Even in China. Children there, next to the Great Wall, who had never seen Mickey Mouse responded. So the studio did have that skill to communicate with images.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.
I grew up watching Mickey Mouse and going to Disney World, like, 2,000 times. Mickey Mouse is like my guru.
It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkies instead of the other way around.
At that time, the people that were in the animated film business were mostly guys who were unsuccessful newspaper cartoonists. In other words, their ability to draw living things was practically nil.
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
Walt Disney wasn't making films for kids. Neither were the Muppets. A lot of the great, really cool films, they weren't making them for kids.
Most original viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club didn't face the crush of family and social problems children have today.
Kids, adults, men, women, everybody has a relationship with Mickey Mouse.
The image we have would be impossible for Mickey Mouse to maintain. We're just... normal people.