This Disney Censorship Story Is Udderly Ridiculous

TIME History movies This Disney Censorship Story Is Udderly Ridiculous Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse, circa 1935 General Photographic Agency / Getty Images The studio was founded on Oct. 16, 1923

When the Disney Brothers Studio got its start on this day, Oct. 16, in 1923, Walt Disney couldnt have predicted that his animation studio would become the entertainment powerhouse that its been for nearly a century.

He also probably failed to predict that, within a decade, hed get hit with what must be one of the sillier censorship cases in history.

Heres how TIME described what happened in February of 1931:

Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America last week announced that, because of complaints of many censor boards, the famed udder of the cow in the Mickey Mouse cartoons was now banned. Cows in Mickey Mouse or other cartoon pictures in the future will have small or invisible udders quite unlike the gargantuan organ whose antics of late have shocked some and convulsed other of Mickey Mouses patrons. In a recent picture the udder, besides flying violently to left and right or stretching far out behind when the cow was in motion, heaved with its panting when the cow stood still; it also stretched, when seized, in an exaggerated way.

Thats right: Clarabelle Cows udders were deemed inappropriate for tender American audiences, who one must presume did not know where milk comes from. Clarabelle was also censored at one point, in Ohio, after she was seen reading a racy book.

But, it turns out, Clarabelle wasnt the only one of Disneys creations to get adjusted by decency boards during the studios first decade. Canada banned another cartoon because of the way a fish got too close to a mermaids thigh, and German censors objected to a cartoon in which Mickey and friends were approached by cats wearing German military garb, which was seen as offensive to Germans. (Its unclear from TIMEs coverage whether the German censors objected to being compared to undignified felines or to anti-Mickey predators.)

It was probably not because of her udders, but Clarabelle has largely faded away from the list of popular Disney characters, which means thatto paraphrase another cartoon icon, Bart Simpsonmost of the studios movies these days do not, in fact, have a cow, man.

Read TIMEs 1937 cover story about Walt Disney here, in the archives: Mouse & Man

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This Disney Censorship Story Is Udderly Ridiculous