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TOEFL
Reading Comprehension
Passage 13 |
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Directions:
In this section you will read a passage which is followed by several questions
about it.
For the questions you are to choose the one best answer, (А), (В), (C), or (D),
to each question.
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Mickey Mouse was not Walt Disney's first successful cartoon creation, but he is certainly his most
famous one. It was on a Cross-country train trip from New York to California in 1927 that Disney first drew
the mouse with the big ears. Supposedly, he took his inspiration from the tame field mice that used to
scamper into his old studio in Kansas City. No one is quite sure why he dressed the mouse in the now-
familiar shorts with two buttons and gave him the yellow shoes. But we do know that Disney had intended
to call him Mortimer until his wife Lillian intervened christened him Mickey Mouse.
Capitalizing on the interest in Charles Lindbergh, Disney planned Mickey's debut in the short cartoon
Plane Crazy, with Minnie as a co-star. In the third short cartoon. Steamboat Willie, Mickey was whistling
and singing through the miracle of the modern soundtrack. By the 1930s Mickey's image had circled the
globe. He was a superstar at the height of his career.
Although he has received a few minor changes throughout his lifetime, most notably the addition of
white gloves and the rounder forms of a more childish body, he has remained true to his nature since those
first cartoons. Mickey is appealing because he is nice. He may get into trouble, but he takes it on the chin
with a grin. He is both good-natured and resourceful. Perhaps that was Disney's own image of himself. Why
else would he have insisted on doing Mickey's voice in all the cartoons for twenty years? When
interviewed, he would say, "There is a lot of the mouse in me." And that mouse has remained one of the
most pervasive images in American popular culture. |
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