We all know Mickey Mouse as the cute loveable Disney mascot. Mickey Mouse also appears at the beginning of Disney animated feature films in his role as Steamboat Willie.
However, I recently found out that I had missed 30 seconds of Steamboat Willie as it had been cut from the original film for depicting Mickey Mouse being cruel to animals, specifically the scene where he uses them as musical instruments.
This full version can also be found on the DVD “Walt Disney Treasures – Mickey Mouse in Black and White
This behaviour may be surprising to those of us who grew up with the Mickey Mouse of the 1980’s, by which time he had been re-cast as a likeable ‘everyman’ character. However the mouse’s character was originally more of a trickster.
In the 1929 film Karnival Kid, Micky Mouse courts Minnie and is not quite a gentleman…
With the release of recent games such as ‘Epic Mickey‘, the ‘Kingdom Hearts‘ series, and possible feature length film in the works, the re-imagining of the Mickey Mouse’s character is in full swing.