Mickey and the Tramp: Walt Disney's Debt to Charlie Chaplin

In 1928, Walt Disney made film history when his studio released Steamboat Willie, the first animated talkie and the first cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse. Although Disney proved to be forward-thinking with regard to sound and later groundbreaking cinematic technologies, his greatest influence was rooted firmly in the past: Charlie Chaplin, the master of the silent era. In 1964, by which time Chaplin's Tramp and Disney's Mouse had become two of the most recognizable icons of the filmmaking industry, Frank Rasky wrote in the Toronto Star Weekly that "[WaIt] Disney and Charlie Chaplin are the only two authentic geniuses that Hollywood ever spawned" (10). By understanding the connections between these two filmmakers and their works, one can better grasp how Chaplin influenced Disney and how they both reflected and affected American culture and audience sensibilities in the twentieth century. Like most children growing up in America during the early years of filmmaking, Walt Disney was fascinated with Charlie Chaplin. By the time Disney was twelve, he was competing in Chaplin impersonation contests in Kansas City. As he told a reporter for Ladies' Home Journal in a 1941 interview, "I'd get in line with half a dozen guys . . . I'd ad lib and play with my cane and gloves. Sometimes I'd win $5, sometimes $2.50, sometimes just get carfare" ("Mr. and Mrs. Disney" 146). Once he and his childhood friend Walter Pfeiffer performed "Charlie Chaplin and the Count" for amateur night at a local theater with Disney, as Chaplin, wearing his father's derby, pants, and big work shoes and sporting a mustache; they won a fourth-place prize of twenty-five cents" (Thomas 38). Disney's sister Ruth, quoted in a 1932 issue of Silver Screen, confirmed that her brother's ambition in life "was to be another Charlie Chaplin. Up and down the alley he'd swagger, with bagging trousers, derby hat, floppy shoes, and a cane, while one of his pals turned the crank of his new movie camera" (qtd. in Syring 8), which he acquired at the age of seventeen. Disney's brother Roy offered succinctly: "[HJe was always very taken with Charlie Chaplin so he was Charlie Chaplin" (Hubler, Roy Disney int. 50). Disney's Chaplin impersonation came to be ranked as the second best in Kansas City, and while his Kansas City acting days were limited, his practice of imitating Chaplin continued after he founded his own movie studio. As animator Ward Kimball recalled, "Walt was a great admirer of Chaplin. He was always showing us how Chaplin did a certain gag. We thought Walt was just as good as Chaplin. Of course, if you asked Walt to do any acting, he'd get a little self-conscious, but when he would get carried away with a story or gag situation and start imitating something, he was just as great as Chaplin" (qtd. in Green and Green). As his career progressed, Disney would frequently act out scenes for his animators, punctuating his conversation with expressive gestures and facial contortions ("Mr." 146). Disney's performances became a mainstay of his studio's story meetings. Calling them "a potent force during story discussions," animator Dick Huemer noted that "Walt could have been a great actor or comedian. . . . Walt would take stories and act them out, kill you with laughing they were so funny. And there it would be. You'd have the feeling. You knew exactly what he wanted" (qtd. in Canemaker 27). Animator Marc Davis concurs, saying of Disney, "He would act out the parts . . . better than you were able to do it. He had a wonderful Chaplinesque sense of timing and being able to perform something ... an action ... a little idea . . . the way he saw it in pantomime. He was marvelous at this. You'd go out of your mind if it was something you were going to work on" (Hubler, Marc Davis int. 15). Just as Disney's acting style was inspired by Chaplin, so too was his approach to filmmaking. Trained in Chaplin's pantomimic style, Disney approached movies visually rather than verbally, his studio being the first to develop and adopt the use of the storyboard to plan out the visual progression of a film. …