Friday 2 September 2011

TURKISH ARTICLE ABOUT MICKEY MOUSE CARTOONS (1934)


This article from no. 27 (from the year 1934) of Turkish cinema weekly magazine Holivut was kindly brought to my attention by my friend Özge Özyılmaz (*) who came across it while researching old Turkish cinema magazines for her PhD thesis on the coverage of Hollywood in pre-war and war-time Turkish film magazines. The article is apparently about animation in general with one section on p. 11 on Mickey Mouse cartoons which, the article reports, will began to be screened in Istanbul cinemas "in the coming season." Unless the author of the article has unknowingly missed any previous release of MM cartoons in Turkey, this indicates that they made their Turkish debut in 1934, with a six years delay from their inception in the US. I know that MM cartoons were being distributed in Britain as early as 1930, but I cannot find any info on the dates they began to be distributed elsewhere in the world. If anyone can kindly provide any info on the distribution of MM cartoons outside the US, esp. in continental Europe, that will be great. In any case, 1934 is a somewhat curious date for the possible debut of MM cartoons in Turkey as MM strips, possibly reprinted from French albums, had already began to be serialized in Turkish children's magazines as early as 1932 and even Turkish illustrators themselves had made several MM gag panels from that date onwards prior to 1934. And yet, it is also a fact that MM comics and story books did really proliferate in Turkey from 1935 onwards.
By the way, if anyone can point out the original source of the illustration on the upper right corner in which Mickey is reading an issue of Holivut, we will be very grateful.
(*) I also thank Cemil Yıldızcan for converting the pdf file into jpg format so that I could post it in this blog.

No comments: