Disney gets Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back!

[creid]

Maybe Uncle Walt wasn't a perfect saint (naming his staff with HUAC committees), but this story about deception, betrayal, and cutthroat business dealings was mostly done by short-sighted money producers, Mintz & Powers, both of whom easy "villians" to the story. I think this story is the greatest example of somebody who had a dream and the ambition to create the first sound cartoon despite no "star" name and nearly no money. If Steamboat Willie was a failure, history would have severely be different.
The break-up of Ub/Walt working friendship is where a filmmarker could show Walt's less glowing side as Uncle Walt was noted as quite a verbal abuser at the time.

[Fflewduur]

I'd love to see a biopic about Walt that wasn't strictly paying homage. Corporate is beginning to acknowledge warts in some of the body of work, but you have to protect the man. Right?

Actually Walt Disney is one of my two favorite show business people who named names to the HUAC: the other would be director of stage & screen Elia Kazan, who had somewhat different reasons.

Coincidence? Oswald is a character in an animated song & dance number in The King of Jazz with Paul Whiteman--Paul Whiteman who commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Ahh, the planets are aligning for the jazz Fantasia: Quincy Jones & Oswald can introduce the "Rhapsody" sequence from Fantasia 2000...

[MK Sharp]

Maybe Uncle Walt wasn't a perfect saint (naming his staff with HUAC committees), but this story about deception, betrayal, and cutthroat business dealings was mostly done by short-sighted money producers, Mintz & Powers, both of whom easy "villians" to the story.

In amongst that, you've also got Disney being done over by Pictorial Clubs and forced into bankruptcy in 1923; and Harman & Ising intending to strike out on their own in 1926, with the intention of taking Iwerks with them.

The break-up of Ub/Walt working friendship is where a filmmarker could show Walt's less glowing side as Uncle Walt was noted as quite a verbal abuser at the time.

Indeed. Hugh Harman and Friz Freleng both mentioned in later interviews about Walt's verbal tirades, and it's also said to be the reason why Rollin Hamilton walked out during the making of the Oswalds. But even so, you could look at it from the other side, which is Walt, with his name on the line with every film, trying to urge his staff on to better things. You could play it up as frustration at being unable to animate nearly as well as Iwerks or Harman, which surely must have come into it.

The interesting thing about Iwerks leaving Disney in 1930 is that he claimed he didn't know he was being wooed by Pat Powers. So you could even play up Powers as the "villian" in that part of the story too, attempting to sink Disney by luring away his chief animator.

It's quite a poignant ending, in a way - Disney makes it to the top, but at the cost of having all his former friends and colleagues as competitors.

[Fflewduur]

It's quite a poignant ending, in a way - Disney makes it to the top, but at the cost of having all his former friends and colleagues as competitors.

Wow: elegantly put. And too good a throughline to get made into a motion picture in Hollywood.

Before this sale my knowledge of Oswald pretty much ended with the invention of Mortimer Mouse; it's really quite something to see these names I recognize from childhood, distinctive names like Lantz & Freleng, names I first encountered against a colorful background w/ funny music playing.

If I don't know it, it's news to me: is it true Tex Avery also worked on the Oswalds at some point?

[edsouth]

I'd love to see a biopic about Walt that wasn't strictly paying homage.

Check out The Hand Behind the Mouse, a doc on Ub Iwerks....it's a book or VHS (maybe DVD!?) It's really good, it was released by Disney and it actually admits to some emblishments that have been made over the years.

Even though it's about Ub...it just as much about Walt!

[Mr. Toad]

If I don't know it, it's news to me: is it true Tex Avery also worked on the Oswalds at some point?

Yes, Avery worked on the third set of Oswald cartoons with Lantz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Avery

[ichabod]

Hands up who's expecting Disney to release a complete set of all 26 Oswald shorts sometime soon!

Well it ain't going to happen!

see here for why > http://www.jimhillmedia.com/article.php?id=1859

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Hands up who's expecting Disney to release a complete set of all 26 Oswald shorts sometime soon!

Well it ain't going to happen!

see here for why > http://www.jimhillmedia.com/article.php?id=1859

Well, we knew that, didn't we?

But I've suggested already that a second "Rarities" volume in the Treasures line could include a handful of Oswald shorts (seven), another handful of Alice Comedies, Figaro, C&D, Susie, Casey and a number of worthy post-Walt shorts. It all falls into place now, doesn't it?

[MK Sharp]

Hands up who's expecting Disney to release a complete set of all 26 Oswald shorts sometime soon!

Well it ain't going to happen!

see here for why > http://www.jimhillmedia.com/article.php?id=1859

Well, we knew that, didn't we?

Indeed we did; although it seems odd that that article seems to almost entirely contradict the print source details given in Merritt & Kaufman's Walt In Wonderland.

And you've got to love rumours of collectors hoarding lost films. Always adds a bit of excitement to a story.

[Fflewduur]

Ever since I was a very little kid poring through the pages of The Art of Walt Disney I've been fascinated by the legend of Oswald; any number of Disney Oswalds that see public release will make that many more than I've ever been able to see before.

[Lars Vermundsberget]

I've got that book and I've read it, but I haven't checked the facts lately, so I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. But it seems to be established that far from all of the Disney Oswald shorts are available.

[Mr. Toad]

For some reason 12 of 26 surviving sticks in my mind.

[Lars Vermundsberget]

All right, that's it! I just had a look in my copy of "Walt in Wonderland" (pp 150-159), and it appears that there are known "print sources" to eleven of the the twenty-six Oswalds, seven of them in the Disney archives. The book was published in 1992/93, though.

[MK Sharp]

What I mean is things like Walt in Wonderland says that All Wet survives in 35mm at Universal; whereas this article claims it's only held in a private collection.

I assume that one must be right and the other wrong... but which is which?

[Lars Vermundsberget]

All right. It could be, though, that the article didn't bother to distinguish between "private collection" and "other non-Disney collection".

[ichabod]

It looks as though we have something in the way of a "formal" introduction to Oswald in this week's Disney insider newsletter!

The Walt Disney Company family recently got one member larger -- and what an important member it is! On February 9, 2006, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney’s first big cartoon star, returned to the Disney fold, thanks to an agreement with NBC/Universal, the company that previously owned the rights to Oswald since his theatrical debut in 1927.

"As the forerunner to Mickey Mouse and an important part of Walt Disney's creative legacy, the fun and mischievous Oswald is back where he belongs, at the home of his creator and among the stable of beloved characters created by Walt himself," said Walt Disney Company President and CEO Bob Iger, who had devoted himself to recovering Oswald.

Oswald holds a distinguished place in Disney history, as Disney Archivist Dave Smith explains: "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Walt Disney's first fully developed cartoon character to star in his own series. Previously he had made a combination live action/cartoon series, the 'Alice Comedies,' but the live Alice was the star. The popularity of Oswald started Walt on the road to independence."

Oswald was also the impetus for the creation of Mickey Mouse – at least, indirectly. When Walt lost control of the rights to his successful character to cartoon distributor Charles Mintz, he was devastated. But he quickly realized he needed another cartoon series to replace the Oswald shorts – and on the train trip home to Hollywood from New York, where he had received the news, he conceived the idea of his new star, a plucky little mouse. As Dave Smith explains, "Walt lost the rights to Oswald because he had signed a contract giving all copyrights and other rights to the series' distributor. He learned his lesson. As soon as he began with Mickey Mouse, he ensured that from then on he owned full rights on everything he produced."

It has been said that Oswald was a model for Mickey – the Insider took a look at the Oswald shorts to see if Walt’s most famous creation was evident in Oswald. Although the plucky rabbit wears shorts that look a lot like Mickey’s, and is drawn with similar panache, we found their personalities to be quite distinct. Mickey’s a plucky, friendly everyguy with a circle of friends and a true love in Minnie Mouse. Oswald, on the other hand, tends to the mischievous and romances various cartoon lovelies in different films.

The greatest difference between the two, however, is voice – Oswald is silent (like all his cartoon brethren of the mid ’20s) and his personality comes through only in his slapstick antics. Mickey has a richly expressive voice, thanks to Walt Disney himself, and to the two voice actors (first James Macdonald, and now Wayne Allwine) who carried on the tradition in his wake.

The Oswald cartoons are funny, highly energetic, and full of terrific sight gags – it’s not hard to see what made Oswald a hit. However, it was characteristic of Walt to turn a defeat like the loss of his first character into a triumph. He recognized this about himself, saying “You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” We had to conclude that starting over with a fresh inspiration allowed Walt to create, in Mickey, a true classic with both more personality and more heart than Oswald.

However, Oswald is a valuable slice of Disneyana, and he was instrumental in the creative growth of Walt Disney. As Dave Smith says, "Oswald may seem only a footnote in Disney history, but his significance was far greater than one suspects. With Oswald, Walt began learning how to instill real personality into his cartoon characters." And the Osward shorts are still terrific fun to watch, just as they must have been back in the ’20s.

So it’s fitting that Oswald is receiving a resounding welcome home. "When Bob was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word," said Walt Disney's daughter Diane Disney Miller. "Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun."

Also check out Oswald's character page in the Disney Archives

http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/cha ... swald.html

[GhostHost]

so any chances of seeing an Oslwald dvd set or just a single disk?

Maybe Uncle Walt wasn't a perfect saint (naming his staff with HUAC committees), but this story about deception, betrayal, and cutthroat business dealings was mostly done by short-sighted money producers, Mintz & Powers, both of whom easy "villians" to the story. I think this story is the greatest example of somebody who had a dream and the ambition to create the first sound cartoon despite no "star" name and nearly no money. If Steamboat Willie was a failure, history would have severely be different.
The break-up of Ub/Walt working friendship is where a filmmarker could show Walt's less glowing side as Uncle Walt was noted as quite a verbal abuser at the time.

What was Walt's Reason for giving names to HUAC? I was reading "Walt Disney: An American Original", but I will not be able to get back to it till after this semester.

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Walt wasn't the only one - quite some people did. A lot of Americans were so scared of communists that they were ready to say whatever the committee would like to hear without really worrying about which other principles they might get into conflict with.

There was basically a "witch-hunt" going on for a while. I don't think one should expect to find actual motives in most individual cases.

[creid]

Each biography has it own theory on why Uncle Walt willingly named names for the HUAC, but most agree he hated the unions and mostly named union leaders, such as Art Babbitt (who could have been the tenth old man.) Uncle Walt, especially in the beginning, tended to treat the company as family and the strike in 1941 hurt him personally. Quite honestly, all names Uncle Walt named were already on the FBI list and the testimony was more for the show than for government information.

It is true Uncle Walt was not the only one willing testifying as I believe Ronald Reagan testified as well. I find it unfortunate that Eli Kazaan reputation has been completely tarnished while Uncle Walt has relatively gotten off scott free.

[Fflewduur]

I find it unfortunate that Eli Kazaan reputation has been completely tarnished while Uncle Walt has relatively gotten off scott free.

I agree--especially since Kazan's reasons were extremely personal and deeply rooted in decades' worth of involvement in labor causes & the American Communist Party.