"A Mickey Mouse Cartoon"
Release Date November
18, 1928
Running Time
Synopsis
Characters
Credits
Milestones
Cut Scenes
Awards
Videos
Laserdiscs
DVD
Television
Technical Specifications
Released by Celebrity Productions, Inc.
Historical Footnotes
And then came "The Jazz Singer" and Walt
Disney saw the future.
To say that "The Jazz Singer" and the advent of talkies revolutionized Hollywood would be an understatement. No one doubted that sound recording would be a natural extension of the cinematic experience. But animation was a different matter. Would the synchronization of sound and animation, even if it were practical, work. More importantly, would the audience buy the illusion of animated characters making noises?
It had already been done, however. A few years earlier, Max and Dave Fleischer had released seven short films using Lee DeForrest's "Sound on Film" process. In order to test if the idea would work for them, Disney set up a special screening of the then silent "Steamboat Willie" strictly for studio employees and their wives. They set up a bedsheet with a microphone behind it and began playing the music themselves as the film played. Wilfred Jackson provided the main music on harmonica. Ub Iwerks played percussion and Johnny Cannon did the sound effects. Walt Disney himself voiced what little dialog there was (although at that time it couldn't really be considered dialog; it didn't amount to much more that squeaks and squawks.)
Wilfred Jackson recalled the session in an interview with Mike Barrier :
"Walt didn't know if people would believe that the character on the screen was making the noise.Nobody had ever seen a drawing make noise, and there was no way to be sure that the people would believe it. It might just look like some kind of a fake thing, and Walt wanted it to seem real, as if the noise was coming right from what the character was doing. So to find out whether the whole thing would be believable ... when a few scenes had been animated ... they set up this test. I was able to play a few simple tunes on a harmonica. One of my favorite tunes was "Turkey in the Straw"; that's why it got used there.
"We came back one night to try this thing out, and Ub Iwerks rigged up a little microphone and speaker out of something or other that he took apart and put back together. Walt's office had a glass window in the door, so we could close the door, and look through it, and see the back of the screen. Roy Disney got outside the building with the projector, and projected through a window, so the sound of the projector wouldn't be too loud.
"When Roy started the projector up, I furnished the music, with my mouth organ ... and the other fellows hit things and made sound effects. We had spittoons everywhere then, and they made a wonderful gong if you hit them with a pencil. we practiced with it several times, and we got so we were hitting it off pretty well. We took turns going out there ourselves, and looking at the thing, and when I went out there wasn't any music, but the noises and voices seemed to come from it just fine. It was really pretty exciting, and it did prove to us that the sound coming from the drawing could be a convincing thing."
The illusion worked well enough to convince Disney to go forward. Since all the major players in the sound revolution were still in New York City, Walt had to make the cross-country trip to arrange for a sound recording system. On the way there, he stopped off in Kansas City and persuaded old friend Carl Stalling to quickly put together a score.
After going through the gamut of companies providing sound systems, Disney finally settled on Pat Powers new "Cinephone" system; a decision he was to regret later. He also hired conductor Carl Edouarde who was enthusiastic about the project.
The first recording session was a disaster. Edourade though he would be able to match the music to the film by just watching the film. But the musicians couldn't keep up with the action and the synchronization didn't work. In desperation for money to finance a second recording session, Disney made what most have seen as a supreme sacrifice: he allowed his brother Roy to sell his prize Moon roadster. To make the synchronization easier for the orchestra, he filmed a moving ball in an usually unseen lower right hand corner of the screen to show where the beats went. This time, the synchronization worked perfectly.
Unable to find a distributor, Disney turned to Harry Reichenbach. Reichenbach was a flamboyant personality who gained notoriety when he took a somewhat kitschy painting called "September Morn" and turned it into a scandal of international proportions. Reichenbach advised Disney that he needed a good track record to interest the distributors into taking "Steamboat Willie". He also convinced Disney to forget about a distributorship until the public and the critics got a chance to see the new short. Reichenbach then got in touch with the manager of the Colony Theater in New York, a figure more legendary than he was; S. I. "Roxy" Rothefel. Upon Reichenbach's recommendation, "Steamboat Willie" was booked in the Colony for a two week run beginning November 18th. He paid Disney $500 a week for a two weeks showing; an unheard of price for an animated film at that time. It opened on November 18, 1928, playing ahead of the movie "Gang War," a standard crime drama starring Mabel Albertson. But it was "Steamboat Willie" that people left the theater talking about.
Gallery
Click on the thumbnail for the full-sized picture
Comments
From what I remember, the short starts out with Mickey driving a boat. He must have been horsing around, because Peet comes up and yells at him. Somehow, Mickey picks up Minnie's cow and puts it on the boat. Minnie runs on the boat, so that she may retrieve her cow. Then, Mickey and Minnie begin playing Turkey In The Straw on all the animals.
This short rocks! It is completely awesome! Watch it!
I rather dislike that the Disney Company's "official" version of the cartoon - one released on laserdisc and video and shown on the Disney Channel - is censored. The scene missing is as follows: Mickey, after pulling on piglet tails while they're suckling and making them squeal to the "Turkey in the Straw" tune, is then shown in the censored scene when he shakes the piglets off their mom and kicks one remaining piglet off. He then plays the sow's teats like accordion buttons to the tune.
I didn't realize for years that the censored version I had always seen was not complete.
There was one gag planned, but never animated. After loading the cow onto the boat, Mickey was to load the sow. You were to see the sow behind a crate as Mickey hooked on the belt. The sow would then be shown being lifted up, with her (previously unseen) piglets hanging on to her teats for dear life. That would have been a fun sight gag, but my research indicates that the scene was never animated.
Animation was part of the world of film since at least 1909. In that year Winsor McCay performed in vaudeville theaters with "Gertie, the Trained Dinosaur". The show was a sensation as the animated dinosaur appeared to respond to McCay's commands. The next year cartoons began to appear that told a story such as "Colonel Heeza Liar" which was the first cartoon series.The first great animation innovator appeared in 1917, when Max Fleischer introduced his "Out of the Inkwell" series. Fleischer's "Koko the Clown" character interacted with Fleischer in live action. Of course, all animation at this point was silent, and required accompiament by a piano or organ when shown in a theater. Without sound the animated characters tended to just be material for gags, and lacked personality.
Throughout the twenties Winkler Productions controlled the most popular cartoons which included "Felix the Cat" and the "Out of the Inkwell" series. Winkler also controlled the modestly successful "Alice Comedies", and later the somewhat more successful "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" series. These were both productions from Walt Disney Comics. Oswald, in fact, looks a lot like a certain famous mouse.
Felix was the only popular cartoon of this period, and even he was considered a filler before a movie, not a real character. This would all change in 1928. Winkler decided to squeeze Disney out of the production of the "Oswald" cartoons by cutting his payments and stealing his animators. Disney had to come up with something different. Which he did, resulting in the birth of Mickey Mouse. However, the first Mickey short "Plane Crazy" was a failure. This short was silent and very much like an "Oswald" short. Why buy an imitation Oswald when you could have the real thing? Disney had to come up with something else fast.
Max Fleischer had experimented with and released seven animated shorts with some sound effects. These shorts had not generated much interest and were quickly forgotten. (Fleischer went on to be the first animator to experiment with color, and to compete with Disney during the 1930's and 1940's. The most famous of his cartoon series include "Popeye the Sailor Man", "Betty Boop", and "Superman".) Disney may have seen the Fleischer cartoons, or he may have come up with the idea for a cartoon with sound on his own. Whatever happened Disney was the first to try a complete cartoon with synchronized sound. The gimmick worked, and people thronged to see "Steamboat Willie".
Mickey quickly became a phenomenon. However, I believe this isn't just because he was the first cartoon with sound. I think it is because Mickey had a personality. Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney had created an everyman, or a reflection of their culture. In 1928 this meant he was a wild, musical, scamp; willing to try anything. As the culture changed so did Mickey, and he remained a culture touchstone until at least the middle of the nest decade.
Overall, one of the most important Disney cartoons, and more importantly, one of the best!
The gags were great for such an early short and set the pace for future Mickey's.
Nevertheless, Steamboat Willie still is a great cartoon, and a lot of fun to watch. It's still rooted in the silent era, because lip synchronization had not been developed yet, making the characters' vocabulary rather limited. And it still uses a comic strip-like visual language to express the characters' feelings. Yet, the musical number is both fresh and catching. When you've seen Steamboat Willie, you'll be whistling 'Turkey in the Straw' for days, with a smile on your face.
Referenced Comments
| I have seen "Steamboat Willie" and would like to submit a comment on this short |