Archival project "Radio Liberty this week 20 years ago." The most interesting and significant from the Archive of the Radio Freedom of twenty years ago. Incomplete story. Still living hopes. Could Russia go the other way?

David Smith, director of the Disney Archive, Alexander Genis, the writer, and the Americans, children and adults, are told about the world -famous cartoon staff and its creator Walte Disney. Author and presenter Marina Efimova. Air September 17, 1998.

Marina Efimova : They say that Mickey Mouse was born on the train. I talk with one of the biographers of Mickey Mouse, director of the Disney Archive David Smith.

David Smith : There are many stories about this, because the creation of Mickey Mouse has become part of the Disney legend. According to one version, Walt Disney came up with Mickey on a train, on which he and his wife returned from New York to California after Disney lost the rights to cartoons about the rabbit Oswalde. There is some kind of truth in it.

Marina Efimova : The rabbit of Oswald David Smith mentioned not in vain, because Oswald was the last draft of Mickey. Before him was the cat Julius from the Alisins comedy series, which the young Walt Disney made in the early 1920s along with several friends-artists. It was after these series of Disney and his artists that they were invited to work in the Universal studio, where they made the film "Lucky Oswald". But the "lucky" failed with a bang. There was clearly not enough charm in this rabbit. Maybe huge round ears? Maybe ridiculous white gloves? And maybe good -natured complaisance and indestructible carelessness of our future hero? However, despite the failure of the film about Oswald, professionals instantly felt a powerful charge of talent in Disney's team. A well -known and even rich in a new genre, the multiplier Paul Terry, then famous for taking not quality, but in quantity, thoughtfully said after watching Oswalda:

Announcer : "If we compare us with the stores, then Disney works like the dear" Tiffany ", and I - as a penny" Wolvort ", and it is still unknown who will capture the market."

Marina Efimova : So in order to capture the market, the cunning leaders of the Universal studio of Walt Disney himself were fired as a potentially dangerous competitor, and his four artists, on the contrary, offered work on unprecedented favorable conditions. However, all four refused and remained with the dismissed Disney. It was then, in the fall of 1928, and Mickey Mouse was born. From despair. According to legend, Walt Disney called the mouse Mortimer, but Mrs. Disney allegedly rejected the name as too British.

"However, all four refused and remained with the dismissed Disney ..."

David Smith : When 20 years ago I first came to work for the Disney studio, I talked for a long time with the artist who created Mickey Mouse. This was the first and best multiplier of Disney Ab Ivers, the Dutch artist, whom Walter met and made friends in 1921, long before the creation of Mickey, in Kansas City, Missouri. They worked together there in an advertising company. AB told me how Walt Disney returned from New York, depressed by the failure of his rabbit Oswald, gathered those several artists who still believed in him, and they all together began to invent a new hero. But at least one detail in the legend is real. It is true that the name of Mickey gave the mouse by the wife of Walt Disney.

Marina Efimova : In infancy, the fate of Mickey Mouse hung in the balance.

David Smith : Disney made two films with Mickey Mouse and could not sell them. The dumb movie was dying. And then Walt took his new cartoon "Willy Steamer", which was almost ready, and introduced the sound into it.

Marina Efimova : Recall that the sound cinema just appeared a year before these events, in 1927, so the sound of the movie "Willy Steamer" was almost amateur and carried out by the only technically competent artist Disney Wilfried Jackson. Remembering his first impression of this first sound cartoon, who decided the fate of Mickey Mouse and his own, Walt Disney wrote:

Announcer : "It was terrible, but wonderful, it was funny, unexpected and new. I have never experienced such a feeling of victory again in my life."

Marina Efimova : And this was the author of Snow White and Bambi?

David Smith : You see, at that time this film seemed incredibly funny. The main effect was in sounds and music. After all, before Tapered music was not directly related to what was happening on the screen, and now, when Minnie-Mouse twisted the tail of a goat and notes, the goat sounded like a barmark and performed the song "Plom in a straw"-the main melody of the film. The children watched the "Willy Steamer" ten times. But adults appreciated his humor, music and skill of artists. The day of an unprecedented success for the cartoon-the New York premiere of the movie "Willy Steamer"-we consider the birthday of Mickey Mouse.

Walt Disney represents the cartoon "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs". 1937

Marina Efimova : This premiere took place in the Colonial cinema that is no longer existing anymore on September 19, 1928. Mr. Smith, as I understand it, Mickey Mouse saved Disney from the need?

David Smith : Oh, yes! The company lost money when Mickey appeared. But his films brought such income that Disney was able to immediately begin the preparation of full -length cartoons. The first of them was Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, which was released nine years after the Villy Steamer. And you look at the difference. "Willy Steamer" is a black and white, short, image and sound still very unimportant quality. He looks like a draft of Snow White. It is even surprising that such changes in animated cinema have occurred in just nine years. Nevertheless, it is Mickey Mouse that we owe the appearance of this masterpiece of Disney.

"In infancy, the fate of Mickey Mouse hung in the balance ..."

Marina Efimova : If we count on September 19, 1928 the birthday of Mickey Mouse, then Walt Disney himself considered his birthday to the Disney Company empire. After a quarter of a century, in the mid-50s, he said:

Walt Disney : "I hope we will never forget that all this began the mouse."

Marina Efimova : How the movie started with a photograph, so the animation began with a series of newspaper cartoons. She was born in the first decade of the 20th century. At this time, the cinema has already become an industry, and the newspaper "Cartoon's" - a series of caricatures - were established as a genre.

Announcer : “Having, according to the legend and based on the novel by Doctor Ragtaym, German emigrant artists herself imported in America itself, but the French film amateur Emil Kohl finally guessed two and two. In 1907, he released the first multiplier film“ Mr. Stop ”.

Marina Efimova : So the author of one of the books about Mickey Mouse Adrian Bailey and adds: “Walt Disney did not create an animated movie, he made it art, the genre. And one of the principles of this Disney genre, about which Disney himself wrote a lot, was a bright personification Mickey Mouse during his life?

David Smith : In the first films, in his young years, Mickey was an adventurer, he traveled a lot, including to the island of Cannibals or in a trailer trailer along mountain roads, as in the film "Mickey Trino-Mouse", changed his occupation. But over the years, he becomes a typical representative of the middle class from a comfortable suburbs and lives as a normal American.

Marina Efimova : In his first film "Willy Steamer" Mickey was a terrible mischievous, however, a musical mischievous. The main melody of the film, the song "Plush in the straw", Mickey what just does not play! The cat howls him and the piglets are wrapped, which he takes turns by the tails, and he turns the cow, inadvertently opening his mouth, playing the melody on her teeth.

Mr. Smith, speaking of the character of Mickey Mouse, you mentioned that after a rather stormy youth, he settled down and turned into a respectable resident of the suburbs. As far as I know, did it affect its popularity?

David Smith : Over the years, the authors of scripts were increasingly difficult and difficult to write roles for Mickey Mouse, because he was not allowed to do anything out of the framework of respectable orderliness. As soon as he was allowed some mischief, so immediately mothers, grandmothers and teachers threw the studio with letters demanding that Mickey remained an example without a flaw. Therefore, in recent films with Mickey Mouse, the main roles, in essence, went to the beloved uglore of American children - dull Donald.

Marina Efimova : As a result of a survey conducted in America after the Second World War, it turned out that Donald ranks first in popularity, and Mickey-Masus is only the third, after the animated hare of Bagz Bannie. A rather typical opinion, developing about Mickey Mouse, expressed Will Brown, with whom our correspondent Raya Vile talked in a New York toy store.

Will Brown : When I was a child, I really loved Mickey Mouse, loved trips to Disneyland, parades in which Mickey is always the main character. Over the years, I realized that Mickey Mouse is a blowing figure. In fact, he is of little interest, he has no character, what is called "personality". Huffy has his friend, although no one knows who it is. And Donald-Dak is also a person-harmful, but with character. And Mickey Mouse even has some nasty voice, a kind of whiner acts on the nerves. And no interesting stories are connected with him, not that with Winnie the Poom - that’s who the real cult figure!

"... and Donald-Dak is also a person-harmful, but with character"

Marina Efimova : We will not forget that Mr. Brown's childhood was in the 70s, when the elderly Mickey Mouse left the big screen and came to work on television. As for the film card from Mickey Mouse, then, as always, what some consider squalor, others consider humility. This is how Disney himself described the character of Mickey Mouse:

Drawing Mickey Mouse, who made Ab Ivers

Announcer : Mickey is a small creature, but he honestly tries to fulfill every business as well as he can, and he overcomes the obstacles that his life puts with comic patience and meek.

Marina Efimova : Many countries have adopted Mickey Mouse from birth. In Italy, he was called Topolino, in Sweden - mousse Pig, in Japan - Mickey Gucci, in Latin America he is an el -migelito roton. Only in Russia was his name did not change, however, doubled the letter "K" - Mickey. In the USA in 1932, Walt Disney was awarded a special Oscar for the creation of this animated character, and during the Second World War, the actions of the Union armies on the landing day in Normandy were indicated by the code words "Mickey Mouse." It is curious that Nazi propaganda immediately hated Mickey. “How can a mouse serve as an example for children?!” Wrote one of the leading Nazi critics. “This is one of the most insignificant ideals ever created in the cinema.” Particularly funny, in Germany, after the seizure of power by the Nazis, films with Mickey Mouse were prohibited. In revenge for this arrogance, the Americans painted the physiognomy of Mickey Mouse on all B-17 bombers, operating on the European front.

The microphone has Alexander Genis.

Alexander Genis : It is even surprising that such a harmless creature as Mickey Mouse turned out to be so many enemies. What is worth at least a storm, raging a few years ago in France in connection with the discovery in the Parisian suburb of European Disneyland. How many then wrote about the "aggression" of Mickey Mouse. Someone even christened this park with a "French Chernobyl." Mickey-mouse also causes irritation in our compatriots. Tatyana Tolstaya recently printed in Moscow a clear article about the unfortunate mouse, which she called the "national rodent of America."

“How can a mouse serve as an example for children?!” Wrote one of the leading Nazi critics. “This is one of the most insignificant ideals ever created in the cinema.”

Marina Efimova : What is the opinion among American critics?

David Smith : 20-30 years ago, criticism of all Disney films from many influential intellectuals began. They believed that Disney shows life too well, too simple and hides the dark sides of the real world from children. And they were right, including that Disney did not set his goal to prepare children for real life. He created for them fairy tales, as was done at all times and in all countries, his goal was to give children a pure, absolutely aimless pleasure.

Walt Disney. 1938. Photo by Alan Fisher

Marina Efimova : By the way, Adrian Bailey writes in the book “Walt Disney is the world of fantasy”: “Even if Walt Disney has become a moralist, who had not lost their hunt for pleasure and fun.” In this sense, the 1933 film "Party" is characteristic. At first, Mickey's guests in his pretty house in the outskirts dance to a slow melody. But the music begins to accelerate the pace and the dancers accelerate movements, the pace is growing, those who have watched the dancing before, then the things are dancing - lamps, pots, furniture, the piano itself, the piano itself, breaks off, and finally dances the whole house. In the end, as it should be in a respectable outskirts, police officers appear. A minute later they dance. “I never claimed art,” said Walt Disney, “only for entertainment for the public. But, I think, there is nothing more difficult in the world than to please the public.” In the 50s, the era of short cartoons in the cinema ended and they migrated to television, and with them Mickey Mouse, who made a new career of the leading daily children's show "Mickey Mouse Club". Something like "good night, kids."

Now, in retirement age, Mickey Mouse has become a warm master of Disneyland-a good position for a gentleman of retirement.

David Smith : But, of course, children who are brought to Disneyland do not know films from Mickey, they don’t even know who Walt Disney is, they think that this is the name of the place. But Mickey-Mouse has long ceased to be just a film card, it became a necessary childhood affiliation. Children love him simply for his appearance. Here, recently, psychologists tried to show the drawings of Mickey Mouse to infants - they laughed!

Marina Efimova : Well, then, we will finally listen to the main audience of Mickey Mouse-New York children. Paradise Vale is talking to them.

Raya Weil : In the largest children's store called “Toys I Us” - “Toys are we” - Mickey Mouse is represented in all types - from wooden and plastic cubes and wooden carousel over the trunk to a huge clockwork, speaking, flying Mickey. Do you know who it is? - I ask a small African American, in the numerous pigtails of which are multi -colored hairpins with the image of Mickey Mouse.

Angie (5 years old): Yes, I even have a photo where I am shot with him.

Raya Vile : The photograph, as it turned out, was taken in Disneyland. And what did Mickey Mouse tell you?

Angie : Nothing special, he is not the talkative, but he sang and danced for me. I love Mickey Mouse.

Raya Vile : On a playground in Brooklyn, I talked with seven -year -old Katti.

Katti : I love Mickey Mouse and Minnie-Mouse. I am honest, I'm afraid of mice. Mickey Mouse, too, like, a mouse, but I love him.

Raya Vile : A grandmother came up here and boasted that Katyusha was talking and reading in Russian, although she was born in America. Katya nodded her head.

Katti : I have many books about Mickey Mouse, as he was with her, gave her gifts.

Raya Vile : Did you know that he was so many years old?

Katti : No.

Raya Vile : How old did you think, he is?

Katti : Five or six.

Marina Efimova : But, back to adults, namely to Sasha Genis, whom I so impolite interrupted. He called his today's essay "Friends and Enemies of Mickey Mouse."

Sculptor Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse in Disneyland, Tokyo

Alexander Genis : In recent years, a lot of dissertations have been protected at the country's universities on the very popular topic of the so -called "ideological imperialism." The essence of this concept is that the West imposes its ideological constructions to the third world, flooding it with its mass culture - comics, children's books, cartoons. In this process, the company that gave birth to Mickey Mouse is undoubtedly leading-Disney-Companion. So, in one China, two hundred thousand copies of different publications related to Mickey Mauza monthly come out. In this regard, at one scientific conference in which I recently I had to take part, the question arose: will Russia become a “banana republic” enslaved by Mickey Mouse? Answering this question, the American Slavist Edith Close said: “In no case! Russian culture is strong enough and original to turn someone else's into her own. The arguments in favor of this conclusion, she drew from comparison of the American and Russian animated interpretations of the great Winnie the Pooh. The contradictions are really open. If the Americans have a rabbit, then the Russians have a parody of the pedant. Disney cartoon donkey IA -IA is a bore, then in the Russian version he is a philosopher.

"If the Americans have a Bear Winnie the Pooh just a fat glutture, then the Russians are a poet, and the poet is esoteric ..."

Such comparisons seem to me in principle fruitful and eloquent. A fairy tale is the very first lesson of specific worldview, which makes us all different, so America cannot be understood without Mickey Mouse, and in order to understand Mickey Mouse, you need to visit his homeland-Disney Park of attractions. In the Kingdom of Mickey Mouse, you fall into a special universe, become the object of directed influence of virtue. You are not so much entertained as they are recruited, turn to your faith. На нескольких гектарах представлена чистая ностальгическая мечта. На первый взгляд, ничего особенного, типичная провинциальная мейн-стрит. Улица, фонарь, аптека… Плюс пожарная охрана. Но все это застыло в том идеальном времени, когда не только улицы, но и нравы были чисты, когда не было преступности, наркотиков, богемных юнцов, расовых конфликтов. Это и есть та самая старая добрая Америка, вера в которую скрашивала американцам жизнь в трудные времена. Душа Америки принадлежит диснеевскому миру, ибо монархия Микки-Мауса – фабрика, вырабатывающая самый необходимый любой стране продукт - оптимизм.