Mickey's 60th Birthday: A Cautionary Tale That Disney Should've Heeded

I am 33 years old at the time of this essay, as I was born in 1988. That was the same year that Mickey Mouse turned 60. That being said, one of the first Disney television specials that I ever knew was Mickey's 60th Birthday. If any of you reading this wonder why we are fighting for the preservation of true Disney magic, I suggest you watch this special. It is still on YouTube in full. I shall explain to you why this special is important to watch later, but for now, I will explain the story.

The special opens up at a TV studio where Mickey Mouse is starring in a live show dedicated to his 60th birthday. However, he feels his act isn’t good enough, so he digs through a prop chest and finds his iconic Sorcerer's Hat, but once he attempts to wear it, he receives a warning from a sorcerer in his mirror (who, by the way, is NOT Yensid of Fantasia fame, but a completely different character created for this special) who tells him not to use someone else's magic. Mickey simply shrugs it off and goes on.

Acclaimed director Mel Fellini (Carl Reiner): "I gave up The New Monkees for this." Meanwhile, Roger Rabbit appears with his voice actor, Charles Fleischer, before he makes Mickey's party go out with a bang!

Meanwhile, backstage, Roger Rabbit, who had become an immediate superstar due to the box office success of his movie (enough to be prominently featured in literally anything Disney, let alone this special) has offered his services for the show. Naturally, being the mixed-up Toon that he is, he receives a bonk on the head and mistakes a stick of dynamite for a set of candles for the cake that is meant to be presented as part of the show. Once he realizes his error, he runs onstage and attempts to defuse the lit stick in an array of cartoon slapstick. Unfortunately, the dynamite explodes and covers Mickey and the audience in cake frosting.

Completely ignoring the prior warning he received, Mickey decides to bring out the Sorcerer's Hat to repair the damage. Once he succeeds, he then gets the idea to wow the crowd even further with more magic. Then the sky turns dark and clouds surround Mickey, who begins to regret what he did. Sadly, it is too late, and he mysteriously vanishes much to the shock of everyone involved.

A wand is a terrible thing to waste: Mickey's attempt to fix the damage with another sorcerer's magic hat does not go over well with the sorcerer whose hat it is, so the sorcerer makes him vanish, leading network news anchors Dudley Goode (John Ritter) and Mia Loud (Jill Eikenberry) to cover the story vigorously.

It is soon revealed to us the viewers that Mickey was transported to the quarters of the sorcerer in the mirror. The sorcerer appears before him and scolds him for going against his wishes and using magic that was not his own. As punishment, he decides to cast a spell on the famous mouse. He recites the following incantation:

I bet we've been together for a million years: Mickey somehow ends up in Columbus, Ohio and meets the Keatons of Family Ties, now in its seventh and last season on NBC: Andrew (Brian Bonsall), Mallory (Justine Bateman), and Jennifer (Tina Yothers).

And with that, Mickey is transported back to the world we live in. However, when he approaches a stagehand named Michael, who was there when the show went to pot, he doesn't recognize him. The spell has basically rendered Mickey unrecognizable to the world, which actually believes he has disappeared and goes on a series of search parties.

Also worth mentioning is that upon Mickey's "disappearance", the media begins to think it was an inside job perpetrated by none other than...Donald Duck?? Earlier in the special, Donald demanded that he be given a role in the special birthday show. And with common knowledge being that, while the two are good friends, Donald possesses some jealousy towards the Mouse. With that, Donald is falsely accused and arrested.

You may already be a winner: The media frenzy causes stocks to plummet (like the real-life stock market crash a year before this special) and even Ed McMahon intervenes with an offer of $5,000,000 to anyone who can find Mickey.

Remember how I said this special was required viewing for our cause? This story basically is an allegory for what Disney itself is currently going through. Let me shed some light on the subject.

In the early 2000's, The Walt Disney Company was at a crossroads. While Michael Eisner, the CEO at the time, was able to bring the company into an era of prosperity during the 1980s and 90s, he was also responsible for making some rather poor choices as well. These choices included:

—Straining relationships between Disney and creative partners such as Jeffrey Katzenberg (which resulted in the creation of Dreamworks and Eisner himself being the base of Lord Farquaad, the villain of its most famous animated film, Shrek), Pixar Animation Studios (which was amended in a move I shall bring up shortly), and Steven Spielberg (the reason why the Roger Rabbit franchise has been mostly dormant ever since the mid-90's).

—Investing in projects that either took years to find their footing or were dead on arrival (one example being the Euro Disney Resort).

—The mismanagement of its iconic animation studio (ironically, the direct-to-video sequels that they made to piggyback off of the success and legacy of the films they were based on using its Television Animation units are no better than the live-action remakes currently plaguing the company today and doing the same thing).

Because of all this, Roy E. Disney created a website pointing out Disney's flaws and things that could be done to fix them in an effort to spread awareness and save the company. This site was called SaveDisney. One could argue that this is reminiscent of how Roger tried to defuse the dynamite he placed on the cake.

Legal eagles: When Donald goes to jail for suspected foul play, he has to hire the law firm of McKenzie (Richard Dysart), Brackman (Alan Rachins), Chaney (he's dead), and Kuzak (Harry Hamlin), as seen on LA Law, to help clear his name.

Ever since Bob Iger had been appointed CEO of the company in 2005, they had made several major purchases and mergers. Aside from the acquisitions of Pixar and the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney had bought Marvel Comics, LucasFilm Ltd., and most recently 20th Century Fox under his reign (the appearance of the cast of LA Law, soon to be rebooted on ABC, is another omen of things to come). While the company has still produced some very solid animated hits of its own since then, such as Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, and, of course, Frozen, it is abundantly clear that Disney has been favoring its acquired intellectual properties. In a sense, they are acting like Mickey did in the beginning of the special and are exploiting the magic of someone else rather than utilizing their own that made them the biggest entertainment company in the world for over 90 years in the first place. In the beginning, the acquisition of Pixar helped their ailing animation legacy by aiding their story departments, thus granting them their recent classics, just like how Mickey originally used the hat to repair the damage done by the explosion. However, it appears that they have since gotten carried away like Mickey did. So much that one could say that they barely resemble the proud company that Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney had founded.

In fact, it can be pointed out that, aside from productions such as the 2013 theatrical short Get a Horse, the Paul Rudish-produced Mickey Mouse shorts and The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Mickey himself is seen using magic more often than not in recent products--that Mickey, with his over-reliance on magic, barely acts like the true Mickey that first entertained the downtrodden public during the Great Depression. Same can be said for Disney and its over-reliance on its acquired IPs rather than its own homemade characters and properties. Mickey’s actions had consequences in Fantasia, too.

Where everybody knows your name…?: Mickey ends up in Boston, Massachusetts and meets Sam (Ted Danson), Rebecca (Kirstie Alley), Woody (Woody Harrelson), Carla (Rhea Perlman), Norm (George Wendt), Cliff (John Ratzenberger), and Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) at Cheers.

The question is, why exactly are they doing this? One could argue that it is pure, simple avarice. After all, owning more means more money to line their pockets. Another reason would have to be their tendency to "play it safe", adhere to agendas and bow down to political correctness. Such censorship muffles creativity.

A VERY good, plausible third reason would be because of something they are fully responsible for: the erosion of the public domain. Originally, when a creator passed away, the rights to their creations would not enter the public domain to be utilized by others for 56 years. However, Disney has lobbied for copyright extension for years. So much that the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 had been nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act". Had they not intervened, Mickey himself would have been in the public domain by now. This butting into political affairs has been destructive in many ways, especially for them. As many of us know, adaptations of existing classic stories are Disney's thing. But with CTEA, many properties are unable to enter the public domain. Movies like Alice in Wonderland would’ve been impossible to do had all this occurred during Walt's lifetime. All of this leaves Disney at a dearth of material to adapt...unless they buy it. And yes, this IS a very bad thing for MANY reasons.

Meet me down on Main Street: When Mickey returns to Disneyland, he finds Phylicia Rashad (Polly) trying to cheer up Cheech Marin (Oliver & Company) because "It's Magic." This is the key to helping Mickey find what he is looking for.

Ever play Monopoly? As one player buys more and more properties, you have no choice but to pay the one who owns the spot you land on, and if it all goes to the same person, then game over it is! They win. They have the Monopoly! In this case, Disney is on the brink of winning this real life Monopoly game! Little do they know that, as bad as it is for us, it is even worse for them, because while they may be winning a game, they are losing their identity! People have said that the name Disney is now just a simple name, completely unrelated to the rapacious corporation it has become.

Whatever the reason, there are some instances in which Disney itself is blaming the wrong people for its lack of true Disney magic in recent times. For example, as we have all seen, Walt Disney Animation Studios has transferred from hand-drawn animation to computer animation in the last two decades. However, this change was neither a fully welcome one nor a natural one. Starting in 2002, Disney made the decision that they would no longer be animating their theatrical films in the full hand-drawn format. This was due to most of their then-recent releases performing less than they hoped in comparison to the CGI features being done by the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks. As such, many of their animators were given the pink slip. This can be compared to the framing of Donald Duck in the special. Disney essentially blamed its hand-drawn animation for its failure the same way people blamed the Duck for the Mouse going missing.

Hail the conquering hero: As Roger rediscovers Mickey and Donald gets off the hook, Br'er Fox makes an appearance at the celebratory parade.

What exactly can be done now to combat this? Well, at the end of the special, Mickey, having been fruitless in his efforts to get people to know who he is again, visits a desolate Disneyland at night. Cast members at the park are doing their best to decorate the place for his birthday the next day, yet just cannot muster up enough positiveness to do the job — one could say that this could also mirror current cast members that may feel despondent over how Disney has not been what it once was in recent years. Mickey aids them by performing the musical number "It's Magic,” livening their spirits. Seeing this, the sorcerer returns and tells Mickey that what he did is the exact kind of magic he needed to use all along — Mickey just had to be himself! And seeing as he had learned his lesson, the spell is lifted just in time for Roger to run onto the scene and claim he found the missing Mouse.

That, folks, is the answer: a simple return to basics. Disney has been focusing on what has been making them the most money as of late: Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and even their own princess characters to an extent. They just need to ease off on the overexposure of those franchises, give a chance to others that have not been in public focus, allow for more creative freedom, and perhaps the name Disney would not be one that is so heavily dreaded and often mocked by an increasingly large number of people.

You're a pal and a confidante: With Mickey having finally returned home, The Golden Girls (Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty) and Beaches stars Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey wish Mickey a happy 60th birthday.

May it work? Would they be willing to do it? Well, who knows? This author, though, does hope so. Because the Disney I saw during the time of the special does not reflect the Disney that I see today.

Come home to the best: A newspaper ad promoting the original broadcast and everything else on NBC that night.