On November 18, 1928, a black-and-white cartoon mouse with big round ears jumped onto a movie screen at the Colony Theater in New York City and started whistling a tune called Steamboat Bill. The audience burst out laughing. The cartoon was Steamboat Willie, and the mouse was Mickey - the first cartoon character ever to star in a film with sound that was perfectly matched to the action. Until that night, cartoons had been silent, with maybe a piano player tickling the keys in the theater. Now the cartoons could sing, hum, and toot horns right along with the pictures.
Mickey was the creation of Walt Disney and his ace animator Ub Iwerks. Earlier that year, Disney had lost the rights to a different character he had drawn called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and on a train ride home he sketched out a cheerful new mouse he wanted to call Mortimer. His wife Lillian thought Mortimer sounded too stuffy, so they changed it to Mickey. Disney himself provided Mickey's high, squeaky voice for almost twenty years. Steamboat Willie was actually the third Mickey cartoon made - but the first one released, because the studio rushed to add sound after Disney saw it amazing audiences in other films.
From that night on, Mickey Mouse became a global superstar. Within a few years he had a comic strip, a fan club with millions of kids, and a watch with his gloved hands as the clock hands. Disney built a whole entertainment empire around the character, including the first Disneyland in California in 1955. Today Mickey still smiles from lunchboxes, theme park gates, and rocket launches - all because a little mouse on a steamboat whistled at exactly the right moment in history.
