I took a nap yesterday after I got home from work, and I had quite the weird dream. I was at my parent's house and it started raining ridiculous amounts. We're talking like Noah & the great flood here. It rained and rained, leaking into the house as my family & I panicked, and then it stopped suddenly. I went upstairs to adjust the door as it had come out of the frame, and this lady pulls up offering me financial advice. Apparently rain signifies that I will soon be cleansed of my troubles and problems, but someone won the lotto jackpot last night and I didn't buy a ticket after the dream, so I dunno how that's gonna happen.

In other news, Disney (ESPN) traded Al Michaels to NBC for, among other things, the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I didn't realize the importance of this character until I read this article by Eric Szulczewski on Inside Pulse. Yes it's a wrestling site, but don't let that sway your opinion of the article.

Apparently Oswald was Walt Disney's original creation, but he lost the rights to Universal Studios when they published his first cartoons. The rest of the story traces every major animation house and all the proceeding generations, showing this one rabbit as the great-grandfather of cartoon animation, and perhaps even furry.

Apparently, every sportswriter in America got their shits and giggles out of the way when Al Michaels was "traded" to NBC for "a cartoon character". If they knew the history behind this, they'd respect this issue a lot more. Well, of course, I do know the history behind it, and I know that Al Michaels wasn't just traded for a cartoon character, but for one of the most important cartoon characters in history. And if NBC Universal could have seen the character as it should properly have been seen instead of just as a moribund property, they could have squeezed Disney for everything the Mouse was worth.

How important is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the history of animation? Incalculable, if you follow the threads. Here's the story...

In 1926, Walt Disney was already a successful young animator. He'd moved from Kansas City to Hollywood a couple of years before with his brother Roy, and his Alice cartoons were already a success. It was then that he created a new character for his inventive genius, Oswald. Of course, being an independent animator, he needed someone to distribute his films. He was able to sell Carl Laemmele, the founder of Universal, on Oswald's potential, and Universal agreed to distribute. The first few Oswalds, released in early 1927, were hits with the audience, and Universal wanted more. It was at that point that the Disneys actually read over the contract they'd signed with Universal. Turns out that they'd signed away the rights to the character of Oswald in return for distribution. When Disney tried to get the rights back, he was rebuffed. So Disney completed his contractual obligation for two dozen Oswald films, but at the same time turned to the drawing board. He was going to create a new character, one whose rights he would keep. He gave Oswald a species change and tweaked his mannerisms. Then he was dissuaded from calling the new character "Mortimer Mouse", and the rest is history. All Disney characters from Mickey on are direct descendents of Oswald.

That alone would be enough to ensure Oswald's place. But there's more. Three of the men who worked on Oswald were Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, and a young animator named Isadore Freleng. After the success of Mickey, all of them would become sick and tired of Walt's autocratic bent and leave to form their own studio, Harman-Ising Productions; the new company was backed by a man who made movie title cards named Leon Schlesinger. The bulk of Schlesinger's business was for Warner Brothers. With the success of Mickey (distributed by United Artists, which allowed Disney to keep his character rights), other studios wanted cartoons, but most of the large cartoon studios, like Bray and Van Beuren, were in New York. Warners wanted something a little closer to Hollywood. Schlesinger recommended the relatively unknown Harman-Ising team to Jack and Harry Warner, emphasizing that they'd worked for Disney. Harman and Ising needed to come up with a character, so they took their memories of Oswald to heart and turned him sort-of human, but keeping his insane antics. Thus was born Bosko. All of the legendary pantheon of Warner Brothers characters, down to the present day (yes, even Loonatics), can trace their ancestry directly to Oswald.

And it continues from there. In 1933, Warners decided to take their animation in-house, and Schlesinger agreed to head this effort up. Harman and Ising said no. Friz Freleng saw his chance and said yes, going along with Schlesinger to become a Warners employee, and except for a short period, stayed until Warners closed the studio in 1963 (he then extended his status as God by forming DePatie-Freleng, which did The Pink Panther). Harman and Ising were abandoned to some lean times and had to let a lot of employees go (one they kept, though, was an eager young cel washer and apprentice animator named Bill Hanna). Then, Louis B. Mayer decided to get into the cartoon business. Despite the reluctance of Harman and Ising to get involved with a studio's in-house efforts, they were broke, and, besides, you didn't say no to Mayer, period. So Harman and Ising formed the MGM cartoon unit under studio accountant Fred Quimby. Bill Hanna stayed on and became an animator and apprentice director, and was eventually teamed with a newcomer from New York named Joe Barbera. Together, in 1940, they did a cat-and-mouse cartoon that wasn't well-regarded by Quimby or Ising, who was the producer of record, but was successful with the audience. They definitely didn't complain when that cat-and-mouse team ended up winning seven Academy Awards. Thus, not only a large part of the MGM legacy (that not created by Tex Avery), but all of the galaxy of Hanna-Barbera stars are progeny of Oswald. That legacy continues down to this day as well, with Hanna-Barbera now part of Cartoon Network Animation.

That thread can be followed in an unexpected direction. When the US went to war, Rudy Ising became Major Rudolph Ising, one of the forces in the Army's in-house cartoon unit, making training films and propaganda shorts for the troops. During that time, he became the mentor to a young would-be animator and artist named Bill Scott. He passed the Oswald legacy to Scott, who had enough of a warped sense of humor to appreciate it. After the war, Scott spent a couple of years at Warner Brothers, absorbing more of Oswald's legacy. After his time at Warners, Scott eventually met up with another person interested in animation named Jay Ward. Scott brought his touch of Oswald into Ward's fledgling studio, and ended up being the prime creative force there (in addition to being the voice of Bullwinkle). Thus, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Rocky the Flying Squirrel share a great deal of DNA.

Another bit of dissatisfaction with Disney led to another bit of propagation of the Oswald legacy. John Hubley joined Disney long after the Oswald era, but he picked up Oswald's legacy in the process. But there was a bitterly divisive strike at Disney in 1941 caused by Walt's normal behavior. Hubley was sympathetic to the strike and left the studio. When the war started, he was assigned to Ising's animation unit, which helped to bring out his Inner Oswald. Hubley had always seen the merits of limited animation, as a way to both save money and help extend the artistic potential of cartoons. He hated Disney's ultra-realistic style. When the war ended, he put his feelings into practice and formed what eventually became UPA, which produced masterpieces of cartoons in the 1950s. Thus, Oswald connects to Mister Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing. By the way, Hubley became a victim of the blacklist. It's always been rumored that Walt ratted him out to HUAC.

(Thanks to Hubley, Oswald's progeny even extends into alternative rock. Hubley's daughter Georgia is a member of Yo La Tengo.)

The final thread, though, begins at the basic disagreement between Disney and Universal. Walt wouldn't do any more Oswald cartoons, but the audience loved them. Universal thus had a popular character, but no one to draw him. They reached out and found a young animator who had worked for Bray back in New York named Walter Lantz. The story, as told by Lantz, went as follows: Laemmele was dissatisfied with the first post-Disney Oswalds, and fired the producers. Lantz, who had worked on those cartoons, said that he could do them better, and to give him a chance; he'd move his fledging studio on to the Universal lot, and they'd become Universal's in-house team. Laemmele wasn't convinced. Lantz then put it on the line. He said, one game of poker. If I win, I'm your man. If I lose, I'll leave. Lantz won that hand and became head of Universal's cartoon unit. Lantz did Oswald cartoons until 1938, using various actors at Universal for his voice (including a young Mickey Rooney). In the meantime, he was building up a stable of original characters, something that was very important after he became an independent contractor for Universal in 1935. Ending the Oswald cartoons gave him enough creative freedom to come up with his own winning concept in 1940: Woody Woodpecker. Thus, Woody and the Lantz stable are brothers of Oswald.

Oswald is the Kevin Bacon of cartoon characters. Everything comes back to him.

So how is it that a character as important as this, a character that has had an incalculable effect on the history of cartoons, could so completely vanish? There hasn't been an Oswald cartoon since 1938. That's not an excuse. Betty Boop hasn't had a cartoon since 1939, but she's more popular than ever. Oswald did have his own comic book until 1962, though. The reason for that, though, is pretty simple to figure out. Walt wanted Oswald back, badly. He tried a number of times to get him back from Universal. But Universal kept using the comic book as an excuse not to do it. As long as they were making money from Oswald, they had an excuse not to sell. It was safe to end the comic in 1962, because by that time Disney was concerned with his animated films, his live action films, his theme park, his plans to build another theme park in Florida, and his weekly TV series, not to mention the fact that he was beginning to feel the first symptoms of the cancer that would kill him. Oswald slipped down the priority scale. After Walt's death, Roy the Elder was too busy trying to keep his brother's legacy together to try. Ron Miller treated his wife's request to get her father's creation back as just another thing the wife said. The late Card Walker was too occupied with Disney going down the tubes. And Eisner was more concerned with his present creations than with history.

But when Bob Iger gained the throne, things changed. He promised Diane Miller that he'd get Oswald back. He knew Disney history, and he knew that a critical part of it was missing. So when he began negotiations with Universal for something Disney had and Universal needed for their TV network, he knew what bargaining chip to use. Dick Ebersol blew it off as saying that it was a fallow asset, that Universal wasn't making money from Oswald, so nothing was sacrificed (there hasn't been an Oswald DVD set in the US, for instance, but that might have more to do with complications from the Lantz estate than anything). That may have been true from an economic standpoint, but not from an emotional one. Forty years after his death, Walt can now rest easier.

Sports fans can rejoice because Michaels and Madden are together again. But cartoon fans, and those who have been touched by cartoons in their lives, can rejoice even more. Oswald, after seven and a half decades in the wilderness, is finally home.