The Complete History and Videos of Walt Disney's Animated Shorts: Part 1 (1922-1924)

Update: I'm slowly adding more videos and images. Today I added images and more info about the Little Red Riding Hood Laugh-O-Gram short. That includes images from Disney's second (and last) use of Red Riding Hood, 1934's The Big Bad Wolf. This blog post was originally written back in 2008.

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We're going to show a video and info (whatever we can find) for every single Walt Disney animated short. We'll take it one year at a time (or three years at a time in this case; we also might take it six months at a time if Disney was busy that year). Have patience with us. It will take awhile. Post a comment if you find more/better videos or info. Enjoy!

The History and Videos of Walt Disney's Animated Shorts

Part 1: 1922-1924

1922

1) Laugh-o-grams: Newman Laugh-o-grams - 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney



This montage includes one of his Newman Laugh-o-grams, "Kansas City Clean Up" (it's near the end):



Named after the fact that they were released in the Newman Theater. Walt Disney was working at a design firm that did a few flyers for a local movie theater. That led to Disney doing some stills and really short animations for the theater, lampooning local politics and news. Titles included "Cleaning Up!!?", "Kansas City Girls are Rolling Their Own Now", "Take a Ride Over Kansas City Streets" and "Kansas City's Spring Cleanup." Disney based his subject matter, and won over the Kansas City audience, on problems and corruption within the local government.

That led to his first series, the Laugh-o-gram shorts. Walt's first series was about what he loved... fairy tales.


2) Laugh-o-grams 1: Little Red Riding Hood - July 29, 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney



Color process: Black and white
Running time: 6 minutes 12 seconds
Country: United States
Preceded by Kansas City’s Spring Cleanup
Followed by The Four Musicians of Bremen


This is a contemporary setting for Disney's first take on Little Red Riding Hood (his second stab at this tale was in the 1934 sequel to The Three Little Pigs--see Note #1 below).

In this Laugh-O-Gram, Little Red Riding Hood is on her way to deliver some doughnuts when Disney's first villain (ever) attacks her (we'll call him the Wolf, but he's a man). Her cat fetches a man in a helicopter who rescues her.



Animation by Walt and Rudolph Ising.

Based on the story by the Brothers Grimm.





Original poster:



NOTES:
(1) His second attempt at this story was in the Silly Symphony, The Big Bad Wolf in 1934 (that played off the popularity of The Three Little Pigs). Basically Walt needed a sequel to his biggest hit since Steamboat Willie. So he brought Red back!
In The Big Bad Wolf, Red accompanies Fiddler Pig and Piper Pig through a forest to deliver food to her sick grandmother. The three meet "Goldilocks the Fairy Queen", who turns out to be the Big Bad Wolf in disguise. She escapes, but the wolf reaches her grandmother's house before her. When Little Red Riding Hood and the pigs reach the house, the wolf tries to eat them, but fortunately she finds refuge in a closet long enough for the other pigs to fetch their brother Practical Pig who rescues her. Here is Red from The Big Bad Wolf:

Red Riding Hood celebrating with her Grandma and The Three Pigs:

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Red made a cameo around the end of the film with other toons.
In the episode "Big Bad Wolf Daddy" from House of Mouse (TV cartoon), when the wolf is introduced to perform, Red quickly demands her check in fear. Here she is from House of Mouse:

(2) The plane antics are revisited in Mickey Mouse's first cartoon, Plane Crazy, in 1928.
(3) Walt had a heavy hand in producing this film (although he animated it with Rudolph Ising). The look compared to the Laugh-O-Gram slides and political cartoons is very similar, with sparse backgrounds and clean lines.
(4) What's interesting, is that this is a linear story. Cartoons at the time mostly just featured gags with some situations tying them together. But this was the most complicated story in a cartoon at that time.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) In the scene with the cat shooting holes through the doughnuts, what makes it surreal is the old bearded man in the corner of the room that is leaning through in a picture frame. (2) Red's car is powered by a dog that is being drawn forward with sausages dangled on a stick behind the car. (3) She has a flat tire and blows up one of the donuts to fix it, which, based on the cat dying, is probably better than eating it.

VIOLENCE: (1) A mother is making donuts by throwing pastry into the air, while her cat shoots a hole through the pastry, and then landing the whole mess in a frying pan. (2) The cat eats one of the donuts, then dies (maybe by lead poisoning for shooting the doughnuts), and his nine lives fly out of him as a counter in the bottom right of the screen keeps track. (3) Some people who have watched it think the Wolf is raping Red. But it was probably not intended to be that extreme.


3) Laugh-o-grams 2: The Four Musicians of Bremen - August 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney



All these laugh-o-grams are set in present times, the 1920s. The idea was that they were looney modern updates of classic fairy tales. Animation by Walt and Rudy Ising.

This short is based off The Bremen Town Musicians by the Brothers Grim. Read more about it here.



NOTES: (1) Walt never revisited this classic fairy tale. I don't know why not. It would have made a perfect Silly Symphony, since music is already the theme (and it's obviously too short of a story for a longer film). (2) They used painted backgrounds in this short, as Walt was trying to save money by creating lush backgrounds that he could reuse. It works fine here, as many of the scenes take place over a generic landscape. (3) The cat is very much like the cat in Little Red Riding Hood, and he is the star of this short. The cat also seems to become Julius, the main animated character from the Alice Comedies that Walt started one year later (scroll below to see those).

VIOLENCE: (1) The cat swims up after the fish, but runs into a swordfish that has removed it’s sword and is sharpening it. Right before the cat and the stray fish arrive, the swordfish tests out his new sword by cutting a fish in half ruthlessly. (2) The criminals attack the animals with swords and cannonballs.


4) Laugh-o-grams 3: Jack and the Beanstalk - September 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney

No video.

Based on a story collected by the Brothers Grimm, "Jack and the Beanstalk."

Animation by Walt Disney, Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harman, Carman "Max" Maxwell, Lorey Tague, and Otto Walliman.

The only image we have is the poster, which I don't usually post because the art style doesn't reflect the actual film:



NOTES: (1) Disney later revisited this story twice with Mickey Mouse. The second version was in the 1933 Mickey short, Giant Land. (Mickey battled a giant again in The Brave Little Tailor in 1938.) Disney's third take on this tale was with Mickey and the Beanstalk, which was part of the film, Fun and Fancy Free from 1947. So basically, Walt visited this tale once a decade for three decades in a row (1922, 1933, and 1947). (2) Although it didn't originate from Disney, the Disney Channel showed this Japanese anime version of Jack and the Beanstalk in the 80s (and the kids voice is the same voice as in Super Book). (3) Walt's first laugh-o-gram with a full animation crew.

(4) When Walt created Little Red Riding Hood, he was still doing it in his spare time in his father’s garage. That film was for training for himself, but would later be released. The Four Musicians of Bremen was the first short intended for release. Based on those two films, Walt secured a contract to produce four more films (which is why his crew grew), after his boss at the Kansas City Slide Company (later Kansas City Film Ad Company) passed on the fairy tales. The four films included "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears", "Puss In Boots" and "Cinderella."

Also, here's a 1933 telling of Jack and the Beanstalk from Ub Iwerks. Ub was the top animator at Walt's studio, but he was convinced to leave Disney and start his own studio. He featured Flip the Frog and these ComiColor cartoons. Take a look. This was arguably as good or better than Walt's 1933 cartoons:




5) Laugh-o-grams 4: Goldie Locks and the Three Bears - October 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney

No video.

Based on a story collected by the Brothers Grimm, "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears."

Animation by Walt Disney, Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harman, Carman "Max" Maxwell, Lorey Tague, and Otto Walliman.

NOTES: (1) Disney revisted the Goldilocks story with the 1924 Alice Comedy, Alice and the Three Bears. This is the only other time that Disney has revisited this story. (2) In 1936, a version of the Three Bears was proposed as a Disney Silly Symphony with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other stock Disney characters in the familiar roles, but the film was never made. I think it should have been a Silly Sympohny instead.


6) Laugh-o-grams 5: Puss in Boots - November 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney



In a split from the original story, the titled cat helps the young boy win the heart of the Princess by enlisting him in a bullfight.

Based on a story by Charles Perrault, "Puss in Boots."

Animation by Walt Disney, Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harman, Carman "Max" Maxwell, Lorey Tague, and Otto Walliman.



NOTES: (1) Most of these shorts featured a black cat that greatly resembled Felix the cat. Walt Disney would make this into a regular character, Julius, in his next series, the Alice Comedies. (2) Disney revisited this story once with the 1935 Silly Symphony, Robber Kitten. That short was a very scaled down version of the Puss in Boots story. (3) Disney has slacked on this character and allowed DreamWorks to claim it through the Shrek storyline (the first Disney character that DreamWorks managed to spoof and then claim for their own because people don't think of Boots as a Disney character). This will become abundantly clear when DreamWorks releases their Puss N Boots movie. (4) Probably the earliest Disney inside joke; when the boy and the cat are standing outside of a movie theater, one of the posters features "Cinderella," a Laugh-o-Gram then still in production. Pixar is the most notorious for doing this.

(5) The four main characters in this film, a boy, a girl, the cat and a dog are in the new title card for Laugh-O-Gram Films, so this short must have been one that was produced early on. (6) The King is played by the old man in the picture frame from Little Red Riding Hood. (7) The production value is also much higher here. The backgrounds are very detailed, with the crowd renderings in the bullfight scene deserving particular notice. (8) Walt revisits the bullfight theme in 1925 with Alice the Toreador and again in 1929 with the Silly Symphony, The Terrible Toreador.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The movie theatre is another great sight gag, with one poster showing an ad for “Rudolph Vaselino,” an obvious play off of Rudolph Valentino. (2) The other poster shows an ad for “Cinderella” by Laugh-O-Grams Films. Neat little product placement. (3) The sign advertises "$5 Boots now $4.99." (4) The cat is a classic cartoon character in that he can do surrealistic things in a realistic world, like remove his tail and make a question mark as he does after the king throws them out. (This gag was already done by Felix the Cat. So obviously Walt was inspired and copying some gags.)


7) Laugh-o-grams 6: Cinderella - December 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney



The traditional story with Cinderella as a 1920's flapper.

Animation by Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harman, Carman "Max" Maxwell, Lorey Tague, and Otto Walliman.

Based on a story by Charles Perrault in 1697, "Cinderella." The Brothers Grimm also told this tale, but they didn't include the Fairy Godmother.



NOTES: (1) Walt Disney only revisited this story one other time, in the 1950 feature-length film, Cinderella. (2) This was the first animation that also included Walt's friend, Ub Iwerks (friends since 1919, working together at the Pesman Art Studio in Kansas City; then they started their ill-fated partnership together, a commercial art business; Ub was the first animator to move to LA with Walt in 1923). (3) Features the same characters from Puss N Boots. I have a feeling that if this series was a success, then these characters would have been the main ones. (4) Disney puts animals into the story once again. The reason is because you need animals or something magical in a cartoon. Otherwise, why not do it in live action instead? (5) This is the last laugh-o-gram fairy tale.

VIOLENCE: (1) Prince shoots the bear in the bottom. (2) The dog hops on a bike to deliver the invitations like a paper boy. He hits a rock and tumbles down a hill, emerging from a cloud of dust with a bandaged head and a crutch. (3) A bystander comes by and says via word balloon “Are you hurt?” The dog simply looks at him, then bashes the man over the head with his crutch.


8) Tommy Tucker's Tooth - December 6, 1922 - Dir. by Walt Disney

An excerpt from the short:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJcp9L-R6iw

Camera: Walt Pfeiffer





NOTES: (1) This was the first of two shorts that Walt Disney made for a local dentist to pay his bills ($500). You'll notice that he was light on shorts in 1923. He was scraping by that year. People have said that he pretty much lived out of the Laugh-o-gram studio, above a restaurant. He mostly ate out of cans, and he ate at the restaurant out of charity from the restaurant and in change for drawing portraits for the owner. This was perhaps the darkest year of Disney's life, but he kept at it. (2) This short was his first released short to combine live-action and animation, which naturally led him to his first series, the Alice Comedies. (Which later led to masterpieces like Mary Poppins. So it can be argued that if he hadn't taken on this job, he might have never experimented with combinations of live-action and animation.) (3) Back in the early 20's, teachers showed this film on proper dental care to grade students (so it was decently popular). (4) The name Tommy Tucker originated from this nursery rhyme.


Other 1922-1923 shorts.

Disney also made a few 300 foot shorts from 1922-1923 called "Laffets" that combined live action and animation. They included "Golf in Slow Motion," "Descha's Tryst with the Moon," "Aesthetic Camping," "Reuben's Big Day," "Rescued," "A Star Pitcher," "The Woodland Potter," and "A Pirate for a Day."



1923

1) Alice Comedies 1: Alice's Wonderland - 1923 - Dir. by Walt Disney

The Fleischer brothers had already achieved some moderate success with their "Out of the Inkwell" series in which a cartoon character would jump into and interact with the real world. Disney envisioned a series where a live actor would be put into a cartoon world.

The full short:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H58meqbp5Ps

This home video montage includes excerpts of Alice's Wonderland:



Animators: Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising

Technical Direction: Hugh Harman, Carmen Maxwell

Live Actors: Virginia Davis (Alice), Margaret Davis (Alice's mother ... Virginia Davis' mother in real life), Walt Disney (animator), Ub Iwerks (animator), Hugh Harman (animator), Rudolph Ising (animator)

Of course Disney revisited Alice famously with his 1951 feature-length adaption, which Tim Burton recently made a sequel to. Here's the Unbirthday song (which will annoy you if you're around the Teacup ride for an extended period at Disneyland):



Walt meets Julius:









NOTES: (1) Alice (Virginia Davis) interacts directly with Walt Disney. You also see the birth of the Julius cat character, who stars in the Alice Comedies series alongside Alice. (2) Also, at the Laugh-o-gram studios, Disney reportedly had a friend that was a mouse. This started him thinking about mice in the Alice Comedies and planted the first seeds for Mickey Mouse. (3) This is a good chance to take a look at Walt (without mustache) and his first animators. (4) It's interesting, because Walt had built a good group of animators here, and it was years before he got up to having a group as trained as this one, even though he was head-long in his successful Alice Comedies. Life is ironic like that. (5) Walt Disney scraped together his change (and the money made from Tommy Tucker's Tooth) to finish this short, a mix between live-action and animation and to buy a train ticket to California. Armed with this short (and his Laugh-o-grams), Disney got a distribution deal with Winkler productions, the company that distributed the Felix shorts and most of the other major shorts at the time. So this is basically an unaired pilot.

(6) Because Alice actually enters the world, which is the premise of the Alice Comedies, we are calling this the first episode of the Alice Comedies. (7) One of the cartoon scenes features a group of animated mice. Some interpreters have seen precursors of the character that was to become Mickey Mouse in this scene. (8) Some of the interaction between the live action and animation was so tricky that Alice's movements were at times composed of animated still photos, a process that was continued at times throughout the series. (9) With the concept of Walt hosting this short, you can't help but foresee his hosting the package films of the 40's and the Disneyland TV Show (and Wonderful World of Disney) from 1954 until his death in 1966. (10) The film's sudden ending before the actress wakes up (Alice jumps off the cliff when being chased by lions) is believed to be because Walt ran out of time and money, but it still works. (11) Using this film, Walt and Roy were able to secure the contract for Alice's Comedies and start their new company, the Disney Brothers Studio. (12) It wasn't originally shown in theaters, but it is believed to have been released as "Alice In Slumberland" on Sept. 29, 1926. Makes sense. The show was popular enough then. Might as well release this short in the series. (13) Virginia Davis was only four years old. Wow, she was good.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) Note the rubbery train. That was an uncommon style, and the style would get used more by Walt and Ub later on, and it would make Walt famous. (2) A rabbit and Alice jump into a rabbit hole. I can't resist. This is too perfect. This of course is a gag and reference to the book, which Walt later made into a feature-length film (1951). Here's the Rabbit scene from the film:




2) Martha - 1923 - Dir. by Walt Disney

This was a Sing-a-Long reel released in 1923 for the song "Martha: Just a Plain Old Fashioned Name."



1924

1) Alice Comedies 2: Alice's Day at the Sea - March 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Part 1, Dutch titles:



Part 2, Dutch titles:



Animation: Walt Disney

Live Action Camera: Roy Disney

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Walt Disney, and Peggy, the Dog

Here Walt plays Reggie. It starts with a bit about a dog in bed. Looks like some early inspiration for Pluto!!! The dog wakes up Alice and gets the car ready. (Wow, it looks like Burton's Frankenweanie and Pee Wee's Big Adventure were greatly inspired by this.) The animation here is mostly silliness just to help the story along, until her underwater dream sequence. That's where the live-action girl goes into the 2D animated world. It really reminds me of the clam story in the full-length Disney Alice in Wonderland movie, made in 1951. Here's the clam scene from the film:



The catfish looks like Felix the Cat! LOL. Observe:



Oh, and a sealion. Classic:



The original poster:



NOTES: (1) You'll notice that it took Walt Disney until March to get this distribution deal off the ground. Disney then insisted to have Virginia Davis move on down to California to continue her role as Alice in the Alice Comedies. (2) I'm calling Alice's Wonderland Alice Comedies 1, even though it officially isn't (it was later released as Alice in Slumberland). The reason, though, is that these aren't numbered by anyone otherwise, so I'm not bucking any known system. I'd rather have the 1923 pilot accounted for than to have it slip by in obscurity. (3) Walt signed a contract with Winkler calling for twelve more films (this was the first), whose option could be dropped after the first six if they proved unsatisfactory. (4) Disney moved into a small space at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. (Later that year, they would move into more spacious studios next door at 4649 Kingswell.) (5) For the first few shorts, Walt did all of the animation, and his brother Roy did all of the live-camera work. (6) Walt also recruited child actors from neighborhood children to provide Alice with others to play against in the live-action scenes.


2) Alice Comedies 3: Alice's Spooky Adventure - April 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Alice enters an abandoned house to retrieve a lost baseball and is knocked out. She dreams she is visiting a town called "Spookville" where she is chased by ghosts.



Animation: Walt Disney, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Camera: Roy Disney

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Leon Holmes, & "Spec" O'Donnell

The show continued with the live-action, present-time premise. Her imagination gets the best of her, and she's whisked away into her cartoon imaginary world. Later on, she would already start in that world at the beginning of the shorts, and the shorts would rely more on the cartoon hijinks.

This short seems to have inspired two of Walt's later and more famous shorts, the first Silly Symphony, Skeleton Dance (1929):



... And Mickey's Haunted House, which came right right after (also in 1929; it borrowed animation from the Skeleton Dance and proved more popular):



Back to the Alice animation...

NOTES: (1) Finally a ghost runs up to Alice and asks her to “Take it off!” The ghost is referring to the sheet, but this is a little riskee the way it is said. (2) Under the sheet, is the cat, Julius, who is the continual refinement of the cat character found in the laugh-o-grams and since the first Alice's Wonderland short. (3) This is the first animation where Rollin "Ham" Hamilton joins Walt in animation. You'd think Ham would be loyal since he'd been around so long. But, nope, it's believed that Ham took off with most of Disney's animators when Mintz power-played Walt and stole Oswald. Ham seemed to have mostly worked for Lantz post Disney, working on the Bosko series and others. His IMDB. (4) Alice comes across a black cartoon cat in this short. He was missing in the next short (Wild West Show), as Disney never intended for him to be a regular character, but Margaret Winkler asked Disney to bring him back.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The cat removes his tail to use as a bat, and then passes it off to Alice to use.


3) Alice Comedies 4: Alice's Wild West Show - May 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Alice and her friends put on a Wild West Show for the neighborhood kids where she regales the audience with her tales of cowboys and Indians.



Edited down. Titles are in English. Includes music (added later). Most of the animation is edited out. Some at 1:24. Wow, Alice gets that bully in the end!

Animation: Walt Disney, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Tommy Hicks

Here are some images from the cartoon parts...







Alice in the cartoon...



NOTES: (1) Alice faces the Indians down inside a cave, where we can’t see the action. This was a common trick in Walt’s cartoons, as he used it in nearly all the Laugh-O-Grams. (2) When Wild Bill Hiccup escapes, Alice and our friend the dog from the Laugh-O-Gram days chase him down. So it's notable that Walt is using the laugh-o-gram characters. (3) Virginia Davis' acting gets up a notch in this short. She is much more animated, especially in her face.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The safe reads “Mfg. by the Unsafe Safe Co.” (2) The short ends with Alice chasing him away and turning to the camera to grin, as we see her two front teeth missing.


4) Alice Comedies 5: Alice's Fishy Story - June 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Alice steals away from piano practice to go fishing and tells her friends a tale about fishing at the North Pole.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Animation: Walt Disney, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Leon Holmes, Tommy Hicks, Walt Disney, Peggy the Dog



Here's Julius:





NOTES: (1) The animated portion of the short opens with Julius the cat, who has not yet been named as such, but we know that is what he will soon be called. (2) Walt drew the cat character in "Alice's Spooky Adventure," and the cat didn't appear in Wild West Show. Margaret Winkler (the distributor) asked Walt to bring the cat back for this short. (3) As the year went on, more artists were added to the staff. One of the more important additions was a girl who was hired to ink and paint cels, Lillian Bounds, who was eventually to become Mrs. Walt Disney. (4) One gag has Julius luring fish to the top of the ice with tobacco and then clubbing them when they come up. It was reused by Goofy in the 1935 short, "On Ice." Observe:



NOTABLE GAGS: (1) Alice manages to trick her mother by training the dog to play piano while she sneaks out the window. (2) Alice and Julius feed the Eskimos like seals.


5) Alice Comedies 6: Alice and the Dog Catcher - July 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Alice presides over a secret club which proposes to rid the town of dog catchers and free the dogs!

Part 1, Dutch titles:



Part 2, Dutch titles:



Animation: Walt Disney, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Camera: Harry Forbes

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Leon Holmes, Tommy Hicks, Joe Allen, Peggy the Dog



Wow the dogcatcher is huge:



VIOLENCE: (1) It's kind of funny that Alice frees the dogs by blowing up the pound with TNT (it rains dogs). (2) Tubby nearly drives the stolen dogcatcher car into a guy on the street. (3) The kids laugh at the dogcatcher in the car going over a cliff at the end.

RACISM NOTES: Although it wasn't intended to be racist at the time... (1) Alice leads a meeting of the Klik Klak Klub, an unfortunate name in light of the later associations for KKK. (2) All the kids are wearing bags over their heads, reminiscent of hoods. (3) The one African-American kid is included almost as a servant of the other kids. (4) The black member wears a bag with blackface on it (supposed to be a joke).


6) Alice Comedies 7: Alice the Peacemaker - August 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

No video.

Alice tries to break up a fight between two newsboys by telling them a story of a feuding cat and mouse.



Characters: Alice, Ike the Mouse, Mike the Cat

Animation: Rollin "Ham" Hamilton, Ub Iwerks

Live Action Camera: Harry Forbes

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, Leon Holmes, "Spec" O'Donnell





NOTES: (1) The cat's name is Mike here, but he is later known as Julius. (2) This is Ub Iwerks' first Alice Comedy (other than Alice's Wonderland), and it shows. The animation is much more fluid and enjoyable, with smarter gags. (3) Also due to Ub's influence, this mouse looks a lot like what Mickey Mouse will look. (4) For the first time, because Ub is there, the quality of the animation is back up to the level of the Laugh-o-gram shorts. Walt knew it too, because he was using animation less and less. This short relies heavily on the animation.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The cat and mouse hang a sheet in front of a horse’s rear, paint their pictures on it, and watch as the dog attacks the sheet, gets kicked by the horse and goes sailing through the air. (2) The cat’s tail is used as a paintbrush. (3) Then the horse giggles after kicking the dog. =^)


7) Alice Comedies 8: Alice Gets in Dutch - November 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Alice misbehaves in school and is forced to sit in the corner. She falls asleep and dreams, but schoolwork intrudes even into her dreams.



Director: Walt Disney

Animation: Ub Iwerks, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Camera: Harry Forbes

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis, "Spec" O'Donnell, David F. Hollander, Marjorie Sewell, Mrs. Hunt (?), Peggy the Dog



The cat is prominently featured in the title card:







NOTES: (1) It's interesting that the cartoon animals are the dog, cat, and donkey. These are three of the four Musicians of Bremen characters from the Laugh-o-gram in 1922. (2) The technique of combining live action and drawings is suffering in this short; at some scenes Alice is rendered so light, she's almost invisible.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The not-yet-named Julius fires a pepper cannon that makes the teacher and the books sneeze. (2) The teacher grows horns at one point.(3) The teacher sneezes her hair off, and the books sneeze all their pages off, ending their threat. (4) Julius sneezes his face off. (5) They sneeze a hole into the ground, which the animals jump into to get away from the teacher.

VIOLENCE: (1) The teacher and books pull out cannons and start firing them at Alice and her animal friends. (2) The teacher chases down Alice with a sword and pokes her.


8) Alice Comedies 9: Alice Hunting in Africa - November 15, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

No video.

Alice and Julius hunt wild game in Africa with differing results.

Animation: Walt Disney; touched up by Ub Iwerks, "Ham" Hamilton, and Thurston Harper

Live Action Camera: Roy Disney

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis



NOTES: (1) Even though it was the third Alice short made, it was not released until this time (November) because of Margaret Winkler's dissatisfaction with it (she's the distributor). For this official release, parts of the animation were redone by Ub Iwerks, "Ham" Hamilton, and Thurston Harper. (2) The animation still wasn't very good, and so the live action footage was reused later in 1925's "Alice in the Jungle." (In other words, they remade it with new animation so that it was a better, finished piece.) (3) Alice becomes animation, in places where the live action Alice would not show up.

VIOLENCE: (1) Alice is chasing a bear with a shotgun. (2) The elephant launches a cannonball from it's trunk that knocks a hole in a sleeping hippo. (3) Julius shoots the spots off a cheetah.


9) Alice Comedies 10: Alice and the Three Bears - December 1, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

In a twist on the traditional story, Alice comes across three bears operating a still, and she and Julius have to fight their way free.



Director: Walt Disney

Animation: Ub Iwerks, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis

This is Walt's second and last take on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (his first was the 1922 Laugh-o-gram fairy tale). Walt was thinking of doing a Mickey Mouse short on this tale, but it never happened.







NOTES: (1) The bears start in a still, making beer. (2) This is the first short to completely take place in the animation world. They don't even bother setting up the cartoon dream sequence.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) To get more hops for the beer, the baby bear chases a frog and nets the word "Hop" as the frog hops away. (2) Julius summons his nine lives to attack the bears. (3) Julius gives his ninth life beer/moonshine, which gives it the strength to beat the bears.


10) Alice Comedies 11: Alice the Piper - December 15, 1924 - Dir. by Walt Disney

No video.

A take on the story of "The Pied Piper on Hamelin" as Alice and Julius are hired to rid the town of rats.

Animation: Ub Iwerks, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton, Thurston Harper

Live Action Actors: Virginia Davis

Disney later revisited the Pied Piper story in the Silly Symphony, "The Pied Piper," in 1933. In that version, the rats are led off to a rat utopia (and not drowned in the river) and the children are led off into a special child utopia dimension in the mountain side that is closed off (and a child throws away his crutches as he enters; kind of like heaven for kids).

NOTES: (1) You'll notice that the cameraman isn't credited anymore because the only live action is Alice now. (2) Recent showings on The Disney Channel (1998) omit the final scene showing Alice and Julius vacuuming up the King after finding out their reward was less than they expected. This is probably not a deliberate cut, but the result of Disney having to use the only print available to them.

NOTABLE GAGS: (1) The king posts a reward sign, offering $5.00 (five dollars) to anyone who can rid the kingdom of the rats. The mischievous rats, meanwhile, change the sign to read $5,000 reward. This is a clever setup to how the Pied Piper (Alice and Julius) get stiffed. The king gives them $5.00 and not the $5,000 they expected. (2) Since the music isn't working, they use a vacuum cleaner.



Click here for Part 2 of this series, 1925-1927.

- TAE

The Top 10 Highest Grossing Animated Films of All Time

So this is a work in progress. I'll start with this list and keep building off of it and making it more interesting.

Second, I'm making this list because while the information is out there, you cannot find it in a list like this. You can find the top grossing domestic films. But this is the only list that lists the top grossing international sales... both domestic and overseas.

But why should the domestic sales matter? The point of making films (by the investors and studios that back them; not necessarily the point of the artistic film-makers) is to make money and gain profit on the initial investment. So what should matter is the gross income and not the domestic income. For example, taking domestic comparisons, Shrek 1 made $267 million and Up made $293 million, which isn't a huge difference. However, worldwide, Shrek made $484 million and Up made $731 million, which is a much bigger difference. As another example, Kung-Fu Panda is 15th in Domestic but 6th in world-wide.

That said, the cost of the film is also significant, because that helps determine the net profit (so I include the cost, but I don't bother calculating the net profit, since theater costs also aren't calculated). For example, you could have a movie like Jimmy Neutron be a huge hit because it made $80 million domestic and only cost $30 million. Compare that to Beowulf, which made $82 million domestic, but it cost $150 million to make.

TOP 10 HIGHEST GROSSING ANIMATED FILMS

Note: Listed in order of world-wide grosses.

1. Shrek 2
STUDIO: DreamWorks | WORLD-WIDE: $919.8 mil | DOMESTIC: $441.2 mil | YEAR: 2004
COST: $150 mil

2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
STUDIO: Fox | WORLD-WIDE: $886.7 mil | DOMESTIC: $196.6 mil | YEAR: 2009
COST: $90 mil

3. Finding Nemo
STUDIO: Disney/Pixar | WORLD-WIDE: $867.9 mil | DOMESTIC: $339.7 mil | YEAR: 2003
COST: $94 mil

4. Shrek the Third
STUDIO: DreamWorks | WORLD-WIDE: $799.0 mil | DOMESTIC: $322.7 mil | YEAR: 2007
COST: $160 mil

5. Lion King
STUDIO: Disney | WORLD-WIDE: $783.8 mil | DOMESTIC: $328.5 mil | YEAR: 1994
COST: $45 mil

6. Up
STUDIO: Disney/Pixar | WORLD-WIDE: $731.3 mil | DOMESTIC: $293.0 mil | YEAR: 2009
COST: $175 mil

7. Ice Age: The Meltdown
STUDIO: Fox | WORLD-WIDE: $655.4 mil | DOMESTIC: $195.3 mil | YEAR: 2006
COST: $90 mil

8. Kung Fu Panda
STUDIO: DreamWorks | WORLD-WIDE: $631.7 mil | DOMESTIC: $215.4 mil | YEAR: 2008
COST: $130 mil

9. The Incredibles
STUDIO: Disney/Pixar | WORLD-WIDE: $631.4 mil | DOMESTIC: $261.4 mil | YEAR: 2004
COST: $92 mil

10. Ratatouille
STUDIO: Disney/Pixar | WORLD-WIDE: $623.7 mil | DOMESTIC: $206.4 mil | YEAR: 2007
COST: $150 mil

=================


To be fair to the old timers and to give you a bonus list, here's a list of the top animated films with adjusted income. So that means we can truly compare to ticket sales and how much those movies would have made today. However, the system isn't a one-for-one comparison because (1) films would sell differently at different times, (2) the world-wide market isn't taken into account, mostly because the older films didn't initially release internationally, and (3) the older films were also re-released a few times, and those sales are added in to the total. In other words, even though this is a fair comparison for some reasons, it is unfair in the sense that we have no clue how well the older films would perform if they were released today (probably not as well).

TOP 10 HIGHEST GROSSING ANIMATED FILMS - Domestic and Adjusted

Note: We're including the adjusted foreign income where available.

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $866.6 mil | YEAR: 1937
ADJUSTED COST: $7.02 mil

2. 101 Dalmatians
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $794.3 mil | YEAR: 1961
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $389.2 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $1,183.5 mil / $1.183 bil
COST: Unknown

3. Fantasia
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $660.2 mil | YEAR: 1941
COST: Unknown

4. The Lion King
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $614.0 mil | YEAR: 1994
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $851 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $1,465 mil / $1.465 bil
ADJUSTED COST: $88.3 mil

5. The Jungle Book
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $585.8 mil | YEAR: 1967
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $264.4 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $850.2 mil
COST: Unknown

6. Sleeping Beauty
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $577.8 mil | YEAR: 1959
COST: Unknown

7. Shrek 2
STUDIO: DreamWorks | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $564.8 mil | YEAR: 2004
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $612.7 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $1,177.5 mil / $1.178 bil
AJUSTED COST: $192 mil

8. Pinocchio
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $535.9 mil | YEAR: 1940
COST: Unknown

9. Bambi
STUDIO: Disney | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $506.5 mil | YEAR: 1942
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $818.7 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $1,325.2 mil / $1.325 bil
COST: Unknown

10. Finding Nemo
STUDIO: Disney/Pixar | DOMESTIC, ADJUSTED: $447.9 mil | YEAR: 2003
FOREIGN, ADJUSTED: $696.4 mil | WORLD-WIDE, ADJUSTED: $1,144.3 mil / $1.144 bil
ADJUSTED COST: $123.94 mil

==============

Enjoy!

- TAE

Early Walt Disney animated films: Struggles with funding

The first film was Snow White. Walt Disney bet the entire company on the success of that film because he wanted it to be as high quality as possible. So all the money he had made from his successful Mickey Mouse, Silly Symphony, and Donald Duck cartoons was used to fund Snow White. In addition, Walt Disney packaged his five Academy Award winning shorts together and released it as a film, "Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_Review_of_Walt_Disney_Cartoons).

All of the Disney company was riding on Snow White, and the critics called it "Disney's folly" because they thought it would fail. Even Walt's wife didn't think people would want to go see "a dwarf movie."

The success put all of Walt's other productions into place (which is why it took 3 years for Disney's next animated film Pinocchio, but Disney was cranking them out about one a year after that). However, Pinocchio lost a lot of money in the box office, which put Disney into debt. A few of the pre-War World 2 films made profits (Dumbo, Saludos Amigos, and Fun and Fancy Free), and Disney slowly squeezed money from re-releasing his first earlier films, and he continued to make money from his shorts, but Pinocchio put the company in debt, and the other films (especially Fantasia, Bambi, and war films) kept it in debt until Cinderella pulled it out. So Cinderella was the third time that Disney risked the entire company on a single project (Steamboat Willie and Snow White were the previous times)…

0 Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons (not canon)
May 19, 1937

1 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
December 21, 1937 (premiere); February 4, 1938



2 Pinocchio
February 7, 1940 (premiere); February 9, 1940

3 Fantasia
November 13, 1940 (premiere/roadshow); January 29, 1941 (RKO roadshow); January 8, 1942



3.5 The Reluctant Dragon (not canon)
June 20, 1941



4 Dumbo
October 23, 1941

5 Bambi
August 13, 1942 (limited); August 21, 1942

6 Saludos Amigos
August 24, 1942 (premiere); February 6, 1943

7 The Three Caballeros
December 21, 1944 (premiere); February 3, 1945

8 Make Mine Music
April 20, 1946 (premiere); August 15, 1946

8.5 Song of the South (not canon)
November 12, 1046



9 Fun and Fancy Free
September 27, 1947

10 Melody Time
May 27, 1948

11 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
October 5, 1949

12 Cinderella
February 15, 1950

Cinderella was a huge success, but Walt Disney lost his passion for animations. It was still there, but he became more passionate about other things (new frontiers for him). Even Cinderella was great, but he saw it as a remake of Snow White. He also just overcame the challenge of keeping the company alive, and he wanted a new challenge.

Disney then took his wad of cash from the success of Cinderella (movie profits, merchandising, and music profits) and turned his attention to TV, live-action films, and Disneyland. Disneyland was his fourth project that he bet the entire company on. Not only did he bet all his profits from TV, animation, and films, but he also built up a debt and had ABC co-own the park (which he bought in 1960).

Of course, he also continued to release all the classics that he had already planned before the war stopped him in 1942 (but you can see that he slowed down on the frequency of his animations because he was concentrating more on TV, live-action films, and Disneyland):

13 Alice in Wonderland
July 26, 1951 (limited); July 28, 1951

14 Peter Pan
February 5, 1953

15 Lady and the Tramp
June 16, 1955 (premiere); June 22, 1955

16 Sleeping Beauty
January 29, 1959

17 One Hundred and One Dalmatians
January 25, 1961

18 The Sword in the Stone
December 25, 1963



19 The Jungle Book
October 18, 1967


Also, most of the later films (from 1960 on) have one thing in common… the director, Wolfgang Reitherman (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0718627/). He often stated that he repurposed animation long before he became a director. It seemed to be a normal process and a way to cut costs without cutting out quality. Wolfgang was a major Disney animator since 1934. He worked on all the old movies, he was one of Disney’s 9 Old Men (http://www.hollowhill.com/gm/library/9oldmen.htm), he began animation direction/supervision starting with Pinocchio, and he became the primary Disney animation director in 1961, directing the following animated films (in addition to shorts):

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
The Sword in the Stone (1963)
The Jungle Book (1967)
The AristoCats (1970)
Robin Hood (1973)
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
The Rescuers (1977)



Enjoy!

- TAE

The Complete History and Videos of Walt Disney's Animated Shorts: Part 4 (1929)

Update: This is getting too long, so we're dividing 1928 and 1929. We added a bunch more videos and text. We now have videos for all the Mickey cartoons of this year! Next is to fill out the Silly Symphonies and more info.

The History and Videos of Walt Disney's Animated Shorts

Part 4: 1929

1929


1) Mickey Mouse 4: The Barn Dance - March 14, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



The Barn Dance (1929), first released on March 14, 1929, was the first of twelve Mickey Mouse shorts released during that year.



The fourth Mickey Mouse movie, it was the first one made after the hit, Steamboat Willie, and it was later released in color:



Why did it take so long for Walt Disney to make a fourth Mickey mouse cartoon, if Steamboat Willie was a huge success? Well, he redid Plane Crazy and Gallopin Gaucho in sound. Other than that, I'm not entirely sure. He might have been renegotiating his contract with Pat Powers, which lasted until early 1930 when Disney confronted Powers for skimming money off the top.



This short didn't end up so great for Mickey!!! =^)

The barn dance of the title is the occasion which brings together Minnie Mouse and her two suitors: Mickey and Peg-Leg Pete. The latter two and their vehicles are first seen arriving at Minnie's house in an attempt to pick her up for the dance. Mickey turns up in his horse-cart while Pete in a newly purchased automobile (Pete also appeared in the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit).



This short is notable for featuring Mickey turned down by Minnie in favor of Pete. It is also an unusual appearance of the Pete character; previously depicted as a menacing villain, he is portrayed here as a well-mannered gentleman. In addition, Mickey was not depicted as a hero but as a rather ineffective young suitor.



This portrays Minnie in a particulary bad light as she seems a bit shallow.



The shoes gag is kind of weird:



Always the thinker, Mickey devises a plan to win Minnie back. Using a balloon, he literally becomes light on his feet.



Pete strikes back:



Minnie once more goes back to Pete. In a cruel twist, the toon ends with Mickey sobbing.



This is the Parrot's second cartoon. His first was in Steamboat Willie. He appears here as Minnie's pet:




2) Mickey Mouse 5: The Opry House - March 28, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



The Opry House (1929) was the second Mickey Mouse short released during the year. It cast Mickey as the owner of a small theater (or opera house according to the title). Mickey performs a vaudeville show all by himself. Acts include his impersonation of a snake charmer...



His dressing in drag and performing a belly dance...



His caricature of a Hasidic Jew...



And, for the finale, a piano performance.



Minnie Mouse does not appear in person in this short. Instead, a poster of her can be seen which introduces her as a member of the Yankee Doodle Girls, apparently a group of female performers.



The only other recurring character to appear in the short is known as Kat Nipp (apparently a play on the word catnip). This would be his debut; he would appear in two more shorts during the year as a minor antagonist.

This short features no dialogue and consequently its humor relies on a long series of visual gags. The accompanying musical pieces notably include "Yankee Doodle" and George Bizet's Carmen. It is also the first appearance of "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt in a cartoon. The song can be found in many other shorts from different animation studios as well as the Disney movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (performed by Daffy and Donald Duck).

This short also introduced Mickey's gloves; Mickey can be seen wearing them in most of his subsequent appearances. Supposedly one reason for adding the white gloves was to allow audiences to distinguish the characters' hands when they appeared against their bodies, as both were black (Mickey did not appear in color until The Band Concert in 1935).


3) Mickey Mouse 6: When the Cat's Away - April 11, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



You can tell that the goal of these animations was to showcase music. It naturally led into the Silly Symphonies series.

Animated by Ub Iwerks.



In the film Mickey and Minnie are portrayed the size of regular mice, whereas Tom Kat is the size of a person.



After Tom Kat leaves his house, drunk on hooch, Mickey Mouse organises all his mice friends to break into Kat's house. Once inside Mickey and Minnie play the piano, and later others play some of Kat's records using themselves as the player and needle. In the end Mickey and Minnie kiss.



Note that this may be the only Mickey Mouse cartoon that shows Mickey the size of a mouse, like in Tom & Jerry. Normally, Mickey is shown as the size of a human next to other animals that are also the size of humans.



The mice start doing gags with a record player and with a saxophone:





The Parrot appears in this short (as well as Steamboat Willie, The Barn Dance, and The Gorilla Mystery in 1930). Here he is in When the Cat's Away:



And they kiss at the end:



Trivia: This is a remake of the Alice short "Alice Rattled by Rats." Disney probably wanted to do it with Mickey, so they made Mickey small for this.


4) Mickey Mouse 7: The Barnyard Battle - April 25, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



The mice are still a little smaller here, but I think they're getting bigger and closer to the size of the cats, led by Pete. Especially that huge recruiter rat is easily the size of Pete.

Some versions shown by Disney cut out the recruitment tests at the beginning. It's a little harsh.

Speaking of harsh, I think Mickey impales a cat at the end!!!



As the title implies it featured a battle between an invading army of cats and an army of mice trying to defend their homes and farms.

Walt Disney especially was fascinated by WWI (having served as an ambulance driver in France).



Peg-Leg Pete was depicted as a leading soldier of the former army and Mickey as a conscript of the latter one. Before joining the army, Mickey has to pass a physical examination. This scene depicts Mickey becoming the subject of physical and emotional abuse. After passing the examination, he is given a machine gun and is sent to battle. Mickey's combat efforts are comical in depiction but prove effective enough in forcing the enemy to retreat. Mickey is hailed as a hero by his fellow soldiers and then the short ends.



This short is notable as the first to depict Mickey as a soldier and the first to place him in combat. The physical examination scene has since often been edited out as being somewhat disturbing. However modern viewers have often pointed to this scene as being the most memorable of the short.

Taking a look at the battle itself, we can see the Cats and Mice engaging in trench warfare. This is yet another inspiration taken from WWI.



The short did not clearly identify the war it depicted; but it has been noted that the cats are depicted as wearing military helmets similar to those used by the German Empire during World War I. On the other hand, the mice are marching in battle to the tune of "Dixie", a song written in 1859. The song was popular among the forces of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The victory of the mice is celebrated in the tune of "Battle Cry of Freedom", known to have been popular among the forces of the United States during the same conflict. In any case both wars were still within living memory of the audiences at the time of release and so it is possible that the details mentioned were intended as recognizable references to both of them.

Though the toon deals with war, there are plenty of fun gags present. One involves Mickey and a machine gun. When he runs out of bullets, Mickey substitutes piano keys instead which wreak havoc on the Cats while playing a catchy tune.



Mickey wins:



It's similar to the Oswald short, Great Guns.


5) Mickey Mouse 8: The Plow Boy - May 9, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



At 4:53, Disney uses the perspective style that he thought would make Plane Crazy a hit before he tried sound with Steamboat Willie.

Mickey was depicted as a farmer alongside Minnie Mouse. He is first seen with his horse while ploughing a field. Then Minnie comes along with her cow. She has Mickey milk the cow for her.

At some point the horse is stung by a bee, panics and starts galloping. By the time the horse calms down again, the plough has been broken. In the finale, Mickey resorts to using a pig as a plough.

Curiously the short is considered mainly notable for the livestock it featured. Minnie's cow is considered to be Clarabelle Cow making her second appearance, and Mickey's plow horse is considered to be Horace Horsecollar making his debut. Though depicted as non-anthropomorphic animals during this short, later that same year Clarabelle would become as anthropomorphic as her former owners.

However, Horace acts anthropomorphic several times during this short.

Mickey's cruelty to animals continues by tying up the cow's tongue and forcing the pig to plow (Horace helps, Ha!). He also continues his womanizing ways by forcing Minnie to kiss and getting rejected by her.


6) Mickey Mouse 9: The Karnival Kid - May 23, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



Although it was Mickey's ninth short, it was the first in which he actually spoke. (During his first eight appearances Mickey whistled, laughed, cried and otherwise vocally expressed himself.) Mickey's first spoken words were "Hot Dogs!"

Walt's doing Mickey's voice. Mickey hasn't gotten his high-pitched voice yet. But Walt is also doing Minnie's voice, and Minnie has the high pitched voice. =^)

I found the gag hilarious where Mickey spanked the hot dog!!!

The short featured Mickey selling hot dogs at a carnival. Much of the humor in this short came from the interaction between Mickey and his hot dogs, with the latter tending to act like actual dogs in relation to their owner/trainer.

Three other recurring characters of the series also appear. The first of them was Clarabelle Cow in a cameo. The second was Kat Nipp, making his third and last appearance. A barker at the carnival, he briefly gets into an argument with Mickey over a dancing doll scam. The third was Mickey's recurring love interest: Minnie Mouse, "the Shimmy Dancer" of the carnival. Having given one of Mickey's hot dogs for free, she is surprised to see it run away.

Mickey apparently attempts to draw Minnie's attention by playing guitar singing outside her window. He only manages to draw the attention of two alley cats who decide to join him and then that of an irate neighbour of Minnie who starts throwing things at these three annoyances in an attempt to silence them.

This short also features the cat duo performing their rendition of the barbershop standard Sweet Adeline.

Mickey gets thwomped in the end. But I think Minnie still likes him. =^)

It's interesting that Cat Nip doesn't seem to compete with Mickey for Minnie, but Pete often does. Mickey's starting to turn into a nice guy.

Trivia: In Toon Town Central in Toon Town Online, there's a building that is named after this 1929 film.


7) Mickey Mouse 10: Mickey's Choo-Choo - June 20, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Mickey's running a small-town railroad. He takes Minnie for a wild ride on a humanized train which eventually rumbles out of control.



Animation : Ben Sharpsteen
Music : Carl Stalling

Mickey's first cartoon with a high-pitched voice. Walt must have realized that this voice works better than the low voice he was using.

Later made in color (a little washed out):



Here Mickey has a dog, but it doesn't look much like Pluto.

Disney's first speghetti gags, which were later made famous in Lady and the Tramp.

At 5:24, Minnie on the car goes to the perspective shot that Disney loves to do. Also at 6:12 where they chase Clarebelle.

I like how there's a bit of a story here. It feels more like the first Mickey cartoons and the Oswald cartoons (Trolley Troubles; the first distributed Oswald short) rather than a song and dance piece.

It ends decently with Mickey and Minnie going back to the engine. Mickey is turning into a nice guy here rather than an anti-hero. He's not womanizing, he doesn't abuse animals (not intentionally), and he doesn't laugh at others.


8) Mickey Mouse 11: Mickey's Follies - June 26, 1929 - Dir. by Wilfred Jackson

Mickey and his barnyard pals put on a show that includes dancing ducks, opera singing by Patricia Pig, and Mickey's own rendition of his theme song, "Minnie's Yoo Hoo.



The barnyard theme continues. They were establishing that Mickey lived on a farm. That was later changed though.

Um, chicken violence?

This was also known for Mickey's first song he's song, dubbed as "Mickey's Theme Song." Here's a clip that shows just the song:



This was a Mickey milestone (part of Mickey's 60th birthday celebration). This an original song. Most of the music up to this point was popular or known music at the time. Mickey's singing voice isn't high pitched, even though his talking voice was.

The little pig comes out of the outhouse at the end! I believe that gag was in the first Mickey cartoon, Plane Crazy.


9) Mickey Mouse 12: The Jazz Fool - July 5, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Mickey and Horace gather a rural audience and put on first a xylophone performance, then an elaborate piano solo.



Horace is back! We haven't seen him since the Plow Boy on May 9, a few months earlier.

The clothes dancing to Mary Had a Little Lamb at 1:27 made me laugh!!!

We're still in the barnyard environment. Some of these ducks are starting to sound like Donald Duck!!!

Mickey spanks the piano at 4:26!! Hahaha. Mickey begins to fight with the piano.

It ends with the piano biting Mickey. No Minnie Mouse in this episode.


10) Mickey Mouse 13: The Haunted House - August 1, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney

You can start to see where the Silly Symphony, Skeleton Dance, came from, which was released later this year. It also shows early inspiration for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion ride that Walt Disney also did.



Music : Carl Stalling

At 2:22 we see the ghost is a skeleton, and 2:31 shows skeletons coming out of the closet. The skeletons want Mickey to play the organ. This is very similar to the Skeleton Dance (there are also a lot of skeletons dancing here and playing music with bones). The skeletons take over the show here, so I guess it makes sense to give them their own short.

No Minnie Mouse here either.


11) Mickey Mouse 14: Wild Waves - August 15, 1929 - Dir. by Burt Gillett

Mickey tries to save Minnie from the ocean waves.



It was remade into color in 1930 (Mickey's finally got his high-pitched voice):



It's interesting, because we start to see Mickey become a kind-hearted hero instead of the womanizing, animal-abusing anti-hero that he started out as.


12) Silly Symphony 1: The Skeleton Dance - August 22, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



Disney billed this with his name, but he later realized that he should put Mickey's name on the Silly Symphonies too to give them better marketing. It's similar to how Pixar advertises today. For example, the first preview of Up showed clips from all the Pixar movies before it showed a little preview of the actual film. They want to remind you who they are. Same idea was used by Disney to market Silly Symphonies.

4:12 - The skeletons were cruel to animals even if Mickey stopped doing that.

Walt and team took a break from the Mickey Mouse cartoons to do these silly symphonies from August 22 through the end of October. Disney was starting to return to his roots of the Laugh-o-gram shorts (that featured fairie tales in present times). This time he found success in music in animation, and so that's the direction he took his second anthology series (the first being the laugh-o-gram shorts).

In the film, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard. It is the first entry in the Silly Symphonies series. In 1994, it was voted #18 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.

Carl Stalling explained, in a 1969 interview, that it was actually a foxtrot set in a minor key. Stalling suggested the idea for a series of musical one-shot cartoons to Disney at a gag meeting in 1929. Stalling also adapts Edvard Grieg's "The March of the Trolls" for part of the skeleton dance music.

In some ways, Carl Stalling helped push Walt Disney into doing these Silly Symphonies, which eventually became short film masterpieces and led to the feature-length films (Three Little Pigs and others were marketed like feature films).

The skeletons dance in various ways and play makeshift musical instruments. In one scene, all four skeletons hold hands and dance in a circle, akin to schoolchildren dancing "Ring a Ring O'Roses". In another scene, a skeleton pulls the thigh bones off another and plays the thighless skeleton like a xylophone. A skeleton also plays a cat like a double bass, using a bow and the cat's tail as the strings. One skeleton dances part of the Charleston.

It is notable for being the first animated cartoon to use non-post-sync sound. Animation from this short was later reused in the Mickey Mouse short Haunted House, in which Mickey, having taken shelter in a haunted house, is forced to play music for the dancing skeletons.

In 1982, The Skeleton Dance was featured in a colorized version as an intro to the Halloween special Disney's Halloween Treat and Disney's Greatest Villains.

Trivia: (1) It was used in the film Ghost Rider (2007), as a cartoon Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is watching not knowing he will become a skeleton-like supernatural being at night in the presence of evil. (2) The Skeleton Dance was also referenced to in the episode "Hill Billy" of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, where Grim, having been turned into a silent era cartoon character, leads several other skeletons in dance, and even mimics the actions.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeleton_Dance"


13) Silly Symphony 2: El Terrible Toreador - September 7, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney



The title character vies with a Mexican officer for the affections of a comely barmaid, all set to Latin themes from classical music.



This is the second Silly Symphony. I can't find the video at this time.

This is known as one of the worse Disney cartoons. The story is similar to Mickey's Gallopin Gaucho, but the quality and gags aren't as good. Probably why the Silly Symphonies to follow went back to not having a story (just song and dance).


14) Silly Symphony 3: Springtime - October 24, 1929 - Dir. by Ub Iwerks

They started showing Mickey's face before the shorts to play off of Mickey's popularity (much how Pixar trailers today reference previous Pixar films).



Animation : Ub Iwerks
Music : Carl Stalling

No story here. Just song and dance without Mickey. The common theme is just spring time.

This is similar to the first color Disney animated short, Flowers and Trees.

It was also the first of four seasonal Silly Symphonies (summer, fall, and winter came later).

The frog ate the crickets at 3:29. =^)

Trivia: (1) A scene of flowers dancing was shown on black and white TV that Horace and Jasper were watching, during a scene in the 1961 animated Disney film, 101 Dalmatians. (2) Being animated by Ub, This cartoon also features a prototype for Flip the Frog, a character Ub would create for Pat Powers at MGM.


15) Silly Symphony 4: Hell's Bells - October 30, 1929 - Dir. by Ub Iwerks

The devils of hell gather together for a mad frolic.

Music : Carl Stalling



This cartoon was released in November 1929, only about three months after "The Skeleton Dance". A highlight is the dance cycle of the three devils around 2:40.

1:11 - Serpent eats the bat and grows wings! =^)

3:18 - The jagged dance movements are awesome!

Um, there'sa dragon cow at 3:45. =^O

5:04 - It starts to get interesting. A little demon cat saw his friend get fed to a 3-headed dog (Cerberus) so he books it. He knocks the devil off the edge who gets spanked by fire at 5:30. I don't know why, but the spanking gag always makes me laugh! Disney did it with the hot dogs (Karnival Kid), then the piano (Jazz Fool), and now to the devil!

And the devil dies at the end. I guess they walked the fine line of not making hell look too fun. =^)


16) Mickey Mouse 15: Jungle Rhythm - November 15, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney

Mickey plays music with various jungle animals.



Out of the barnyard and into the jungle! This is the first Mickey cartoon in quite awhile, and they've mostly placed Mickey on a barn. However, the first three films had Mickey in movie-like locations (similar to Disney's Oswald shorts). So I think they ran out of ideas for the earlier Mickey shorts, because they were confining themselves to song and dance routines on the farm (probably because those were doing the best). I think they finally decided that the popularity of Mickey meant they had to pick it back up, and in order to do that right, they had to mix it up. Starting with a jungle environment. Pretty soon, we'd see Mickey Mouse in every type of scenario.

That's also why their last two previous Mickey shorts were in a haunted mansion and a beach. Now a jungle. They're just putting Mickey into new settings.

This short feels similar to the Haunted Mansion short. Instead of skeletons dancing, we've got jungle animals. Once again, no real story here, just music. The last story was when he saved Minnie in Wild Waves. It seems like they do more of these, but mix it up with a bit more story every once in awhile.

Here's the classic cruelty to animals! It's back! No Minnie though.

Trivia: The scene with the dancing apes appears to have been reused in the 1931 short, "The Castaway."


17) Silly Symphony 5: The Merry Dwarfs - December 16, 1929 - Dir. by Walt Disney

It took them a whole month to knock this one out. There was a lot of drama going on though. Iwerks and Stalling were upset because Disney was demanding and not organized, and Disney was upset at his distributor, Pat Powers, who was skimming money off the top. So the drama might have slowed them down.

A village of dwarfs dance and play through their day.



Animation : Les Clark
Music : Carl Stalling

A lot of similar ideas were later used by the elves in the 1932 Disney short, Santa's Workshop and the 1940 film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

These dwarves are so small that they ride crickets!!! Wow. They're more like mites, sprites, Kiebler elves, or Smurfs!

It was released laterin 16mm under the title "The Little Elves." I think that title's more likely to meet expectations. For Merry Dwarves I was expecting them working in a mine or building armor or something.



These dwarves drink a lot! They even fall into barrels of beer, ala Timothy Mouse in Dumbo!

5:34 - The hallucination effects are great (also a similar idea was used later in Dumbo)! I think they're just moving the papers around! =^)

The drunk dwarves collapse - weird ending.



Enjoy!

- TAE