Voices
A large part of Mickey's screen persona is his famously shy, falsetto voice. From his first speaking role in The Karnival Kid onward, Mickey was voiced by Walt Disney himself, a task in which Disney took great personal pride. (Carl Stalling and Clarence Nash allegedly did some uncredited ADR for Mickey in a few early shorts as well.) However, by 1946, Disney was becoming too busy with running the studio to do regular voice work which means he could not do Mickey's voice anymore (and as it is speculated his cigarette habit had damaged his voice over the years), and during the recording of the Mickey and the Beanstalk section of Fun and Fancy Free, Mickey's voice was handed over to veteran Disney musician and actor Jimmy MacDonald. (Both Disney's and MacDonald's voices can be heard on the final soundtrack.) MacDonald voiced Mickey in the remainder of the theatrical shorts, and for various television and publicity projects up until his retirement in the mid-1970s, although Walt voiced Mickey again for the introductions of the original 1954—1959 The Mickey Mouse Club TV series and the "Fourth Anniversary Show" episode of the Disneyland TV series aired on September 11, 1958.
1983's Mickey's Christmas Carol marked the theatrical debut of the late Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse, who was the voice of Mickey until his death in 2009. Allwine once recounted something MacDonald had told him about voicing Mickey: "The main piece of advice that Jim gave me about Mickey helped me keep things in perspective. He said, 'Just remember kid, you’re only filling in for the boss.' And that’s the way he treated doing Mickey for years and years. From Walt, and now from Jimmy." Allwine was, incidentally, married to Russi Taylor, the current voice of Minnie Mouse. Les Perkins did the voice of Mickey in the TV special Down and Out with Donald Duck released in 1987.
Bret Iwan, a former Hallmark greeting card artist, is the current voice of Mickey. His early recordings in 2009 included work for the Disney Cruise Line, Mickey toys, Theme Parks, and also the Disney on Ice: Celebrations! ice show. His first video game voice-over of Mickey Mouse can be found on Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, a video game for PlayStation Portable. He has also voiced the character in the next games for the Kingdom Hearts series. Bret also does the vocal effects of Mickey in Epic Mickey.
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Famous quotes containing the word voices:
“The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God. Robert: They come from your imagination. Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)