What the first Mickey Mouse looked like – it’s over 90 years old!

There are many legends about the appearance of the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. The most common says that in the 1920s Walt Disney caught mice, built them a house in the studio and started feeding them. The cartoonist’s favorite name was Mortimer, and the cartoon character almost received this name.

Inventing a new character, Disney was based on his own character – the humanized rabbit Oswald, the rights to which he accidentally transferred to Universal Pictures. Gradually, on Walt’s sketches, a mouse began to emerge from a rabbit: the ears became shorter, the belly became rounder, and the nose became longer.

So, after a while, Mortimer Mouse was born. However, Walt’s wife, Lillian Disney, rejected the name, considering it too pretentious. Thus, the name of the funny mouse was reduced to a simple Mickey.

Mickey Mouse first appeared in the silent cartoon Plane Crazy on May 15, 1928. Note that Mickey is still without his iconic white gloves: they will only appear in 1929.

Mickey Mouse quickly spoke, and until 1947 Walt Disney himself voiced it. In the 1930s, the mouse became colorful, and since then, year after year, its image has changed – until it became what we know it today.

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Photo: Getty Images