by Robert Laurence
Today
Mickey Mouse’s name is a part of the language, adorning thousands
of things, having appeared by now on over five thousand commercial
products alone – from those ubiquitous Mickey Mouse watches (now
collector’s items) to sweatshirts, sheets, and a diamond-studded Mickey
Mouse locket selling for more than a thousand dollars. Altogether the
rodent has starred in more than a hundred cartoons, winning two Oscars,
one in 1932 and the other in 1941 while he was busy selling war bonds.
Mickey Mousing is now the name of a cartoon soundtrack-synchronizing
process invented for the mouse’s films – each of the more than one hundred
ten minute cartoons required 14,440 pictures; sixteen drawings were needed
to show a single step. Mickey Mouse was the password chosen by
intelligence officers in planning the greatest invasion in the history of
warfare – Normandy, 1944. Mickey Mouse diagrams were maps made for
plotting positions of convoys and bombarding forces at Normandy. The
special insulated boots issued to combat troops in Korea were called
Mickey Mouse boots, and Mickey Mouse discipline was used and is
still applied to childish rear-echelon inspections . . . All this and much
more in honor of a real mouse who lived and died over half a century ago,
a real mouse reborn to revitalize fantasy and take his unassailable place
among the great folk heroes of all time.