A first draft of the script for Mickey Mouse’s first film will be auctioned off later this month.
The “Steamboat Willie” script is being offered by S/R Labs in a phone auction with other animation art on Oct. 24. The minimum bid is $300,000.
“The owner approached me and asked me to present it to the world,” said Ron Stark, a director at the Westlake Village company, which specializes in preserving and restoring animation art and celluloids and arranging auctions.
The script lists Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney as co-authors on the cover and has a copyright date of May 19, 1928 by Walt Disney Productions on the bottom of the page.
Other pages from the script shown on the website’s auction page feature sketches of Mickey as a guide for the animators.
Iwerks is credited with helping create the look and style of Disney’s idea for a mouse cartoon character, after Disney’s company lost the rights to its first character of Oswald the Rabbit. Iwerks did a lot of the animation for Mickey Mouse cartoons in the early days of the studio.
“Steamboat Willie” is also famous for being the first cartoon with sound.
Stark said a notarized statement of authenticity from David Iwerks, Ub’s son, accompanies the script. David Iwerks worked at the Disney studios for many years.
“He applied his first-hand knowledge of his father’s artistic style and thinking,” Stark said. “His conclusion was that the draft and its drawings are unquestionably authentic.”
In addition, a document from the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners verifies the typewriter used to type the script is from the era.
Officials with the Disney Archives would not comment on the script or the auction other than to say they were aware one was planned.
The auction also includes animation art from a variety of now defunct animation companies such as Fleischer Studios which produced Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman cartoons.
To register for the auction, or for more information, visit the S/R Labs website, srlabs.com.
Contact the writer: meades@ocregister.com or follow on Twitter @markaeades
