Walt Disney

[Matheous-2]

Not sure this is the proper section for this so please forgive me if anyone is annoyed.
Some years ago, someone related a story about a film documentary (which I had seen) about "Lemmings that commit suicide" by jumping over a cliff! Apparently these poor creatures do not do this naturally- but may have been forced by Disney's crew to do so for the sake of filming!!
Can anyone confirm this please....

[jno]

yup

http://www.snopes.com...ey/films/lemmings.asp

[Mosaic]

Good grief!

[Matheous-2]

Thanks jno! The link explains & confirms this quite well-although it apparently was not clear that Disney was aware of the methods used by the team of photographers back then in 1958

[sandyRoe]

The camera team admitted they knew, but Walt Disney.

[jno]

not Disney's finest hour.

The annoying thing is, everyone now believes it. Call people "lemmings" and everyone knows it means creatures rushing madly to their doom.

[karenmac60]

I did my history project on Walt Disney when I was at school - he wasn't the cuddly guy people seem to think....

[jno]

nope - ferociously anti-communist, anti-semitic, treated his staff badly, the works. Not really a terrific artist either, but he was an entrepreneur and a visionary; he made the first feature-length cartoon when everyone thought he was mad, and did it again in building the first Disneyland. He was right both times and his critics were wrong.

[Matheous-2]

jno -Yes I had heard all that before also. And that one of his biggest regrets was not being able to draw Mickey Mouse!

[VHG]

I cant believe he could not draw Mickey Mouse as he had been an cartoon artist

In fact he and his friend Ub Iwerks created a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit long before they created Mickey Mouse. Oswald bears a strong resemblance to Mickey Mouse.

When Disney wanted to create his own cartoons he found out to his dismay he did not own the right to Oswald the lucky rabbit (even though he created the cartoons) so made the "new" character Mickey Mouse who bears a close similarity to Oswald.

And the rest is history.

You can see some of the Oswald cartoons on Yo Tube.

http://en.wikipedia.o...wald_the_Lucky_Rabbit

[jno]

it does seem Ub Iwerks was the one who invented Oswald and Mickey (who's pretty much Oswald with shorter ears). He also animated the early cartoons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks

I'm not too sure exactly what artistic work Disney himself did, despite his background in drawing cartoons, but he was certainly an adept showman and businessman.

[Matheous-2]

VHG- I can't help wondering if it was perhaps the case that Walt was not permitted to draw MM because of existing copyright restrictions and the story became mis-interpreted....?