minnie and the gang throwing a surprise birthday party for Mickey. This time Mickey receives an organ instead of a piano and there is a wild rhumba dance and besides Horace and Clarabelle, Donald and Goofy (neither of whom existed at the time of the original 1931 short join the festivities) join the festivities. This is the cartoon with Goofy struggling to bake a cake using “volcano heat” on the oven.
In 1953, Capitol Records produced a “record-reader” entitled MICKEY MOUSE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY (DBX 3165) to celebrate Mickey’s Silver Anniversary of being twenty-five years young. A “record-reader” was a two record set accompanied by a storybook and some cue like the sound of a bell or a horn let a child know when to turn the page so that the sounds on the record would match the story. (In this case, Mickey Mouse coaxed Donald Duck to give the signal to turn the page.) Donald’s voice was done by Clarence Nash and Goofy’s voice was done by Pinto Colvig who even though he had left the Disney Studio was connected with Capitol Records as he was then the current voice of Bozo the Clown who appeared on several “record-readers”. Colvig also recreated the voice of Practical Pig on the album. Jimmy MacDonald gave voice to Cinderella’s mice, Jaq and Gus Gus as well as supplying the barks for Pluto (who does a “soft paw” dance rather than soft shoe for Mickey’s celebration).
And of course, the voice of Mickey Mouse was provided by…Stan Freberg. Yes, satirist Stan Freberg who was also well known in the industry for his cartoon voice work (especially for Warner Brothers) did Mickey’s voice which sounded like Mickey Mouse with a cold since Freberg wasn’t able to reach the right falsetto range for the famous mouse. Freberg also did a killer imitation on the record of Ed Wynn’s Mad Hatter and Jerry Colonna’s March Hare among other voices.
Back in 1996, Stan told me, “Walt Disney was always the voice of Mickey, when he was alive, but when he was too busy, his sound effects wizard Jimmy MacDonald did it. Once, when Capitol Records was recording a children’s album called MICKEY MOUSE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY and both Walt and Jimmy were busy, Walt asked me to record Mickey’s voice: ‘Hi, Minnie, hi Pluto, Happy Birthday! Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha!'”
Since Jimmy MacDonald was there at the recording session, it is more likely that Stan wanted to do Mickey’s voice and Walt and Jimmy graciously allowed him to do so. It is an odd album with the Three Little Pigs, B’rer Rabbit, B’rer Fox, B’rer Bear, Dumbo, Thumper, Bambi, Joe Carioca, Cinderella, Alice, the White Rabbit, Peter Pan (and the infamous crocodile even stops chasing Captain Hook long enough to sing “Never Smile at a Crocodile” which was a song written for PETER PAN but never used) and many more.
In September 1953, DELL Comics even printed a special one hundred page comic book “giant” entitled MICKEY MOUSE BIRTHDAY PARTY with *** Moores drawing a cover of Mickey Mouse by a birthday cake where the candles were actually Disney characters. The interior included reprints from several FOUR COLOR issues (#181, #27 and #79) as well as some reformatted Mickey Mouse comic strips from 1941 by Gottfredson and Bill Wright.
Mickey’s Silver Anniversary in 1953 was also the first time that Imagineer John Hench painted a “formal portrait” for Mickey. Hench also painted the official Mickey Mouse portraits for Mickey’s 50th (1978) and 60th (1988) and 75th birthdays (2003). (Walt Disney Art Classics, the art and collectibles division of The Walt Disney Company, commissioned Hench to render Mickey in an official portrait commemorating his 70th birthday. The portrait was published as a limited edition print in December of 1998 and was an instant sell-out.)
Mickey’s 50th birthday was a year long celebration in 1978 and generated not only an official “Happy Birthday, Mickey” logo but a variety of commemorative merchandise. There were retrospective screenings of Mickey’s cartoons at several venues from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art to the American Film Institute to the Chicago Film Festival. Animator Ward Kimball accompanied Mickey on a special Amtrak train for a fifty-seven city tour. The tour ended at the Broadway Theater (formerly the Colony Theater) where a plaque designating the theater as the official birthplace of Mickey Mouse was installed. (Seven huge scrapbooks in the Disney Archives are filled with newspaper clippings from the year long event.) In addition, Mickey received his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, making him the first cartoon character to ever receive a star. People were singing a specially written song: “The Whole World Wants to Wish You Happy Birthday, Mickey Mouse.”
Disney also saluted Mickey’s birthday on television. MICKEY MOUSE ANNIVERSARY SHOW (12/22/68) had Dean Jones hosting Mickey’s 40th birthday along with the original Mouseketeers. MICKEY’S 50th (11/19/78) had celebrities like Johnny Carson and Jonathan Winters honoring Walt’s mouse and MICKEY’S 60th (11/13/88) had Mickey fooling with a sorcerer’s hat and disappearing, forcing Roger Rabbit to try and find him, while “news reporter” John Ritter offered commentary and updates.
In fact, Mickey’s Sixtieth birthday rivaled Mickey’s Fiftieth.
From Summer 1988 through Spring 1990, as the Walt Disney World railroad trains steamed toward their newest train station just past Fantasyland, guests would have heard:
“We’re rolling, we’re rolling on the Express!
We’re rolling on Mickey’s Birthdayland Express!
We’re going off to Mickey’s Birthdayland!
And we’re so glad that you could come along and join the gang![Donald]
We’ll have a whole lot of fun! (laughs)[Chip & Dale]
So come on everyone!
We’ve got a big surprise for Mickey Mouse!
It’s all aboard the express bound for Birthdayland!
We have a date with Mickey Mouse’s Birthdayland!
We’ll have a whole lot of fun!
So come on everyone!
We’ve got a big surprise for Mickey Mouse!
We’ve got a big surprise for Mickey!
A birthday bash for Mickey!
Big surprise for Mickey Mouse!
We’re rolling, we’re rolling on the Express!”
This station originally opened in 1988 as Mickey’s Birthdayland Station. Featuring a covered waiting platform, the open-air station provided guests easy access to the new land, Mickey’s Birthdayland, celebrating Mickey Mouse’s 60th birthday. (The station was renamed Mickey’s Starland Station in 1990, and Mickey’s Toontown Fair Station in 1996, in keeping with the new names for this area of the park.) Mickey’s Birthdayland was the first new “land” added to Walt Disney World since its opening and was built in less than a year as a temporary location to meet Mickey Mouse and his friends and get autographs. The area was themed as if it was part of Duckburg with small store front facades hiding the colored tents. A show took place there as well, with Mickey as the unsuspecting guest of honor at his very own surprise party.
A sixty-eight page slick magazine (MICKEY IS SIXTY) with a special edition “cel” of Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was published with excerpts from this magazine appearing in TIME, LIFE, PEOPLE and more. Ear Force One (a hot air balloon in the shape of Mickey’s head) toured the United States. The Disney Company planted a 520 acre cornfield in Sheffield, Iowa in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head. The concept was that when the field was seen from an airplane overhead it would look like a birthday card for Mickey from Minnie. (This idea was the brainchild of Jack Linquist who was then Disney creative marketing vice president.) Again, a special Mickey Mouse birthday logo was created and a flood of nicely done commemorative merchandise honoring both the classic Mickey and the modern Mickey.
Today (November 18) in a private ceremony, Michael Eisner will unveil for the media seventy-five Mickey Mouse statues that each stand six feet tall and weigh seven hundred pounds. They were designed by a mix of celebrities including Tom Hanks, John Travolta, Ben Affleck, Susan Lucci,etc. Those who participated in the design created the Mickey Mouse statues to fit one of six themes: heritage, adventure, magic and fantasy, fun and laughter, friendship, and the future.
The statues will be displayed at various locations on Walt Disney World property through April 2004 and then will travel to twelve U.S. cities on an eighteen month tour sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. After the tour, the statues will be auctioned off with the proceeds benefiting a charity of each artist’s choice. The program is called “Celebrate Mickey: 75 InspEARations”.
There have always been rumors that Disney hates the “graying of the Mouse” (the aging of its top executives who have been encouraged to leave the Disney Company during the last few years) and poor Mickey Mouse seems like he may be the latest victim. Hopefully, the weak treatment of Mickey’s milestone birthday is not a foreshadowing of the upcoming Disneyland Golden Celebration in 2005. Happy birthday, Mickey! You are seventy-five years YOUNG.
I would like to acknowledge the previous research on this subject by Jim Fanning, John Cawley (the most under-rated man in the animation business) and the ever amazing Jim Korkis. Speaking of Jim Korkis, I would like to publicly apologize to Jim for borrowing some of his research on Emile Kuri in my previous column without crediting him. And for those of you who miss Jim’s writing on things Disney, make sure you track down a member of the Disney Vacation Club. Jim writes a monthly exclusive column on all things Disney for the DVC e-mail newsletter including a series on the stories behind the names on the Main Street windows!