Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, also known as Oswald the Rabbit, Oswald Rabbit, and Ozzie, is an animated cartoon character created in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures. He starred in the titular series of short films released to theaters from 1927 to 1938. Twenty-seven animated Oswald shorts were animated at the Walt Disney Studio and produced by Winkler Pictures, while the rest were produced by Walter Lantz Productions. After Universal took control of Oswald's character in 1928, Disney created Mickey Mouse as a replacement to Oswald, surpassing Lantz's Oswald in popularity as the series was eventually made redundant in favor of other Universal series. The films established both Walt Disney Studio and Walter Lantz Productions as major players in the American animation industry in the golden age of American animation. In 2003, Buena Vista Games pitched a concept for an Oswald-themed video game to then-Disney President and future-CEO Bob Iger, who became committed to acquiring the rights to Oswald. In 2006, The Walt Disney Company acquired the trademark of Oswald and the rights to the Disney-era films (with NBCUniversal effectively trading Oswald for the services of Al Michaels as play-by-play announcer on NBC Sunday Night Football). After his fade into obscurity, Oswald has since had a modern resurgence in popularity, and is considered a cult character, particularly in the Disney theme parks. Oswald returned in Disney's 2010 video game, Epic Mickey. The game's metafiction plot parallels Oswald's real-world history, dealing with the character's feelings of abandonment by Disney and envy toward Mickey Mouse. He has since appeared in Disney theme parks, comic books, and video games. Oswald made his first appearance in an animated production in 85 years through his cameo appearance in the 2013 animated short Get a Horse!. Oswald films produced before 1931, including the entirety of the Disney-era films, are in the public domain.
Characteristics
While under Disney's creative control, Oswald was one of the first cartoon characters that had personality. As outlined by Walt himself: "Hereafter we will aim to [make] Oswald a younger character, peppy, alert, saucy, and venturesome, keeping him also neat and trim". With Oswald, Disney began to explore the concept of "personality animation", in which cartoon characters were defined as individuals through their movements, mannerisms, and acting, instead of simply through their design. Around this period, Disney had expressed: "I want the characters to be somebody. I don't want them just to be a drawing". Not only were gags used, but his humor differed in terms of what he used to make people laugh. He presented physical humor, used situations to his advantage and presented situational humor in general and frustration comedy best shown in the cartoon The Mechanical Cow. He would use animal limbs to solve problems and even use his own limbs as props and gags. He could be squished as if he was made of rubber and could turn anything into a tool. His distinct personality was inspired by Douglas Fairbanks for his courageous and adventurous attitude as seen in the cartoon short Oh, What a Knight. In regard to Oswald's personality, Disney historian David Gerstein describes the difference between Mickey and Oswald: "Imagine Mickey if he were a little more egotistical or fallible, or imagine Bugs Bunny if he talked the talk but wasn't as good at walking the walk". In order to make his Oswald cartoons look "real", Disney turned away from the styles of Felix the Cat, Koko the Clown, Krazy Kat, and Julius the Cat and began emulating the camera angles, effects, and editing of live-action films. To learn how to base gags on personality and how to build comic routines, rather than heaping one gag after another, he studied Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton. In order to stir emotion in an audience, Disney studied and scrutinized the shadow effects, cross-cutting, and staging of action in films featuring Douglas Fairbanks and Lon Chaney. Over several cartoons, Disney and his animators would develop Oswald's persona: an "emotive, fast-moving wise guy, alternately ebullient and grouchy". Walt Disney did not want for Oswald to simply be "a rabbit character animated and shown in the same light as the commonly known cat characters", as well as merely just a peg for gags. Instead, his stated intention was "to make Oswald peculiarly and typically OSWALD".
History
Creation In 1927, because of cost and technical restrictions, Disney and his chief animator Ub Iwerks ended their work on the Alice Comedies and Julius the Cat. Around the same time, Charles Mintz got word that Universal Pictures wanted to get into the cartoon business, so he told Disney to create a new rabbit character that he could sell to Universal, because there were too many cat characters (Krazy Kat, Felix the Cat, etc.). After Oswald was created, Winkler signed a contract with Universal on March 4 the same year, which would guarantee 26 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. Work on both the character and series began soon after Disney moved his studio to Hyperion Avenue.
The Universal studio heads rejected the first Oswald cartoon, Poor Papa, for its poor production quality and the sloppiness and age of Oswald. Disney, together with Iwerks, created a second cartoon titled Trolley Troubles featuring a much younger, neater Oswald. The short, released on September 5, 1927, officially launched the series and proved to be Universal's greatest success to date. Poor Papa was later released in 1928 and the storyline was reused in a Mickey Mouse short five years later, in Mickey's Nightmare. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit became Universal's first major hit in 1927, rivaling other popular cartoon characters, such as Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown. The success of the Oswald series allowed the Walt Disney Studio to grow to a staff of nearly twenty. Walt's weekly salary from the series was $100 while Roy Disney's was $65. The Disney brothers earned $500 per Oswald short and split the year-end profits, with Walt receiving 60% ($5,361), and Roy receiving 40% ($3,574). With income gained from the Oswald series, Walt and Roy purchased ten acres of land in the desert. They also invested in an oil-drilling venture. Iwerks also invested his income in several stone mills to crush paint pigment he used to make paint formulas that were utilized by animators for decades.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
