Acquired
00:48:17 · David Rosenthal
[00:48:17] S1: And and that could be anything. I mean, the only reason that the Oswalds worked, even though they were a rip off of Felix, was because they came built in with the universal distribution. But, yeah, Walt taking out the Mickeys before bringing sound, like, he's got nothing to bring to the table here. Yep. So Walt lines up access to the cinephone sound recording system from a character named Pat Powers, who had actually helped create Universal, you know, some number of decades earlier, and then had gone on to become a sound accolade and entrepreneur developing a sound system for this new movie technology. And so Walt and Ub and crew animate a test sequence of a Mickey with sound, and they screen it for all their wives and girlfriends. And Ub writes later of what happened next when they screamed the synchronized sound Mickey for the first time. I never saw such a reaction in an audience in my life. The scheme worked perfectly. The sound itself gave the illusion of something emanating directly from the screen. Walt kept crying, this is it. This is it. We've got it. It turned out that sound was the critical enabling technology for animation to go beyond a novelty and allow the characters that are on screen to actually have personality that audiences connect with. So interesting.
00:49:41 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:49:41] S0: And it's not obvious at first. Until you do. It's obvious in retrospect, but you can totally see how when Walt had this insight and then they made the investment. Because doing a test animation and synchronizing the sound, like, even to show a little screener must have been really hard at the time because none of the tools existed. They sort of had to invent the way to synchronize the drawings with the music and the systems. It's sort of a big bet even to try and see if that creates personality. Right. [00:50:08] S1: Right. And sound did the same thing for live action movies, but it's not that big a leap to have humans talking. Like, humans talk. You know, sound just made it way better. Sound for cartoons was this giant leap. These characters, this art can now be actual characters with personalities Yep. In a way that they couldn't before. [00:50:32] S0: Non obvious at the time, completely obvious in retrospect. [00:50:35] S1: Yep. So they make steamboat Willie as the third Mickey, but the first with synchronized sound. [00:50:43] S0: Which we're gonna skip over the whole headache nightmare of creating this thing, but it was like Walt constantly going back and forth to New York, betting every last dollar that he had, inventing all these new processes, trying different ways to get an orchestra synced to the sound. [00:50:59] S1: Oh, yeah. They, like, animated a little ball on the screen that would sync to the orchestra as they were playing.
00:50:59 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:50:59] S1: Oh, yeah. They, like, animated a little ball on the screen that would sync to the orchestra as they were playing. [00:51:04] S0: Yes. And he couldn't get the original conductor of the orchestra to actually use his method. The orchestra guy was like, trust me. And then it was all out of sync with the screen. The the net of it is it's a giant, painful, operational struggle to get this thing out, but my god, does it hit. Yes. Well, [00:51:25] S1: you know, this is the nature of the New York distributors. They get it made. Walt takes it and shops it around to all the big folks in New York, and they're so conservative. They're like, well, this is cool, but, I don't know how audiences are gonna react to this. We kinda wanna see a [00:51:43] S0: test first. I don't wanna be first in line. [00:51:45] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly like VCs. Like so Walt decides that he's gonna take matters into his own hands, and he goes directly to the manager of the Colony Theater in New York City and cuts a deal for a thousand dollars to run Steamboat Willie before the features that they're showing in the Colony Theater. So going around distributors just to get this in one theater as a test. Yep. And so Steamboat Willie premieres in New York City on 11/18/1928 before the film gang war. Nobody really remembers gang war because Steamboat Willie is a revolution. Critics love it. Audiences love it. [00:52:29] S0: Yeah. Isn't there some famous story of people sort of standing up and screaming, we want Steamboat Willie again instead of playing the the main feature?
00:52:29 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:52:29] S0: Yeah. Isn't there some famous story of people sort of standing up and screaming, we want Steamboat Willie again instead of playing the the main feature? [00:52:38] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But still, you know, Disney now needs to find a distributor, and now he's got the proof point. These New York distributors, they're still so conservative. They're like, well, you had one hit. I don't know that, like, we can really trust that this isn't just a fad, that the future sound Mickey's are also gonna be a hit and that you can repeat the magic. And famously, one distributor, while Walt is meeting with him here, and he's trying to explain to Walt why he's gonna pass again on the Mickey deal, picks up a package of Lifesavers candy. And he says to Walt, the public knows the Lifesavers brand. They know what these are. They don't know Walt Disney, and they don't know your mouse. I mean, I can only imagine Walt sitting here just seething. Yeah. But this makes a huge impression on him. I think this is an important thing about Walt. He definitely has a huge ego. Right? But he is very willing to learn even from pretty obnoxious people. He's like, you know what? You're right. [00:53:43] S0: Oh, I think he's motivated by learning. [00:53:45] S1: He's motivated. [00:53:46] S0: Yes. An engineer. I think he's, he loves picking things apart and learning the way they work. I think he's motivated to make the best art he can in addition to making the best business he can. So if someone's gonna offer him A lesson. A way to learn something.
00:53:46 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:53:46] S0: Yes. An engineer. I think he's, he loves picking things apart and learning the way they work. I think he's motivated to make the best art he can in addition to making the best business he can. So if someone's gonna offer him A lesson. A way to learn something. [00:53:58] S1: Yeah. Yeah. He'll take it. He'll take it even if he might be mad at the person. So he writes about this moment later. From now on, the audience was gonna know if they like the picture, they were gonna know Walt Disney's name. Ultimately, what Walt does is he turns to Pat Powers, his partner in the sound technology, who had been one of the, you know, original Universal executives. And they cut a deal where Powers will be Disney's direct distribution agent in return for just 10% of the gross revenue on the Mickey's, which seems like a pretty good deal. Yeah. And indeed, it was kind of a too good to be true deal because Powers, like all these New York guys, was basically plotting to do the exact same thing as Mintz to Disney. He wanted to start working with Walt, give him a sweetheart deal, and then lure away the animation talent. Because Powers, remember, has the sound technology that he's given to Walt. So he's thinking, if I get the animators Right. What do we need Walt for? [00:55:08] S0: So this explains the sweetheart deal on distribution because that wasn't the real prize he was after.
00:55:08 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:55:08] S0: So this explains the sweetheart deal on distribution because that wasn't the real prize he was after. [00:55:13] S1: And just a year later, in 1930, Powers does the unthinkable. He convinces Ub Iwerks to quit and leave Disney. He says, Ub, we're gonna get you set up with your own studio. You're gonna work with me. We're gonna create new characters. It's the exact same thing that Mintz did to Disney last time. Absolutely brutal. Except it plays out the exact opposite way. [00:55:44] S0: Because Walt's learned his lesson. [00:55:45] S1: Walt has learned his lesson. By the time this happens, over a dozen Mickey shorts with sound have come out. Every single one of them branded prominently upfront and at the end, a Walt Disney comic, and they had become huge hits. So even though Power steals Iwerks away, nobody cares. Everybody still wants the Mickeys. Everybody still wants Walt Disney comics. Disney has made himself the lifesavers of animation. Disney first switches to Columbia for distribution and then to United Artists, and audiences just keep loving Mickey. In fact, they love him so much that it leads to the discovery of a whole new business model for Disney and the company, the intellectual property flywheel. And it starts with the Mickey Mouse Club. This is wild. I had no idea about the origins of the Mickey Mouse Club. [00:56:44] S0: Basically discovered by Disney by accident. Accident. Right? Totally by accident.