Gonzales emigrated from Spain to the U.S. in 1918 via Ellis Island, and was employed at the Walt Disney Studios in September 1936, where he worked initially as an "in-betweener" on several short animated stories and on the motion picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and also as an artist in the Publicity Department creating pencil art for publicity drawings and Good Housekeeping Disney children's pages.
In general, the Sunday pages have status as better than Gottfredson's daily gags of the time (also written by Walsh).
His father, walking home from work one late-summer evening in 1936, tore a flyer from a telephone pole and gave it to Gonzales after dinner.
Gonzales was interviewed and hired on the spot, given $200 and told to report in two weeks to the Hyperion Studios in Los Angeles to work as an animator.
His first assignment was as an "in-betweener" on what was to be the first animated full-length major motion picture, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for a man he'd never heard of before named Walt Disney.
Modeled after the Oscar, which is awarded annually for achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Mousecar is a bronze statuette of Mickey Mouse in his trademark pose on a black base.