Disney celebrates 96 years of Mickey and Minnie with image of Walt Disney

Exactly 96 years ago, Walt Disney held at the Colony Theatre, in New York, the first screening of the short “Steamboat Willie” (“Steamboat Willie”, in Portuguese), a production responsible for marking the first appearance of two characters that would become symbols of the Disney studios: Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

To celebrate the date, through social media, The Walt Disney Archives, the department responsible for all Disney archives, shared an image of its founder, Walt Disneyin the early 1930s, alongside some Mickey Mouse dolls. Look!

As explained in the documentary “Mickey: The Story of a Mouse”, available on Disney+, between the two, Mickey was the first to appear, after the renowned director lost the rights to his first character, Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit.

The mouse would have been created by Walt Disney during the filmmaker’s trip to Hollywood, “at a time when my luck and that of my brother, Royit wasn’t good, and the disaster seemed to be approaching”, as the animator says in the production.

Therefore, Walt He began working on “Steamboat Willie” in his garage, when he realized that, to make the story complete, it would be necessary to create a companion for Mickey — thus creating Minnie.

Are Mickey and Minnie really married?

If Mickey Mouse is the most famous mouse in the world, then his companion, Minnie Mouse, certainly deserves the same title. Debuting on screen at the end of 1928 with the short “Steamer Willie”, both Mickey and Minnie will celebrate more than 80 Valentine’s Days together in 2024.

However, some people speculate about what kind of relationship the two establish with each other, since during the animations, Mickey is sometimes married to Minnie, sometimes just courting her. In the September 30, 1933, issue of Film Pictorial magazine, Walt Disney comment exactly on this question.

Read the full article: After all, are Mickey and Minnie Mouse really married?