The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse (10 page)

Gottfredson
: Mostly, I tried to keep up with the changes the Studio made to Mickey. I tried hard to match the Mickey I was drawing for the newspaper strip with the Mickey of the films.

In January 1933, I dropped the thin white line above Mickey’s eyes for simplicity’s sake but other than that I just followed the new model sheets of Mickey that would filter down to me.

Periodically, Mickey would lose and then regain his tail. He lost his short pants in the Forties and of course got pupils in his eyes with Fantasia (1940). When I first saw the pupils in Mickey’s eyes on the model sheets I liked them immediately. 

Korkis: I am sure you watched the animated cartoons closely. Do you have a favorite?

Gottfredson
: Fred Moore was the fellow who really streamlined the mouse and some of the other characters. To me, the finest Mickey short cartoon that was ever made was
The Nifty Nineties
(1941) with Fred Moore’s design of Mickey. I’ve said this many times before but I think the best Mickeys ever done were by Fred Moore. I tried to imitate Fred but I don’t think anyone could ever copy his style.

Korkis: Since you worked at the Studio, did any of the animators like Moore drop by to comment on your work?

Gottfredson
: The animation department didn’t even know we existed. We were so small and shoved in a back corner that it was out of sight, out of mind I guess.

In the Comic Strip department we were paid straight salaries and if we wanted a vacation, we had to get ahead a few weeks on the schedule. Our salaries were ever as high as the animators. When the union got into it later, it finally was decided that scale for a Class I Comic Strip Artist was about the same as a minimum wage for an animator, I think.

Korkis: It was sort of what you had been telling me earlier about your feelings about the comic book artists.

Gottfredson
: We just didn’t consider [comic book artists] professional artists. There was a definite snobbishness by those of us who did newspaper strips towards comic book artists. I had nothing to do with the redrawing or reprinting of my comics strip stories in the Disney comic books. They had to change the panels for the format of the comic book so it resulted in some very bad drawings where panels had to be extended on the bottom or the sides or even sides being cut off in odd places to make them fit.

So they had to draw hands or feet or added in trees to fill spaces or cut characters off or changed balloons. I forget all the things that were done. It just ruined the design of the panel. I tried never to read the redrawn or reprinted strips. We considered them second-generation material and why spend time on them? 

Korkis: The story continuities in the Mickey Mouse strip seem to stop in the mid-1950s.

Gottfredson
: We began to phase out of continuities and go back to a gag-a-day format at that time because it was a decision of King Features to help counteract the effects of television on newspapers. They felt that with a few exceptions that comic strip stories couldn’t compete with television.

At first, I missed the continuities but gradually daily gags became a relief. Continuities were very demanding. We had to do them so fast. I don’t think we had the time to really develop them because we were producing them daily. In animation, they always seemed to have plenty of time.

Korkis: Were you bothered that readers never knew your name and thought that Walt was doing the strip?

Gottfredson
: People ask me all the time if I was annoyed that I wasn’t allowed to sign my name on the strip. Not at all. That was just the tradition of the comic strip where ghosts did the work and the artist who created the strip still signed his name.

It wasn’t Walt’s fault. I know he asked King Features to let me sign my name and they told him it would dilute the thing and confuse people and make it more difficult to sell. And they were right. People wanted Walt Disney. They thought he did everything. I have no complaints or regrets. 

Korkis: What was your impression of Walt Disney?

Gottfredson
: Walt and Roy were great people to work for. Under them, the creative freedom was unbelievable. Roy was a little warmer to us than Walt. Walt was a tough taskmaster. I don’t think he even realized when he was being harsh. He was always just so focused on whatever project he was doing and was passionate that it be done right. That was all that mattered.

The rest of us were just the tools he used. If, as you said earlier, I kept the “real” Mickey alive, I was just doing the best I could as an extension of Walt and his dream. There was only one Walt Disney. There will never be another.

Korkis: Thank you, Floyd.

During the Golden Age of Radio, listeners could tune in the dial on their huge radio (which was actually a piece of living room furniture) and hear adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery, musical variety, romance, and thrillers, as well as classical music concerts, Big Band remotes, farm reports, news and commentary, panel discussions, quiz shows, sidewalk interviews, sports broadcasts, talent shows, weather forecasts, and more.

The Golden Age of Radio lasted from the early 1920s until the invasion of television in the 1950s. In the beginning, American radio network programs were almost always presented live, since the national networks prohibited the airing of recorded programs until the late 1940s.

As a result, prime-time shows would be performed twice — once for each coast. Some programs, however, were recorded as they were broadcast during this period, typically for syndication or so advertisers could have their own copy.

Fortunately, the estate of Felix Mills, musical director of the
Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air
, donated all of his original discs of the show to the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters for future researchers to enjoy and study.

Mills’ daughter, Betsy Mills Goodspeed, wrote:

I remember Walt being very excited about doing the show. He was constantly amazed by how much grown-ups loved and admired his work.

My father thought Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the most marvelous film that was ever produced. As far as I know, he didn’t go to the Disney Studios to discuss the music for the radio show but went to [Walt] Disney’s house, or Walt came to ours. Walt obviously believed that Felix was the best choice for the job, and Felix thought the radio program was a fantastic endeavor by all those who were involved. He felt highly honored to have been awarded the contract.

Walt Disney and his animated friends were no strangers to radio. Walt (often doing the voice of Mickey Mouse and sometimes accompanied by Clarence Nash voicing Donald Duck) popped up on several radio shows during the Golden Age.

In summer 1937, Lever Brothers (which made products like Rinso and Lifebuoy) were looking for a half-hour program to precede and build an audience for their
Al Jolson’s Lifebuoy Program
on CBS that was being massacred in the ratings by its competition on NBC,
The Jack Benny Program
.

Looking for additional funds and publicity for the nearly completed
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, Walt Disney hesitantly agreed in September to do an audition record for a weekly Disney radio show.

The show was scheduled to debut on October 5, 1937. Written by comedy writer Ken Englund, the premise was that Mickey Mouse would host the half hour and present a weekly guest star (actor Leslie Howard was chosen for the pilot), but that Donald Duck would mess things up.

Deeply involved in the final months of making
Snow White
Walt wouldn’t be available to do the voice of Mickey Mouse, so actor J. Donald Wilson was selected as his substitute. One newspaper reported that it was “the first time anyone other than Walt Disney himself was allowed to speak for Mickey”. Clarence Nash, of course, did the voice of Donald Duck and the musical chores were handled by Meredith “Music Man” Wilson.

Roy Disney flew to New York in September to close the deal, but it fell apart because of a dispute over money.

Some news stories, including one in the
Hollywood Reporter
, hinted that “Disney is afraid [his characters] may sour on him if they [air] every week” and that Walt “refuses radio because he doesn’t think his Mickey Mouse and others would broadcast well”.

Despite this setback, other sponsors, even the makers of Lucky Strike cigarettes, were trying to woo Walt into doing a weekly radio children’s show. Pepsodent, thanks to a guaranteed weekly budget of between $10,000 and $12,000 weekly and some other concessions, finally got Walt’s commitment to create a show to air Sunday afternoons on NBC in the same time slot used by Amos ‘n’ Andy during the other six days of the week.

Walt probably agreed because the show coincided with the release of
Snow White
and because he saw it (just as he later did with television) as an opportunity to publicize his latest film.

The original option was for thirteen weeks with Walt doing the voice of Mickey Mouse until a suitable replacement could be found. Despite what others report, Walt only did Mickey’s voice for the first three weeks.

Starting with the fourth show, the voice of Mickey was comedian Joe Twerp, whose comedy relied on him being an excitable stutterer who confuses words. He had been considered for the role of Doc, a similar personality, in
Snow White
, but Roy Atwell was chosen to supply the voice instead.

The writers were Bill Demling, who had supplied material for big-name radio comedians like Ed Wynn and Joe E. Brown, and Eddie Holden, a radio actor who had voiced the giant in the Mickey Mouse short
The Brave Little Tailor
(1938) and who had done incidental voices in
Dumbo
and
Bambi
.

Music direction was by Gordon “Felix” Mills, one of radio’s most active orchestra leaders of the era, who directed thirty-three musicians for the show. Six of those musicians also performed as Donald Duck’s wacky novelty “gadget” band, the Webfoot Sextet, with instruments like cowbells, bottles, a meat grinder, an auto horn, a Bob Burns-style bazooka, and a “syrup-cruet hurdy gurdy”. Amazingly, all of this cacophony sounded pretty good and very funny.

In his unpublished memoir, Felix Mills remembered:

I called in a young drummer from the [Eddie] Cantor show when one of our drummers had the flu, and for several weeks he hung around at rehearsals. [His name was Spike Jones.] Spike asked what I was going to do with the Duck’s music and I said, “I’ll never use it again; do you want it?”

(Later in 1941, the musical group Spike Jones and The City Slickers appeared on the scene and became popular for playing this same type of cacophonic music.)

The show featured a twelve-voice female choir (with four members who specialized in bird whistling so they could also perform as Minnie Mouse’s Woodland Bird Choir) and an eight-voice male choir. The opening theme song for the show was the still popular “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” and the closing theme was “Heigh Ho” from
Snow White
.

Broadcast from a theater studio on the RKO lot (RKO was releasing the Disney animated films), Joe Twerp did the voice of Mickey Mouse. Minnie Mouse was performed by Thelma Boardman who would later supply Minnie’s voice in some of the Disney cartoons of the 1940s.

Pinto Colvig, the original voice of Goofy, had left the Disney Studio by the time the show started, so Goofy was voiced by Stuart Buchanan, the official “casting director” at the Disney Studio who had supplied the voice of the huntsman in
Snow White
.

Donald Duck was voiced by Clarence N and Clara Cluck by Florence Gill. Both of them had performed the same roles in the Disney animated cartoons.

Radio announcer John “Bud” Hiestand (who appeared in many movies in 1938 as a radio announcer) announced the show, and also voiced the Magic Mirror, which was the primary form of transportation that allowed Mickey and the gang to journey through time and space to meet everyone from Long John Silver to Mother Goose to Robin Hood.

While the Disney version of the Snow White character appeared on at least two episodes (and in one episode Walt danced with Snow White), the gang also got to visit Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty almost two decades before their films were made.

(Incidentally, on some of the later shows, Walt was too busy to attend rehearsals and performances, and so Hiestand had to impersonate him when the script called for an appearance.)

Hiestand’s brother-in-law Glanville Heisch, a skilled writer of verse and song as well as the creator of the popular radio show the
Cinnamon Bear
, was also on board as a writer and director.

Other voices on the show were supplied by such popular performers as Billy Bletcher (Old King Cole and Judge Owl; Bletcher was the voice of Peg Leg Pete in the cartoons), Hans Conreid (the Pied Piper; many years later he would voice Captain Hook), Bea Benaderet (Miriam the Mermaid in the kingdom of King Neptune), Walter Tetley, and many others, including Mel Blanc.

Mel Blanc? The voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and countless other cartoon characters who always told the story that the only voice he did for Disney was the voice of Gideon the Cat in
Pinocchio
and it was later cut out except for a hiccup? (Of course, Blanc also supplied the voice for the Audio-Animatronics Cousin Orville in the Carousel of Progress attraction.)

Then twenty-nine years old, Blanc was a regular on the show portraying a variety of characters as well as one of his earliest continuing characters, a man who gets so excited that he starts hiccupping so violently he can’t stop. Perhaps this performance gave Walt the idea to use him in the production of
Pinocchio
which was in development at the time.