Mickey Mouse appears as Yen Sid’s apprentice in the Disney animated feature Fantasia.
The sequence is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” set to Paul Dukas’s orchestral composition of the same name. Mickey plays an apprentice who uses his master’s magic to animate a broom, then loses control of the enchanted helper.
Yen Sid is the sorcerer who owns the workshop. His name is “Disney” spelled backward, a detail that has become a widely noted piece of the character’s design and history.
Fantasia was released in 1940 and combined classical music with animated visual interpretations. Although Mickey had already been a major star for more than a decade, the role of the apprentice became one of his most enduring screen images.