Mighty Mouse


Mighty Mouse is an American animated character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox. He is an anthropomorphic superhero mouse, originally called Super Mouse, who made his debut in the 1942 short The Mouse of Tomorrow. The character's name was changed to Mighty Mouse in his eighth film, 1944's The Wreck of the Hesperus, and the character went on to star in 80 theatrical shorts, concluding in 1961 with Cat Alarm.
In 1955, Mighty Mouse Playhouse debuted as a Saturday morning cartoon show on the CBS television network, which popularized the character far more than the original theatrical run. The show lasted until 1967. Filmation revived the character in The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, which ran from 1979 to 1980, and animation director Ralph Bakshi revived the concept again in Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, from 1987 to 1988.
Mighty Mouse also appeared in comic books by several publishers, including his own series, Mighty Mouse and The Adventures of Mighty Mouse, which ran from 1946 to 1968.
Mighty Mouse is known for his theme song, "Mighty Mouse Theme ", written by composer Marshall Barer.

History

Super Mouse

The character originated in 1942 from an idea by animator Isadore Klein at the Terrytoons studio, who suggested a parody/homage to the popular Superman character, making some sketches of a superhero fly. Paul Terry, the head of the studio, liked the idea but suggested a mouse rather than an insect.
The character was dubbed "Super Mouse", and his first theatrical short, The Mouse of Tomorrow, debuted on October 16, 1942.
In his book Of Mice and Magic, critic Leonard Maltin describes the character's origin story:
The trade journal Variety said The Mouse of Tomorrow "just misses being outstanding, mainly because of faulty narration and too much kidding of Superman. Idea of super-rat conquering prowling beasts of feline world is good, but too closely follows pattern of that super hero."
Super Mouse, and later Mighty Mouse, was originally voiced by Roy Halee Sr., a tenor who often sang on radio and first started doing cartoon voices for J. R. Bray's studio. In the operatic melodramas to follow, Halee and his quartet provided all of the vocals.
In Super Mouse's next film, he spoofed the popular Universal Monsters films. In Pandora's Box, he battled bat-winged cat demons, and his origin story was changed: now he becomes Super Mouse by eating vitamins A through Z. The hero made seven films in 1942–1943 before his name was changed.

Mighty Mouse: rename and redesign

In 1944, Paul Terry learned that another character named "Super Mouse" was to be published in Standard Comics' Coo-Coo Comics, so his character's name was changed to Mighty Mouse. The first short under the character's new name was The Wreck of the Hesperus, released February 11, 1944, adapting the celebrated poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with the addition of a superhero mouse. A couple months later, the studio spoofed another classic, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, under the title Mighty Mouse Meets Jeckyll and Hyde Cat.
By summer, Mighty Mouse's costume got an overhaul as well. Until this point, he'd been wearing Superman's colors—a blue costume with a red cape—but in the June 16, 1944, cartoon Eliza on the Ice, Mighty Mouse appears for the first time in a red costume, with a yellow cape. This is also the first time that the character was portrayed as living among the stars, hurtling down from the heavens to save the day.
The final design of the character debuted in the 15th cartoon, The Sultan's Birthday, released on October 13, 1944. In this cartoon, redesigned by animator Connie Rasinski, Mighty Mouse has a fuller figure with an exaggerated upper body, and is clad in a yellow outfit, with a red cape and trunks.
Like his inspiration, Superman, Mighty Mouse's superpowers are vast and sometimes appear limitless. His main powers include flight, super-strength and invulnerability. The early cartoons often portray him as a ruthless fighter; one of his most frequent tactics is to fly under an enemy's chin and let loose a volley of blows, subduing the opponent through sheer physical punishment.
However, his powers can vary, depending on the demands of the story; he is sometimes knocked unconscious or rendered temporarily immobile by the villain, only to rise again by the end of the cartoon and save the day. In some films, he uses X-ray vision and psychokinesis. He was also able to turn back time in 1946's The Johnstown Flood. Other cartoons, like 1945's Krakatoa, show him leaving a red contrail during flight that he can manipulate like a band of solid, flexible matter. In several of the cartoons, when Mighty Mouse achieves the impossible feats, the narrator exclaims, first in a normal voice: "What a mouse!!!!!", followed by his louder triumphant voice: "WHAT A MOUSE!!!!!"
In a 1969 interview, Terry said that Mighty Mouse's power had a religious aspect: "When a man is sick, or down, or hurt, you say, 'There's nothing more we can do. It's in God's hand.' And he either survives or he doesn't according to God's plan. Right? So, 'Man's extremity is God's opportunity.' So, taking that as a basis, I'd only have to get the mice in a tough spot and then say, 'Isn't there someone who can help?' 'Yes, there is someone; it's Mighty Mouse!' So, down from the heavens he'd come sailing down and lick the evil spirit, or whatever it was. And everything would be serene again." Biographer W. Gerald Harmonic notes that as of the mid 40s, Mighty Mouse would be pictured living on a star or a cloud, up in the heavens, and that he became "a Christ-like figure, a savior of all 'mouse-kind'."
While his typical opponents are nondescript cats, Mighty Mouse occasionally battles specific villains, though most appear in only one or two films. Several of the earliest "Super Mouse" films, which were made during World War II, feature the cats as thinly veiled caricatures of the Nazis, hunting down mice and marching them into concentration camp–like traps to what would otherwise be their doom. The Bat-cats, alien cats with bat wings and wheels for feet, appeared in two cartoons; in two others between 1949 and 1950 he faces a huge, dim-witted, but super-strong cat named Julius "Pinhead" Schlabotka whose strength rivals Mighty Mouse's. In rare moments, he confronts non-feline adversaries such as human villain Bad Bill Bunion and his horse, or the Automatic Mouse Trap, a brontosaur-shaped robotic monster. In The Green Line, the cats and the mice live on either side of a green dividing line down the middle of their town's main street. They agree to keep the peace as long as no one crosses it. An evil entity, a Satan cat, starts the cats and mice fighting. At the end, Mighty Mouse is cheered by mice and cats alike.

Melodrama spoofs

In 1945, Mighty Mouse and the Pirates was the first Mighty Mouse cartoon to feature sung dialogue, in the operetta style. Gypsy Life and The Crackpot King followed in the same style. Gypsy Life was particularly successful, earning Terry his third nomination for an Academy Award for Short Subjects.
There was a romantic, damsel in distress element in these cartoons—in each one, Mighty Mouse saves a dark-haired beauty from terrible trouble, and in the latter two, the camera fades out on the hero and the girl in a romantic clinch. While these were very similar to the musical melodrama spoofs that were soon to emerge, they didn't have an overwrought narrator, or the suggestion that the cartoon is an episode of a continuing story.
In November 1947, A Fight to the Finish was the first in a series of musical melodrama spoofs, with Mighty Mouse saving damsel in distress Pearl Pureheart from the villainous, mustache-twirling cat Oil Can Harry. Terrytoons revived the concept from their earlier Fanny Zilch series, a melodrama spoof that ran for seven cartoons from 1933 to 1937. Fanny was constantly tormented by a human version of Oil Can Harry, and protected by her lover, J. Leffingwell Strongheart.
A Fight to the Finish begins with a snatch of Cole Porter's song "And The Villain Still Pursued Her", which had also been used as the theme for the Fanny Zilch cartoons. The narrator opens with an urgent recap of the previous episode: "In our last episode, we left Mighty Mouse at the old Beaver River station. As you remember, folks, he was locked in a desperate struggle with a villain. But on with the story..." Mighty Mouse is engaging in "a fight to the finish" with Oil Can Harry, now a villainous cat with a mustache, a top hat and a big black cloak, voiced by Tom Morrison. The blonde heroine, Pearl Pureheart, is tied up in the other room, but refuses to give up hope. Harry manages to knock out Mighty Mouse, and leaves him tied to the railroad track with a bomb on his head, and the 5:15 train due to pass by. Harry drives Pearl away to his home, where he woos her in song, to no avail. Mighty Mouse manages to blow out the fuse, stop the train and escape from his bonds, and rushes to Pearl's rescue. At Harry's house, they fight with fists, guns and swords, as Pearl slips out the window and onto a passing log which is floating down the river into a mill. Mighty Mouse throws Harry into the river and rushes to rescue Pearl, who's heading for the buzzsaw. The narrator asks, "Is our little heroine doomed to destruction in the sawmill? Will Mighty Mouse arrive in time? See the following episode, next week!" The camera starts to iris out, but then stops, as the narrator relents, "Stop! Gosh, we can't wait until next week. Please, show us what happens, won't you?" Mighty Mouse grabs Pearl in time, and the pair have a brief romantic chorus together as the cartoon delivers a happy ending.
The melodrama spoofs continued as an occasional series over the next six years, with Oil Can Harry and Pearl Pureheart returning in thirteen more cartoons. Another memorable short was 1949's The Perils of Pearl Pureheart, in which Oil Can Harry hypnotizes Pearl into singing "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" on stage at an old saloon, where he vacuums up the tips thrown by the audience. Hypnotized for three and a half minutes of the six-minute cartoon, Pearl continues to sing as the battle between Harry and Mighty Mouse rages around her, even underwater.
To vary the formula, the melodramas started traveling to exotic locales, including Italy, Switzerland, Holland and even prehistoric times and medieval times.
The fourteen Oil Can Harry melodrama theatricals were:
  • A Fight to the Finish
  • Loves Labor Won
  • The Mysterious Stranger
  • Triple Trouble
  • A Cold Romance
  • The Perils of Pearl Pureheart
  • Stop, Look and Listen
  • Beauty on the Beach
  • Sunny Italy
  • Swiss Miss
  • Prehistoric Perils
  • Happy Holland
  • A Soapy Opera
  • ''When Mousehood Was in Flower''