Mickey Mouse poster from 1928 sells for $101,000

 

 

A 1928 film poster of Mickey Mouse has been sold to a mystery buyer for more than $100,000 at an auction in Texas.The colour poster is one of the earliest surviving images of the iconic character, created by Walt Disney. The poster was sold by the family of a deceased collector in California.

Mickey replaced an earlier character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit created by Disney for Universal Studios and first appeared in Steamboat Willie. The poster, which shows a smiling Mickey - dubbed 'The World's Funniest Cartoon Character' - waving his gloved hand, fetched $101,575 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.

Auction house director Grey Smith called the poster "an important piece of pop culture treasure", adding that it was likely to be the only Mickey Mouse poster created until 1930, when Columbia Pictures started distributing Disney cartoons.  Last year, a cartoon featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit called Hungry Hobos from 1928 was sold in the US for $25,000.

The 16mm film was found among the Huntley Film Archives in Herefordshire.

 

Oswald the Rabbit was the precurser to Mickey mouse

Walt Disney needs no introduction. Born in 1901, he was named after his father's friend, their family's Congregationalist pastor Walter Parr. His father, Elias Disney, was very strict and would beat his children for minor violations of the Sabbath. Interestingly, Walt and his sister snuck out once to see an early silent film projected on a sheet in a church: of Jesus being crucified and resurrected, most likely the 1912 classic From the Manger to the Cross.

Walt Disney

 

Infatuated with vaudeville and motion pictures, Disney began to draw cartoons for his school papers. After driving an ambulance in World War I, he returned to the States and tried to break into the fledgling animated film industry. After some false starts animating shorts with a few stock characters which he had created, he struck gold in 1928 by creating Mickey Mouse, voiced by the man himself, and the rest is history: Mickey Mouse is one of the most recognized icons in the world.