Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Poster of Trolley Troubles, the second Oswald short film

In 1927, because of cost and technical restrictions, Disney and his chief animator Ub Iwerks decided to end 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 character he could sell to Universal. After Oswald was created, Winkler signed a contract with Universal on March 4, 1927 that would guarantee 27 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons.[10][5][7] Work on both the character and series began soon after Disney moved his studio to Hyperion Avenue.[11]

Disney chose to make the character a rabbit since there were already two popular animated cats at the time, Felix the Cat and Krazy Kat.

The first Oswald cartoon, Poor Papa, was rejected by the Universal studio heads for its poor production quality and the sloppiness and age of Oswald.[12] Disney, together with Iwerks, decided to create a second cartoon titled Trolley Troubles featuring a much younger, neater Oswald. The short, released on September 5, 1927,[11] officially launched the series and proved to be Universal's greatest success to date. The storyline for Poor Papa was reused in a Mickey Mouse short five years later, in Mickey's Nightmare, 1932.[12] 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.[7][13]

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).[11] 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.[11]

Oswald's success also resulted in Universal and Winkler signing another contract in February 1928, guaranteeing three more years of Oswald cartoons.[14]

As time passed, Disney feared that Mintz would forgo renewal of the contract, partly due to Iwerks informing Disney that George Winkler, at the behest of Mintz, had been going behind Disney's back during pick-up runs for Oswald reels and hiring away his animators. Eventually, Walt traveled with his wife Lilly to New York to find other potential distributors for his studio's cartoons, including Fox and MGM, prior to meetings with Mintz. As Walt later recalled, he placed two Oswald prints under one arm and—feeling "like a hick"—marched "one half-block north" on Broadway to MGM to visit Fred Quimby. During this period, Walt and Lillian attended the premier of the Oswald short Rival Romeos, which debuted at the Colony on 53rd and Broadway.[11]

In the spring of 1928, Disney traveled to New York City in hopes of negotiating a more profitable contract with his producer Charles Mintz. But as economic problems were apparent at the time, Mintz figured Disney should settle for a 20% cut, although large turnarounds were promised if the studio's finances showed considerable growth. While most of his fellow animators left for Mintz's studio, Disney decided to quit working on the Oswald cartoons. On his long train ride home, he came up with an idea to create another character, and retain the rights to it. He and Iwerks would go on to develop a new cartoon in secret, starring a new character which would soon become the most successful cartoon character in film history and later became the foundation of a global entertainment empire. The first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be filmed was Plane Crazy in the summer of 1928, but it was produced as a silent and held back from release. The first Mickey Mouse film with a synchronized soundtrack, Steamboat Willie, reached the screen that fall and became a major hit, eclipsing Oswald. Plane Crazy was later given its own synchronized soundtrack and released on March 17, 1929.[15][16]

Mintz, meanwhile, opened his own studio (later known as Screen Gems) consisting primarily of former Disney employees, where he continued to produce Oswald cartoons, among them the first Oswald with sound, Hen Fruit (1929). Coincidentally, Disney and Mintz each produced nine cartoons the first year and 17 the next, before Oswald was taken over by others. Animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, unhappy with Mintz, asked Universal head Carl Laemmle to remove Mintz, suggesting they would be the ones to continue the Oswald series. Laemmle did terminate Mintz's contract, but instead of hiring Harman and Ising, he opted to have the Oswald cartoons produced right on the Universal lot.[17] Laemmle selected Walter Lantz to produce the new series of Oswald shorts (the first of which was 1929's Race Riot).

A version of Oswald redesigned by Walter Lantz

Over the next decade, Lantz produced 142 Oswald cartoons, for a total of 194 films featuring the character, spanning the work of all three producers. After Lantz took over production in 1929, the character's look was changed to some degree over the following years: Oswald got white gloves on his hands, shoes on his feet, a shirt, a "cuter" face with larger eyes, a bigger head, and shorter ears. With 1935's Case of the Lost Sheep, an even more major makeover took place: the character was drawn more realistically now, with white fur rather than black, shoes are removed, plus wearing suspenders instead of a shirt and shorts. This new Oswald model was adapted directly from a non-Oswald character in another Lantz cartoon: the Cinecolor "Fox and the Rabbit" (1935), released some two months earlier as the last of the early Cartune Classics series. The redesign was done by Manuel Moreno.[18]

The cartoons containing the new, white-furred Oswald seemed to be different from their predecessors in more than one way, as the stories themselves became softer. Minor changes in the drawing style would continue, too. With Happy Scouts (1938), the second-to-last Oswald film produced, the rabbit's fur went from being all-white to a combination of white and gray.

Unlike the Disney shorts, in which Oswald did not speak, Lantz's cartoons began to feature actual dialogue for Oswald, although most of the cartoons were still silent to begin with. Animator Bill Nolan performed the voice of Oswald in Cold Turkey, the first Lantz cartoon with dialogue, and the following year Pinto Colvig, who was working as an animator and gag man at the studio, started voicing Oswald. When Colvig left the studio in 1931, Mickey Rooney took over the voicing of Oswald until early in the following year. Starting in 1932, Lantz ceased to use a regular voice actor for Oswald, and many studio staff members (including Lantz himself) would take turns in voicing the character over the years. June Foray provided Oswald's voice in The Egg Cracker Suite, which was the final theatrical short to feature the character. She later voiced him again for an unaired radio pilot, Sally in Hollywoodland (1947).[19]

Oswald made a cameo appearance in the first animated sequence with both sound and color (two-strip Technicolor), a 2½-minute animated sequence of the live action movie The King of Jazz (1930), produced by Laemmle for Universal. However, it was not until 1934 that Oswald got his own color sound cartoons in two-strip Technicolor, Toyland Premiere and Springtime Serenade. The Oswald cartoons then returned to black-and-white, except for the last one, The Egg Cracker Suite (1943), released as a part of the Swing Symphonies series. Egg Cracker was also the only Oswald cartoon to use three-strip Technicolor. Oswald's last cartoon appearance was a cameo in The Woody Woodpecker Polka (1951), also in three-strip Technicolor, which by then had become the norm in the cartoon industry. He also appeared in a 1952 theatrical commercial for the Electric Autolite Company, with his voice being provided by Dick Beals.[2]

Oswald and his surrogate sons. After a few years on screen, Oswald settled to be featured in comic books. This version of the character is designed by Manuel Moreno.

Oswald's first appearance in comics was in a series of comic strips titled Oswald the Rabbit, which ran from February 1935 to January 1936. They were drawn by Al Stahl and published by National Allied Publications. The comics were serialized on one page of the entirety of New Fun and the first issue of More Fun.

Oswald's second run in comics began in Dell Comics' New Funnies, which ran from 1942 to 1962. Following the typical development seen in most new comics, the New Funnies stories slowly morphed the character in their own direction.

At the start of the New Funnies feature, Oswald existed in a milieu reminiscent of Winnie-the-Pooh: he was portrayed as a live stuffed animal, living in a forest together with other anthropomorphized toys. These included Toby Bear, Maggie Lou the wooden doll, Hi-Yah Wahoo the turtle-faced Indian, and Woody Woodpecker—depicted as a mechanical doll filled with nuts and bolts (hence his "nutty" behavior). In 1944, with the addition of writer John Stanley, the stuffed animal motif was dropped, as were Maggie Lou, Woody, and Wahoo. Oswald and Toby became flesh and blood characters living as roommates in "Lantzville". Initially drawn by Dan Gormley, the series was later drawn by the likes of Dan Noonan and Lloyd White.

In 1948, Toby adopted two orphan rabbits for Oswald to raise. Floyd and Lloyd, "Poppa Oswald's" new sons, stuck around; Toby was relegated to the sidelines, disappearing for good in 1953. Later stories focused on Oswald adventuring with his sons, seeking odd jobs, or simply protecting the boys from the likes of rabbit-eating Reddy Fox and (from 1961) con man Gabby Gator—a character adapted from contemporary Woody Woodpecker cartoon shorts. This era of Oswald comics typically featured the art of Jack Bradbury, known also for his Mickey Mouse work.

Post-1960s, Oswald comics tended to be produced outside the United States, for example in Mexico and Italy. Through the end of the 20th century, the foreign comics carried on the look and story style of the Dell Oswald stories.

In 2010, Oswald starred in the digi-comic series Epic Mickey: Tales of the Wasteland, a prequel to the Epic Mickey video game, sharing what the Wasteland was like before Mickey arrived there.

In 2011, Oswald starred in the Norwegian Disney comic story "En magisk jul!", written by David Gerstein and drawn by Mark Kausler. It is based on and takes place in the times of the classic Oswald shorts from 1927–28.[20] The story was later reprinted, as "Just Like Magic!", in the American Disney comic Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #726 (2015).

Al Michaels acknowledged that his contract negotiations had effectively traded him for Oswald, and spoke favorably of the deal.[21]

In February 2006, Disney CEO Bob Iger initiated a trade with NBC Universal in which a number of minor assets, including the rights to Oswald, were acquired by The Walt Disney Company in exchange for sending sportscaster Al Michaels from Disney's ABC and ESPN to NBC Sports.[5] At the time, ABC had lost its contract for NFL broadcast rights, and despite recently signing a long-term contract with ESPN, Michaels was interested in rejoining broadcast partner John Madden at NBC for the Sunday night package. Universal transferred the trademark of the character to Disney, and in exchange, Disney released Michaels from his employment contract, allowing him to sign with NBC. Even though the first few episodes had lost their copyright protection due to a failure to renew the first few episodes, trademarks are valid so long as they are used in commerce. In essence, Michaels was traded for the right to use Oswald on T-shirts, in video games, and other merchandise.

The deal included the trademark rights to the character and the copyright of the specific episodes of the original short films that they did not fail to renew made and produced by Walt Disney. The rights to the Winkler and Lantz/Universal-produced Oswald films were retained by Universal and other products related to the character were not included in the deal. Iger had been interested in the property because of an internal design document for a video game, which became Epic Mickey.[22] Walt Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, issued the following statement after the deal was announced:

When Bob [Iger] was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word. Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun.[23]

Around the same time, the Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets made a similar deal, the Chiefs giving the Jets a draft pick as compensation for releasing coach Herm Edwards from his contract. Referring to this trade, Michaels said:

Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday.[21]

In January 2007, a T-shirt line from Comme des Garçons seems to have constituted the first new Disney Oswald merchandise. Following in December was a two-disc DVD set, The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, included in Wave Seven of the Walt Disney Treasures DVD series. Several Oswald collectors' figurines and a limited edition grayscale plush toy appeared shortly after the DVD set's release. The Disney Store also began to introduce Oswald into its merchandise lines, starting with a canvas print and Christmas ornament that became available Fall 2007. A standard-issue color plush toy matching Oswald's appearance in Epic Mickey appeared in late 2010. This was followed by an ongoing roll-out of clothing and other products at the Disney Store, various chain stores, and the Disney California Adventure theme park.

In 2012, the newly-redesigned Buena Vista Street at Disney California Adventure included Oswald's Filling Station, a merchandise stand themed as a gas station operated by Oswald.[24] The shop sells "Oswald Ears" hats (a similar style to the popular Mickey Mouse Club caps), as well as shirts, plush toys and mugs.[25] In 2014, an Oswald character began making appearances in the area near the shop.[26]

Leaks from online résumés and portfolios have led to speculation of an animated series starring Oswald launching on Disney+. On July 6, 2019, the Oswald animated series was said to be in development on Christopher Painter's online résumé prior to being removed following online discussion regarding its inclusion.[27] Disney has yet to officially confirm the existence of an Oswald animated series.

Using Ub Iwerks' sketchbook drawings in 2012, archivists recreated a scene from an Oswald cartoon, Harem Scarem.[5]

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two marked the first appearance of Oswald as a playable character, alongside Mickey Mouse.

In 1995, Oswald briefly appeared in Férias Frustradas do Pica-Pau, a Woody Woodpecker video game released for the Sega Master System and the Mega Drive in Brazil only.[28]

Oswald is one of the main characters in the video game franchise Epic Mickey. The world of Epic Mickey is called "Wasteland" and it is similar to Disneyland but for "forgotten" Disney characters, including Oswald,[29] who rules the place.[30] Actually, Oswald fashioned it after Disneyland, but he put images of himself in the place of Mickey in the statue with Walt Disney and other places throughout the town.[31] Oswald was the first cartoon character to be "forgotten" and inhabit Wasteland.[31] Oswald dislikes Mickey for stealing his popularity that he felt he deserved.[32] Oswald tries to make Wasteland a better place for forgotten characters, especially his "bunny children" and his wife Ortensia.[32]

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is a video game that was released on November 18, 2012.[33] Unlike the previous game, Epic Mickey 2 features full voiced cut-scenes with Frank Welker (Welker had also provided Oswald's vocal effects in the previous game) as Oswald's first voice actor in a Disney's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit production (Bill Nolan was Oswald's first voice actor in 1929 when Walter Lantz produced the Oswald cartoons).[34][35]

Tetsuya Nomura, creator and lead producer of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, had requested for Oswald's use in Kingdom Hearts III, but the response from Disney was that the character would be "too difficult" to use, with no further clarification or details from Disney.[36] Nomura cites Oswald as one of his favorite Disney characters.[37]

Oswald starred in Harem Scarem, a 2012 cartoon created by archivist from Walt Disney's sketchbook taking dozens of drawings.[38] He made an appearance in a 2013 throwback style Mickey Mouse cartoon, Get a Horse![39]

While only 19 of 26 cartoons were previously known to have survived, a couple of Oswald's lost cartoons were found in the 2010s.[40] In 2015, the British Film Institute's National Archives were found to hold his Sleigh Bells (1927) footage. The BFI and Walt Disney Animation Studios worked to restore the short.[41] Long-term Disney animator David Bossert wrote a book, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons which was released in 2017. A Japanese man, Yasushi Watanabe, read the book and discovered that he had a missing 1928 Oswald cartoon, Neck & Neck, since he was a teenager.[40]

At one point in July 2019, an animation writer, Christopher Painter, listed on his online résumé that he was writer on multiple episodes of an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series. A handful of news sites circulated a story from a fan site claiming the series would be coming to Disney+, only for the résumé to be removed from the writer's blog.[42][43] Disney has yet to make an official comment on the rumored series.