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Book: The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse by Jim Korkis
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Authors: Jim Korkis
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five dollar a month studio over a garage where he sat at night and watched the antics of a pair of mice. After weeks of patient persuasion, he tamed them so that they would climb upon his drawing board. There they sat up and nibbled bits of cheese in their paws or even ate from his hand.
As he watched them, he occasionally wrote letters to his niece. The letters described the activities of the mice and sometimes were illustrated with drawings of them doing funny, fantastic human things.
Walt never had a studio above a garage, and Walt’s niece (the daughter of his older brother Herbert) would have been eleven years old, a significant age difference. More important, “six years ago” in 1927, Walt was living and working in Hollywood not in Kansas City. These letters were never discussed in any other article or surfaced during Walt’s lifetime. They are yet another bit of hokum on the creation of Mickey Mouse.
From Psychology magazine (November 1933):
[In Kansas City, Walt] made the acquaintance of Mickey. One evening as he was bending over his drawing board, two little mice scampered across his table. Amused at their capers, he began to make friends with them. And presently they were serving as his models. For hours they would sit on his drawing board, while he worked, combing their whiskers and licking their chops in true mouse fashion. And Walt would weave them into human situations and make them tell funny human stories.
Again, this story is not true. Sometimes Walt would say it was an entire family of mice that he captured and tamed. Other times, he would say that it was just one mouse that he made a prisoner in an overturned wire waste basket and eventually trained it (by hitting the mouse on the nose with the eraser on the end of his pencil) to stay inside a large circle he drew on a sheet of paper at the top of his drawing board.
When Walt decided to go to California, he supposedly took the mouse to a vacant lot “in the best neighborhood” he could find to release it. Walt told a reporter:
The mouse that had played on the drawing board didn’t seem to want to go. He stood around looking at me. I had to stamp my foot on the pavement and yell at him to make him beat it. That’s the last I ever saw of him.
None of these stories are literally true, but Walt loved embellishing how he created Mickey Mouse.
The story of Mickey’s birth on a train ride from New York became so polished by repetition over the years that it overshadowed any other variation and became as much an oft-told myth as young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and then confessing it to his father.
Even today, people still insist that the story Walt told about being inspired by a real mouse and using that inspiration on the train to create Mickey Mouse is the gospel truth.
An article in Cosmopolitan magazine (February 1934) stated:
[F]iction has it that a mouse roamed Walt’s workroom; that the two became friendly, and the Mickey mouse originated in this room. It is a nice story, but false. As a matter of fact, Mickey Mouse’s papa is not overly fond of mice. He jumps out of their way, and doesn’t go looking for them.
In response to that article, John C. Moffitt wrote in the Providence Bulletin newspaper (April 1934):
A magazine writer recently dismissed the story of the [real Kansas City] mouse which inspired Mickey as a myth. But Walt Disney spent one whole morning telling it to me and he insisted it was true.
Walt’s engaging and magical tale of the creation of Mickey Mouse was so powerful that it overcame any reasonable doubts with ease.
Audiences wanted to believe in the story of one brief burst of inspiration in a moment of deep desperation that resulted in the birth of the world’s most beloved cartoon character as well as that it was inspired by the kindness Walt had shown to a helpless little mouse.
In fact, audiences still want to believe that story today despite any and all factual evidence to the
As he watched them, he occasionally wrote letters to his niece. The letters described the activities of the mice and sometimes were illustrated with drawings of them doing funny, fantastic human things.
Walt never had a studio above a garage, and Walt’s niece (the daughter of his older brother Herbert) would have been eleven years old, a significant age difference. More important, “six years ago” in 1927, Walt was living and working in Hollywood not in Kansas City. These letters were never discussed in any other article or surfaced during Walt’s lifetime. They are yet another bit of hokum on the creation of Mickey Mouse.
From Psychology magazine (November 1933):
[In Kansas City, Walt] made the acquaintance of Mickey. One evening as he was bending over his drawing board, two little mice scampered across his table. Amused at their capers, he began to make friends with them. And presently they were serving as his models. For hours they would sit on his drawing board, while he worked, combing their whiskers and licking their chops in true mouse fashion. And Walt would weave them into human situations and make them tell funny human stories.
Again, this story is not true. Sometimes Walt would say it was an entire family of mice that he captured and tamed. Other times, he would say that it was just one mouse that he made a prisoner in an overturned wire waste basket and eventually trained it (by hitting the mouse on the nose with the eraser on the end of his pencil) to stay inside a large circle he drew on a sheet of paper at the top of his drawing board.
When Walt decided to go to California, he supposedly took the mouse to a vacant lot “in the best neighborhood” he could find to release it. Walt told a reporter:
The mouse that had played on the drawing board didn’t seem to want to go. He stood around looking at me. I had to stamp my foot on the pavement and yell at him to make him beat it. That’s the last I ever saw of him.
None of these stories are literally true, but Walt loved embellishing how he created Mickey Mouse.
The story of Mickey’s birth on a train ride from New York became so polished by repetition over the years that it overshadowed any other variation and became as much an oft-told myth as young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and then confessing it to his father.
Even today, people still insist that the story Walt told about being inspired by a real mouse and using that inspiration on the train to create Mickey Mouse is the gospel truth.
An article in Cosmopolitan magazine (February 1934) stated:
[F]iction has it that a mouse roamed Walt’s workroom; that the two became friendly, and the Mickey mouse originated in this room. It is a nice story, but false. As a matter of fact, Mickey Mouse’s papa is not overly fond of mice. He jumps out of their way, and doesn’t go looking for them.
In response to that article, John C. Moffitt wrote in the Providence Bulletin newspaper (April 1934):
A magazine writer recently dismissed the story of the [real Kansas City] mouse which inspired Mickey as a myth. But Walt Disney spent one whole morning telling it to me and he insisted it was true.
Walt’s engaging and magical tale of the creation of Mickey Mouse was so powerful that it overcame any reasonable doubts with ease.
Audiences wanted to believe in the story of one brief burst of inspiration in a moment of deep desperation that resulted in the birth of the world’s most beloved cartoon character as well as that it was inspired by the kindness Walt had shown to a helpless little mouse.
In fact, audiences still want to believe that story today despite any and all factual evidence to the
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