Seed: The Mouse From U.N.C.L.E.
And speaking of dysfunctional accumulations of kin, sooner or later everyone gets around to wondering just what the hell is up with Mickey Mouse’s family. I can’t tell you how many hours of sleep I’ve sacrificed to this problem—it’s a real three o’clock in the morning booger--but you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
Okay, Mickey has two nephews, Morty and Ferdie. Actually, he has at least three other nephews--Monty, Morrie, and Marmaduke--and a niece named Maisie, but there is no indication that these four are brothers and sister of Morty and Ferdie and their appearances in Mickey’s adventures are rare. I suspect that when they refer to Mickey as “Unca Mickey,” the name is more a sign of affection, an endearment. Or they could be the offspring of a member of the Mouse family with whom the film studios chose not to associate, like the lesser Baldwin brothers.
Now, Morty’s and Ferdie’s mom is Mrs. Amelia Fieldmouse. Notice that her last name differs from Mickey’s. This means that she is Mickey’s biological sister married to a Mr. Fieldmouse. If she were married to Mickey’s brother, her surname would also be “Mouse” and not “Fieldmouse,” unless, of course, Mickey shortened his name when he went into the movie business (not unknown in Hollywood). But if Mickey has a brother, who is he and why have we never seen him? Was he killed in WW I? Did he sell out to M-G-M and change his name to “Jerry”? Was he eaten by Felix the Cat?
Research has led most investigators to believe that Amelia Fieldmouse is, in fact, Mickey’s sister; but that being the case, why does Mickey always call her “Mrs. Fieldmouse”? What has happened between these siblings that forces one of them to address the other so formally?
And then there is the alternative, the Hollywood Babylonian theory as to what is really going on.
Rumors abound that documents still exist proving that Amelia Fieldmouse and Minnie Mouse, Mickey’s long-term girlfriend, were roommates when they both attended classes at Ratcliffe College in the early 1920s. Mickey’s pre-1928 history, before his starring debut in the film “Plane Crazy,” is obscure, but his frequent co-star, Goofy (real name Dippy Dawg), drunkenly let slip at his Oscar Watch Party in 1944—“How to Play Football” lost to the patriotic fervor of “The Yankee Doodle Mouse”—that Mickey had worked as a groundskeeper at Ratcliffe while the girls were enrolled there. Before Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow could hustle the besotted Goof away from the prying ears of the press, he hinted that Mickey and Amelia had carried on a brief but passionate affair and that Mickey’s “nephews” were in fact nothing of the kind.
When reporters called on Mickey the next day, he slammed the door in their faces while yelling “No comment!” They rushed to see Minnie, who put them off with a shy, girlish giggle.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who had been slated for stardom with Walt Disney before being sold off to another producer due to high salary demands and who never scaled the heights of fame his replacement with Disney, Mickey Mouse, achieved, tried to tell anyone who would listen about the Mickey/Amelia scandal, but the thugs Pegleg Pete and the Beagle Boys, who worked for Disney, made sure that Oswald was ignored by spreading false and slanderous gossip about Oswald and Screwy Squirrel, thereby ruining the rabbit’s credibility and both careers. Pete and the Beagles were rewarded with small and villainous film roles.
Minnie Mouse, who certainly has the looks but not the smarts or talent necessary for a prolonged career in motion pictures, is said to have been richly rewarded for helping to maintain Mickey’s “good guy” image for nearly 80 years.
Whew. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time with this thing, but the obvious oddness in Mickey’s relationship with his “nephews” and their mother has been of primary concern to me since childhood and I just had to get some of this stuff off my chest.
Now, just don’t get me started about Donald, Huey, Dewey, Louie and Uncle Scrooge . . .
Labels: cheap sarcasm, dysfunctional family, Hollywood
posted by Anonymous @ 9:55 AM,
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Response: After All, It Brought Forth A Mouse
It's yet another tragic episode in the sad tale of Generation X's childhood. It's well-documented that we were neglected by our parents. The Boomers had stay-home moms and the derivatively named Generation Y at least had daycare centers while we had only the keys around our necks as our guardians. Yes, we were neglected even by Disney. From the time I entered first grade to the time I entered college, there were exactly two new Disney animated movies - The Fox and the Hound and The Resucers - neither of which featured a certain mouse. No, we had Jodie Foster and Kurt Russell and Paris Hilton's aunt as the face of Disney.
Boomers were steeped in Disneyana. There were, of course, all the classic movies but there were also the Mickey Mouse Club and Wonderful World of Disney shows on television and maybe even shorts shown before features in theatres which starred the squeaky rodent. And forget the comics. The scant comics rack was stuffed with Archie and the DC and Marvel universes -- no topless mice on those pages. Bunky and Guy experienced Mickey's reappearance in Mickey's Christmas Carol, and of course his daily performances on the early incarnation of the Disney Channel not to mention widely available videos of his oeuvre. Being pre-cable and pre-video, we didn't have those.
Unfortunately, Flatulus, I cannot aid you in your quest. I don't even know the mouse, let alone the details of his possibly sordid past or his sketchy family background. It is certainly an intriguing situation. No, my question has always been, where in the hell was Mickey during his wilderness period from, say 1960 to 1985? I'm not kidding, the whole time I grew up Mickey was very rarely seen and only then in a historical context. The only thing you saw was the outlined mouse-ear logo. Was he killed in an industrial accident at the studio? Did Pegleg Pete or one of the Beagle Boys go too far and extinguish his tiny little life? I hate to think he was snuffed out in a fit of passionate rage by Donald or Minnie following an interspecies tryst with Clarabelle or Daisy. Either way, there's been a studio coverup.
I've often wondered if he had taken the path so many chose in the 60s and gone to the Himalayas on some spiritual quest only to be lured into the soporific stupor of the poppy. I sometimes imagine Goofy and Pluto tracking him down in some back alley Kathmandu opium den -- bursting in just moments before he succumbs to the demons chasing him in the form of bucket-toting brooms.
I suspect the answer is that he truly was the avatar of Walt Disney and that he was frozen the whole time until modern technology found a way to somehow download Walt's brain into the little mouse. They don't call it suspended animation for no reason. So now he's still kickin' it everyday on House of Mouse or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or whatever his show is called now.
To be honest, though, Mickey always annoyed the hell out of me. I'm not sure if it was Loony Toon loyalty or the voice or the confusion over the fact that he didn't wear a shirt and Donald didn't wear pants. I have always have been able to relate to Donald - still do - but I always rooted for the Beagle Boys where Mickey was concerned.
Hopefully one of our blogmates has a good answer for you...
Labels: cheap sarcasm, Disney, Hollywood, mice
posted by St. Fiacre @ 9:50 AM,
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