There have been so many exciting things happening in The Walt Disney Company lately, from the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios to the return of a lucky rabbit. Personally, I'm pretty excited about that last one.
In case the name Oswald the Lucky Rabbit doesn't ring a bell, here's the story. (Stay with me here, as we'll get to the rabbit shortly.)
Despite what Walt Disney so famously said, it did not all begin with a mouse. Walt Disney's animation career actually began in Kansas City, where he produced a series of "Laugh-O-Gram" cartoons that modernized classic folk tales with a jazz-age sensibility. Unfortunately, Walt's company went bankrupt when his distributor for these six cartoons went out of business, while still owing Walt thousands of dollars.
In an attempt to save his first animation studio, Walt created a short animated film that combined a live-action girl with animated characters. "Alice's Wonderland" convinced film distributor Margaret Winkler to finance a series of successful black-and-white silent shorts based on the same premise. The Disney Brothers Studios launched in 1923 to produce this series of "Alice Comedies," and it is the true beginning of the Disney-animation heritage. The studio produced more than 50 cartoons, casting four different girls as Alice.
In 1927, Charles Mintz, who had married Margaret Winkler, signed a contract with Universal Studios to produce a new cartoon series that was to star a rabbit character. The head of Universal's publicity department had people around the office write a name on a slip of paper and put those slips into his hat. One of the secretaries pulled out the name "Oswald."
Oswald was a "Lucky Rabbit" because he had four lucky rabbit's feet, not to mention the good fortune of having Walt and artist Ub Iwerks guiding his first 26 silent black-and-white cartoons, produced from 1927-1928. Walt supplied the story ideas and direction, and Ub led a small team of animators.
Reportedly, Universal didn't care for the first Disney-produced Oswald cartoon ("Poor Papa") and refused to release it to the public. One studio insider was quoted as saying, "The cartoon is merely a succession of unrelated gags, being not even a thread of story throughout its length." They also felt the character looked too old and "rough."
Walt went back to the drawing board, promising to make Oswald "a younger character, peppy, alert, saucy and venturesome." The next effort, "Trolley Troubles," was a fast-paced story of Oswald as a conductor on a rickety trolley car and the challenges he faced getting his passengers to their destination. It debuted on Sept. 5, 1927, and audiences loved it.
Film Daily magazine declared, "Oswald is a riot!"
Universal gave Oswald a great deal of publicity, including a merchandising campaign that featured Oswald on a five-cent marshmallow-and-chocolate candy, and a stencil set for drawing the character in six different poses and costumes. Though Walt didn't get any money for the use of Oswald's image, it was great publicity for his character.
Walt was required to produce a new Oswald cartoon every two weeks! The character portrayed a medieval troubadour rescuing a damsel in distress in "Oh, What A Knight!," a Canadian Mountie tracking down an evil doer in "Ozzie of the Mounted" and an amateur airplane pilot in "Ocean Hop."
If these adventures sound like something from an early Mickey Mouse cartoon, then it should come as no surprise that Oswald (who looks a bit like the yet-to-be-created mouse) had a girlfriend named Fanny, who acted very much like the still undiscovered star Minnie Mouse. Oswald's nemesis was the villain Peg Leg Pete, who also had appeared in the "Alice Comedies," making him Disney's oldest surviving animated character.
With all this success, Walt and his wife took a train trip to New York to ask Mintz for $250 more for each episode for the next series of Oswald cartoons. Walt was shocked when Mintz actually offered $450 less for each short. To make matters worse, Mintz had hired away all of Walt's animators (except for Ub Iwerks) as well as a young apprentice animator named Les Clark, who later would become one of Walt's "Nine Old Men."
In addition, Mintz informed Walt that, according to their contract, Oswald was the property of Universal, not the Disney Brothers. A disgusted Walt told his wife, "Never again will I work for somebody else."
However, Walt remained optimistic, and wrote to his brother Roy from New York, saying, "We will be able to laugh last; that's the best laugh of all."
On the train ride back to California, Walt began to think that his new cartoon series should feature a mouse, and Mickey was born.
Meanwhile, Universal hired Walter Lantz (who would later create Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker) to continue producing more then 100 additional Oswald cartoons, but they never achieved the same success as Walt's releases. The lucky rabbit remained hidden in the Universal archives for generations, until The Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to the character earlier this year through a transaction with television network NBC, now Universal's parent company. NBC-Universal walked away with former ABC Sports broadcaster Al Michaels, and Disney emerged with a variety of new sports-programming rights, along with that long-missed, but never forgotten little rabbit.
Welcome home, Oswald.
