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The Controversial Mickey Mouse Short That Freaked Out Disney
Alyson Lewis
October 22, 2023
Welcome to the Cracked newsletter!
This issue is about Robin Williams, the oral history of a controversial Mickey Mouse short, funny things that happened at funerals, petty heists, poop-covered things, and much more.
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A new installment of VICE TV’s Dark Side of Comedy serves as a grim reminder of Robin Williams’ struggles with drug addiction. In the episode, fellow comics like Allan Stephan remember early days in Williams’ stand-up career when he wouldn’t take the stage without chemical assistance. "Know anyone with any blow? I have to go on and I can't go on without any blow."
But Williams got clean in the early 1980s after a tragic incident that scared him off drugs for good. The comic had become friendly with John Belushi during his visits to New York, goofing with him on stage at Catch a Rising Star and touring the city’s punk clubs with Belushi as guide, according to the Williams biography Robin. The experience, said Williams, was “like being on a tour with Dante, if Dante were James Brown. I was like Beaver Cleaver in the underworld.”
For most of Mickey Mouse’s history, Disney has played it safe. While Warner Bros. could have Bugs Bunny essentially commit acts of domestic terrorism, Mickey’s position as corporate mascot caused Disney to use far more caution. If they weren’t absolutely sure about having Mickey star in something, they’d abandon the project entirely.
It’s because of this sensitivity — and, to be fair, a decline in theatrical cartoons thanks to the introduction of television — that Mickey didn’t star in a traditional theatrical short for over 40 years. Although 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol and 1990’s The Prince and the Pauper were released in theaters, both were over 20 minutes long, a far cry from the traditional theatrical shorts that originally made Mickey famous. For decades, the last of those shorts was 1953’s The Simple Things, until a new one was finally created in 1995. However, Disney got so spooked by the darkly funny, horror-themed short that they barely supported the finished product and didn’t have Mickey star in another short until 2013.
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