The last cartoon of Mickey Mouse in black and white was Mickey’s Kangaroo (1935) where Mickey receives a kangaroo from a friend in Australia (Simon, 2004) and soon after came the innovation of technicolour. With the creation of the first technicolour cartoon of Mickey Mouse The Band Concert (1935), the character finally gets the final decision over the colour of his shorts that previously were both red and green and gets red as his signature colour, which appeared very vivid on a watercolour looking background (Hellmann, 2020). A decision was also made on the colour of his skin.
First short in technicolour “The Band Concert” (1935)
In the previous black and white cartoon Mickey’s face was plain white but, when he started appearing in colour cartoons, this was changed to a white person’s skin tone (Shiffman, 2023). Though it seems that Mickey had always been white as in his 1933 cartoon Mickey's Mellerdrammer Mickey Mouse was controversially involved an animated short which directly refers to minstrel shows and where Mickey wears blackface. In it Mickey Mouse explodes a dynamite that he has put in his mouth. With the soot of the explosive, it creates blackface makeup on his face, after which he goes on to perform a minstrel show-like act on a stage (Ülgen, 2023). This role of Mickey Mouse in this animated short is a direct reference to blackface makeup and minstrel shows.
Mickey Mouse in Mickey's Mellerdrammer (1933)