Mickey Mouse Stock Poster (Celebrity Productions, 1928). One Sheet (27" X 41").. ...

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Mickey Mouse Stock Poster (Celebrity Productions, 1928). One Sheet (27" X 41").
In October 1927, Walt Disney, like many of his contemporary filmmakers, saw Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer and was inspired by the use of synchronized sound to film. He envisioned a cartoon with the same abilities and set about developing a character that the new sound process would be good for. He had been creating a series of cartoons featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal, however, in early 1928 he lost the rights to the character and was forced out of the studio. Subsequently, and in collaboration with his good friend Ub Iwerks, he co-created and developed Mickey Mouse. The first two cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho were silent, but Disney was persuaded by Pat Powers to use his Cinephone sound system for the third Mouse short, Steamboat Willie. The first two Mickey Mouse short subjects also failed to attract a distributor, but with the fully synchronized soundtrack on Steamboat Willie, Celebrity Productions agreed to distribute the fledgling cartoons. The cartoon had it's world premiere on November 18, 1928 and the rest, as they say, was history, as Mickey Mouse went on to become the greatest cartoon character of all time. This one sheet is from the very short period of time that Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons were distributed by Celebrity Productions. They distributed every Mickey Mouse short from November 1928 through December 1929 -- a total of twelve cartoons. Beginning in January of 1930, all of Disney's cartoons would be distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is likely that there were no individual one sheets produced by Celebrity Productions as they were a very low budget distributor (and the country was in a deep depression) and in fact, no individual cartoon one sheets for Mouse shorts from Celebrity have ever been seen. So this is very likely the only poster created for Mickey until the 1930 era. Therefore, this is the original and very first appearance of Mickey Mouse on a one sheet and could date from the release of Steamboat Willie. As an additional item of interest, this particular example is the only copy known to exist and has its provenance from the Steve Schapiro Collection. The poster was featured on page 66 of his book, The Movie Poster Book (1979). One inch of blank border had been trimmed around the edges at one time. There was color touchup applied to all the fold lines where there was minor chipping, however, in Mickey's nose and in the white area to the right of his face there was a bit more paper loss along the horizontal fold. In addition, all of the white areas of the poster had to be airbrushed. The poster has been preserved by linenbacking and still shows a hint of the old restoration finish over the printed areas. However, with modern professional restoration, the poster now looks very presentable. Don't pass up this wonderful opportunity to acquire the only known copy of the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon poster. Very Good on Linen.