Mickey and the Tramp Kathy Merlock Jackson
439
Mickey and the Tramp:
Walt Disney’s Debt to
Charlie Chaplin
Kathy Merlock Jackson
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 ‘‘[Walt] 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: ‘‘[H]e 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 selfconscious, 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,
Kathy Merlock Jackson is professor and coordinator of communications at Virginia Wesleyan College, where she specializes in media
studies and children’s culture. She is completing a book of Walt Disney’s interviews for the University Press of Mississippi.
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The Journal of American Culture Volume 26, Number 4 December 2003
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. In a 1964 interview with
Frank Rasky for Star Weekly, Disney asserted, ‘‘I
learned a lot about storytelling from Charlie. . . .
He was full of fun. Loved to clown and act out his
stories’’ (qtd. in Rasky 10). Although both
directors were perfectionists who discarded
scenes that slowed down the essential action,
there were differences in their overall orientations
and styles. When making his live-action films,
Chaplin rarely used a script, preferring to ad lib
and allow gags to develop through experimentation and rehearsal. Less gag-driven, Disney
repeatedly stressed to his animators that films
were about three things: story, story, story
(Canemaker 231). However, both directors shared
a preoccupation with comic pacing and timing,
manipulating frames in the editing process, for
example, to enhance a gag’s timing or to make a
pratfall more spectacular (Justice 64). Walter Kerr
wrote of ‘‘the very bellows that expand and
contract to give’’ Chaplin’s masterpiece The Gold
Rush, ‘‘its epic-comic life’’ (253). Such lessons in
visual pacing were not lost on Walt Disney, who
had a knack for shaving the precise number of
frames from a shot to achieve the right effect.
Disney’s obsession with Chaplin also led to the
creation of his signature animated character,
Mickey Mouse. In a 1931 interview with Harry
Carr for American Magazine, Disney credited
Chaplin:
I can’t say just how the idea [of Mickey]
came . . . We wanted another animal. We had
a cat; a mouse naturally came to mind. We
felt that the public—especially children—
like animals that are ‘cute’ and little.
I think we were rather indebted to Charlie
Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something
appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a
mouse that would have something of the
wistfulness of Chaplin . . . a little fellow
trying to do the best he could. (qtd. in Carr
57)
Both Mickey Mouse and Chaplin’s Tramp function as universal characters who can adapt to any
situation. As Kerr has noted, ‘‘The secret of
Chaplin, as a character, is that he can be anyone’’
(85). Whether a bricklayer, window repairer,
floorwalker, drunk, fiddler, minister, or gold
prospector, Chaplin’s Tramp tries to be serious
and dignified, to do the right thing; this provides
the essence of his comedy.
Mickey is equally determined and adaptable,
trying to do the best he can, yet maintaining a
happy insouciance. Ted Sears, who founded and
developed Disney’s story department, offered this
profile of Disney’s most famous character:
Mickey is not a clown. He is neither silly nor
dumb. His comedy depends entirely upon
the situation he is placed in. His age varies
with the situation. Sometimes his character is
that of a young boy, and at other times, as in
the adventure type picture, he appears quite
grown up . . . When Mickey is working under
difficulties, the laughs occur at the climax of
each small incident or action. They depend
largely upon Mickey’s expression, position,
attitude, state of mind, etc. and the graphic
way that those things are shown . . . Mickey is
at his best when he sets out to do some
particular thing and continues with deadly
Mickey and the Tramp Kathy Merlock Jackson
determination in spite of the fact that one
annoyance after another, or some serious
menace, tries to impede his progress . . .
(qtd. in Canemaker 64)
Although Mickey is best remembered as the
first animated character to appear in a talking
film, it was not his voice that catapulted him to
stardom. As longtime Disney animator Ward
Kimball asserts,
Mickey became an international success
practically overnight because, in his early
films, he relied on sight gags for the majority
of his laughs—much like Laurel and Hardy,
Buster Keaton, and especially Charlie
Chaplin. Whether people were watching in
Hong Kong, Paris, or Cairo, they didn’t
need any dialogue. They could simply laugh
at what was happening on screen. (qtd. in
Roessing 12)
Time magazine, in a 1931 article titled ‘‘Regulated
Rodent,’’ agreed, saying, ‘‘Like Charlie Chaplin,
Mickey Mouse is understood all over the world
because he does not talk’’ (‘‘Regulated Rodent’’).
Two years later, Time likened Mickey to Chaplin’s
wistful little fellow trying to do the best he can,
calling the Tramp Mickey’s ‘‘predecessor in world
popularity’’ (‘‘Profound Mouse’’).
Disney’s humor shares similarities with
Chaplin’s. In a 1938 article in Theatre Arts Monthly,
Morton Eustis celebrates Chaplin and bemoans
the decline of comedy in the age of the talkies—
with the exception of Walt Disney’s work. ‘‘Walt
Disney alone, in the medium of the cartoon,’’ he
writes, ‘‘created a type of comedy as new as it was
old, which has the same universal appeal as
Chaplin’s. Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Donald Duck,
the Seven Dwarfs, are the direct descendants of
the Keystone comedians, the commedia dell’arte
players or the comic actors of the ancient Greek
festivals. Disney’s materials, as he himself has said,
‘are anything the brain can imagine and the hand
can draw—all human experience: the real world
and dream worlds, color, music, sound, and,
above all, motion’’’ (Eustis 680). Another critic,
Fenn Sherie, described Disney’s Silly Symphonies
in a 1933 review in Pearson’s Magazine as
441
‘‘a delicate fantasy of Hans Andersen interpreted
with the whimsical comicality of Charlie
Chaplin’’ (73).
Disney also followed Chaplin’s lead in avoiding sex in his comedies. While the bashful,
shuffling Tramp might infer sex, he never
specifically spelled it out. Neither did Disney,
whose later manifestations of Mickey Mouse, for
example, exhibited the same shyness as the Tramp.
As Kimball noted, ‘‘Walt could approach sex in
the classic sense of the word where the girl and
the guy walk off in the end and lived happily ever
after, assuming of course, that they just might
NOT go to bed’’ (Hubler, Ward Kimball int. 10).
Despite the lack of overt sex, both filmmakers
appreciated bodily gags, especially involving
corpulent characters and large posteriors.
Disney longed to meet Chaplin when he first
arrived in Hollywood in 1923. Each day he walked
past the Chaplin studio on LaBrea Avenue on his
way from his Uncle Robert’s house, where he was
temporarily living, to the employment office. It
would, however, be a few years before the young
animator actually met his idol. Despite the success
of Steamboat Willie in 1928, the Disney Studio was
losing money on its cartoons and asked its
distributor, Columbia, to increase the advance per
film to $15,000. When Columbia declined, Disney
sought other distributors and attracted the interest
of Joseph Schenck, president of United Artists,
which had been founded in 1919 by Chaplin, Mary
Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith.
Disney was hopeful, aware that United Artists’s
‘‘declaration of independence’’ had made Chaplin,
Pickford, and Fairbanks the richest actors in the
film industry (Mann 718). In addition, as Disney
biographer Bob Thomas writes, ‘‘Walt was especially thrilled at the prospect of being associated
with the great Chaplin’’ (113).
As it turned out, Chaplin proved to be just as avid
a fan of Disney, insisting, for example, that a Mickey
Mouse cartoon appear on the program with his 1931
release City Lights (Inge 63). To underscore the
connection, cartoonist George Corley produced a
single-frame comic, reminiscent of a famous image in
City Lights, of Chaplin tipping his derby and
handing a rose to Mickey (Figure 1). Titled ‘‘Bouquet
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The Journal of American Culture Volume 26, Number 4 December 2003
Figure 1. George Corley, ‘‘Bouquet for Mickey
Mouse.’’ Portland, Oregon News, March 16, 1931.
for Mickey Mouse,’’ it ran in Portland, Oregon’s
News on March 16, 1931, with the following caption:
‘‘No less a star than Charlie Chaplin hands floral
tribute to Mickey Mouse’’ (Inge 63).
Chaplin supported Disney in another way by
sharing business tips. He once instructed him,
‘‘You’re going to develop more: you’re getting
ahold [sic] of your medium . . . But to protect
your independence, you’ve got to do as I have
done—own every picture you make’’ (qtd. in
Thomas 113–14). Disney, who years before had
suffered the indignity of having his first major
animated character, Oswald the Rabbit, taken
from him by an unscrupulous distributor, heeded
the advice. In future career ventures, including the
establishment of his theme parks, Disney made
exclusive rights and ownership of property
paramount concerns.
Wanting to cement his company’s relationship
with its new partner, Disney was determined to
make his first United Artists release a stunner.
The result was Flowers and Trees (1932), the first
animated film in Technicolor. In order to protect
his property, Disney negotiated a deal with
Technicolor that his studio would have two years’
exclusive use of the three-color process in order
to thwart his animation competitors (Thomas
114–15).
Disney was overwhelmed on October 15,
1933, when he encountered Chaplin again at a
Writers’ Club dinner at which Disney was the
guest of honor (Johnston 13). The Los Angeles
Sunday Times noted that other Hollywood
luminaries, including Will Rogers, planned to
attend to ‘‘[honor] Walt as a great creative artist’’
(Los Angeles Sunday Times). At the ceremony,
Chaplin offered French and Spanish pantomime
skits and did his distinctive Chaplin walk in
Disney’s honor ( Johnston 13).
As Disney’s career flourished, Chaplin continued to be not only a creative influence, but also
a source of advice and encouragement. ‘‘Charlie
was very kind to me,’’ Disney intoned in a 1964
interview. ‘‘When everybody else was sceptical
[sic], he encouraged me to go ahead with my first
feature-length animated film. Even let my bookkeepers examine all his books so I could lick the
problems of distribution. ‘Don’t let the cynics or
the bankers sell you short on Snow White,’
Charlie told me. ‘It’ll be your biggest success’’’
(qtd. in Rasky 10). Chaplin was right. After Snow
White earned over $4 million domestically and
about the same amount worldwide in its first
release, Disney recalled fondly, ‘‘Charlie came
over and studied our books’’ (qtd. in McDonald
218). In later years, Disney would call himself ‘‘a
protégé of Mary, Doug, and Charlie. . . . [they
invited me] to come over, study United Artists’
figures, and make money’’ (qtd. in McDonald
218).
Aside from finances, Disney learned another
crucial lesson from Chaplin when he set out to
make feature-length animated films: the importance of pathos. ‘‘Charlie taught me that in the
best comedy you’ve got to feel sorry for your
Mickey and the Tramp Kathy Merlock Jackson
main character,’’ Disney stressed. ‘‘Before you
laugh with him, you have to shed a tear for him’’
(qtd. in Rasky 10). Disney described an outing
with Chaplin at the Santa Ana racetrack, where
Chaplin demonstrated sight gags involving his
Little Fellow for his next film. ‘‘Charlie got so
engrossed in his recital,’’ noted Disney, ‘‘[that] he
didn’t notice the crowds gathering around us.
And the crowds got so wrapped up in the pathos
of his characterization that they forgot all about
the race’’ (qtd. in Rasky 10).
Although Disney heeded Chaplin’s advice to
incorporate sentiment into early features such as
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and
Dumbo, he did not do so with a later work, and
he paid the price. ‘‘That was the trouble with our
Alice in Wonderland,’’ Disney recalled. ‘‘Lewis
Carroll’s Alice wasn’t a sympathetic character.
She was a prim, prissy girl who bumped into a lot
of weird nonsense figures. We fell down in Alice
because we were trying to please Carroll’s
specialized egghead public as well as the mass
public. Well, I learned you can’t please both’’ (qtd.
in Rasky 10). Disney never made the same
mistake again, adhering to the mantra that
Chaplin established in The Kid of showing
‘‘comedy with perhaps a tear,’’ and frequently
incorporating the highly emotional Chaplin
theme from the same film: the separation of
parent and child. Today, while some critics may
deride both Chaplin and Disney for their
sentimentality, the two filmmakers have never
lost their appeal to the mass audience. However,
their motivations bear scant resemblance. For
Chaplin, the social critic, pathos centered on
sympathy for the downtrodden or the worker.
However, Disney, who exhibited little concern for
class or social issues, simply tried to establish
likable characters whom audiences could identify
with and create engaging dramatic action.
Disney and Chaplin share scant biographical
similarities. Although both had difficult childhoods, achieved early success, formed a close
bond with an older brother, and adopted similar
artistic and financial sensibilities, they exhibited,
of course, more striking differences. Chaplin was
born in Britain and Disney in America, and while
443
Chaplin came from an impoverished broken
home, Disney was raised in a stable, middle-class
household with two parents. Chaplin’s adult life
was marked with sexual scandals while Disney
remained married to his wife Lillian for forty-one
years.
Most importantly, Chaplin and Disney developed clashing political loyalties. Chaplin never
applied for American citizenship, and although he
denied being a member of the Communist party,
during the blacklist era he was barred from
entering the country following a European trip
due to his suspected Communist leanings and
moral turpitude. Following a very different
political agenda, Disney served in the military,
supported the US government, and took every
opportunity to demonstrate and voice his support
for America. Out of deference to his old friend,
Disney never spoke publicly regarding Chaplin’s
exile; however, he reportedly confided to one of
his animators that the country was better off
without ‘‘the little Commie’’ (Eliot 197). Hence,
Disney’s connection to Chaplin resulted not from
the two filmmakers’ parallel lives or politics, but
rather to their common willingness to absorb the
cultural milieu that surrounded them at the peak
of their popularity, to develop artistically, and to
please their audiences.
Representative of two overlapping eras of
filmmaking, Chaplin’s Tramp and Disney’s
Mickey Mouse both embody qualities reflective
not only of the American character, but also of the
human spirit: adaptability, hard work, pluckiness,
a sense of humor, and a gentle heart. Alva
Johnston wrote the following in the July 1934
issue of Woman’s Home Companion:
Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse are the
only two universal characters that have ever
existed. The greatest kings and conquerors,
gods and devils, have by comparison been
local celebrities. Mickey’s domain is today
even more extensive than Chaplin’s. Charlie’s mustache, hat, pants, shoes and cane
belong to western civilization and make
him a foreigner in some regions. Mickey
Mouse is not a foreigner in any part of the
world. (12)
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In the twenty-first century, these two cinematic
icons remain intact, as evidenced by the Disney
organization’s successful attempt in 2003 to
lengthen the term of copyright for its famous
Chaplin-inspired character. Today, Chaplin’s
derby and cane and Mickey’s ears remain as
recognizable as they were seventy-five years ago,
reflective of the permeability of the human spirit
and how one artist’s impact on another perpetuated America’s contribution to the art of moviemaking.
Green, Amy Boothe, and Howard Green. Remembering Walt:
Favorite Memories of Walt Disney. New York: Hyperion, 1999.
Hubler, Richard. Unpublished interview with Marc Davis, 21 May
1968. Transcript available at Walt Disney Archives, Burbank, CA.
Hubler, Richard. Unpublished interview with Roy Disney. 17 Nov.
1967. Transcript available at Walt Disney Archives, Burbank, CA.
Hubler, Richard. Unpublished interview with Ward Kimball. 21 May
1968. Transcript available at Walt Disney Archives, Burbank, CA
Inge, M. Thomas. Comics as Culture. Jackson and London: UP of
Mississippi, 1990.
Johnston, Alva. ‘‘Mickey Mouse.’’ Woman’s Home Companion 1 July
1934: 121.
Justice, Bill. Justice for Disney. Dayton, OH: Tomart Publications,
1992.
Kerr, Walter. The Silent Clowns. New York: Knopf, 1979.
The author would like to thank Dave Smith, archivist at the
Disney Archives, Burbank, California; Tom Inge; and Ray Merlock
for their advice on this article.
Works Cited
Los Angeles Sunday Times, n.t., 15 Oct. 1933: n. pag.
McDonald, John. Forbes May 1966: 1381.
Mann, Arthur. ‘‘Mickey Mouse’s Financial Career.’’ Harper’s
Magazine May 1934: 714-21.
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‘‘Profound Mouse.’’ Time 15 May 1933: n. pag.
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‘‘Regulated Rodent.’’ Time 16 Feb. 1931: n. pag.
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Carr, Harry. ‘‘The Only Unpaid Movie Star.’’ American Magazine
Mar. 1931: 551.
Sherie, Fenn. ‘‘Secrets of the Silly Symphonies.’’ Pearson’s Magazine
July 1933: 73-82.
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Birch Lane Press, 1993.
Syring, Richard H. ‘‘One of the Great Geniuses!’’ Silver Screen Nov.
1932: 46-48.
Eustis, Morton. ‘‘Custard Pie to Cartoons.’’ Theatre Arts Monthly
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