On September 4th, 1927, a jolly goofy animated bunny named “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” made his silver screen debut. In the five minute and forty-six second short entitled “Trolley Troubles,” the earnest conductor drives his trolley full of rabbits through (and under) a variety of obstacles – including a stubborn cow, a seemingly insurmountable hill and a panic-inducing brake failure.
As his trolley speeds towards oblivion, the nervous Oswald even takes off his own foot and kisses it for good luck because, well, it’s a rabbit’s foot.What made Oswald’s debut notable wasn’t the hijinks, but the man who created him. It was 90 years ago this year when Walt Disney’s first animated creation was shown to the world. As we all know, it wasn’t his last. But how did Disney go from a lucky rabbit to a charming mouse? The answer isn’t simple and it wasn’t necessarily by choice. Here’s how Walt Disney began with a bunny and ended with a rodent.
Even at a young age, Walt Disney stood out among his peers. Through his teens, he was often contracted out to do animation work. By 1921, he had made enough money to open his own studios at the age of 20 – Laugh-O-Gram Studios in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. While it struggled, Disney was ambitious and daring, including convincing a publisher at the New Yorker to finance a new film featuring a live-action girl interacting with cartoons (called Alice in Wonderland). However, before he could complete the film in Kansas City, Disney’s company went bankrupt. So, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. His brother joined him there and they went into business together, forming Disney Brothers Studios. It was in Hollywood where they finished Alice in Wonderland and sold the concept (but not the original short). By 1924, the Disney brothers had an order for series of “Alice Comedies” shorts.
In all, they made over 50 shorts featuring several young actresses playing the title character “Alice.” This success made him (and his brother) fairly wealthy, but soon Disney grew tired of the format. He also thought the quality of the animation was subpar due to having to spend too much time dealing with the live action portion, like securing studio time and dealing with actors. As such, the last few Alice Comedies (which have been recently restored) actually feature a lot more animation than live-action components.
Despite all of Disney’s reservations, the Alice Comedies were still quite successful and made him a wanted man. In 1927, Walt Disney signed a deal with Universal Studios to produce 26 animated shorts for $2,250 (about $31,000 today) per short. However, Universal had a request and that was to make sure the title character was not a cat because, as the studio’s head Carl Laemmle said, “there were too many cats on the market.”
Urged to get the cartoon done as quickly as possible, Disney and his team dove into work developing their new animated rabbit “Oswald.” Contrary to popular belief, the name does not hold any real significance. According to legend, the name “Oswald” was picked out of a hat at a Universal staff meeting – which is also why it didn’t follow the alliterative pattern of other animated characters like Bugs Bunny, Pink Panther and, later, Disney’s own Mickey Mouse.
In just over two weeks, Disney presented the first short cartoon “Poor Papa, which featured a chubby, grumpy and dazed Oswald dealing with way too many children. (You know, because rabbits have a lot of babies.)
Universal didn’t mince their disappointment with it. They felt…
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