Release Date July 14, 1934

Running Time 9:17

Synopsis

A small mouse saves a butterfly from a spider's web. The butterfly turns out to be a fairy who gives the mouse one wish : to be able to fly. But his wish turns out to be not quite what he bargained for.

Characters

The Flying Mouse

The Flying Mouse's Mother

Credits

Director : Dave Hand

Animation

Bob Kuwahara

Bob Wickersham

Fred Moore

Jack Bailey

Videos

United States

Cartoon Classics : Limited Gold Editions : Silly Symphonies

Italy

Paperino e la Sua Banda di Paperi

C'era Una Volta un Topo

Television

The Ink and Paint Club : #23 : The "Other" Mice

The Ink and Paint Club : #53 : Silly Symphonies at the Zoo

Laserdiscs

Japan

Once Upon a Mouse

DVD

Region 1 : United States

Dumbo

Disney Treasures : Silly Symphonies

Dumbo (Big Top Edition)

Region 2 : Italy

Dumbo

Technical Specifications

Color Type : Technicolor

Animation type : Standard

Sound mix : Mono

Aspect ration : 1.37 : 1

Negative format : 35mm

Print format : 35mm

Cinematographic process : Spherical

Original language : English

Released by United Artists Pictures

Comments

A Silly Symphony.

From Johann Weiss : I don't know about you, but bats and mice both make me a little nervous.

From Jerry Edwards : Well done, interesting cartoon - but not among my favoites. Contains the song "You're Nothin' But A Nothin'" which was released on sheet music. The main reason this isn't among my favorites is the way I perceive the "hidden philosophy." The cartoon is telling me that you shouldn't strive for something you badly want. Also don't do a good deed, you'll be punished for it. Why should this poor mouse get nothing but grief as a result of wanting to fly and saving a fairy's life. She could just as easily given him butterfly wings or bird wings. I just don't like the attitude of this short - as I perceive it.

From Ryan : I didn't care too much for this short. I kind of felt sorry for the poor mouse when he gets his wings so that he can fly, but it doesn't turn out to be what he wanted. He gets teased by some bats and his own family mistakes him for a bat and dashes into their pumpkin house. The fairy in this short looked a lot like the Blue Fairy from "Pinnocchio."

From Super Secret Mario : I liked this short. The moral of it is to be yourself and not something you are not.

From Steve Taylor : Another way of looking at the moral for this short is "don't bother trying to improve yourself or be something unique, since other people won't like it." He had WINGS, for crying out loud!

From Jim and Joyce Quitter : We are an old couple in our 80's and can barely remember this cartoon. We had some help in finding the exact cartoon when we could not remember the source of the song "You're Nothing but a Nothing." We had gone around the house humming the tune and singing some of the words that we remembered. It was driving us crazy. None of our acquaintenances could help. We inquired from ASCAP and a really nice guy was good enough to direct us to this web site. Still haven't found the lyrics, but we're a lot wiser than we were before. Two old people made happy.

From Ilene : I saw this cartoon on the Wide World of Disney as a 4/5 year-old child, in 1961 or '62, and it has haunted me most of my life. He just wanted to fly, and really, what child didn't. But that song, "You're nuthin', you're nuthin', you're nuthin' but a nuthin', you're not a thing at all!" was horrific to my 4/5 year-old mind. Of course he was something! Anyone could see he was  something ... Anyway, that song lodged in my brain, erupting whenever I felt insecure about some new thing I was doing. I guess the moral of the story was supposed to be "be content with who you are--don't try to be something you're not," but I felt like the moral of the story was rather "Know your place. Don't strive for your dreams--you'll never fit in anyway."

From Gijs Grob : A musical cartoon about a little mouse who wants to fly like the birds. A blue fairy grants him that wish, giving him bat-like wings, but he soon discovers that these don't bring him any luck: he is not allowed to join the xenophobic birds, not recognized by his relatives and called "a nothing" by a group of crooked bats. Luckily, the same fairy releases him from his wings and in the end we see our little hero running to his mother in the sunset light. This cartoon is one of many silly symphonies that seem to aim directly at kids and that are rather moralistic. This seems to be a strong trend in 1934 and it gradually led Disney away from brashy humour towards sugary goody-goodiness. This cartoon is quite humourless, yet beautifully drawn. The blue fairy is a good try at the human figure (if not near Snow White, let alone the blue fairy in Pinocchio) and the mice are drawn much more realistically than Mickey. Moreover, "The Flying Mouse" is another stunning example of character animation: our main hero acts out his feelings mostly in pantomime. We can feel his joy, his embarassment, his fear and his grief.

(The following is excerpted from an interview with Dave Hand posted on Michael Barrier.com and is reprinted here with the authors permission.)

Once there was one idea I just thought was rather terrible, and I said so, and Walt fought me, and he got mad at me; and he could be rather unreasonable, at times. Of course, he was the boss, but he usually was very understanding. But not this time. So I took the idea—I didn’t want to—and went into the director’s room with it. Some time later, Walt came in and I said, "Walt, I still don’t like it." He said, "Oh, it’s a good one, Dave, you do it. Do it just the way we told it to you." So I did; believe me, I did. I worked hard to sell it to the animator, and he didn’t help. They’d just sit there and [say] "Yeah, yeah." Sometimes they wouldn’t know whether it was good or bad. The scene came out on the screen—we always had our previews, sneak previews—and the darned gag fell flat as a pancake. The next day—there was always a postmortem—I said, "Walt, I didn’t ever think that gag was any good." He said, "Jeez, Dave, you just didn’t do it right." So I mumbled to myself and thought, "You can’t win with Walt."

[The episode in question involved a scene in The Flying Mouse (1934). Hand described what happened in a letter to me in May 1975: "The mouse was being blown backward through the air, out of control. He was a sympathetic character in a sad plight. The ‘laugh’ gag was that his rear end would make a ‘bull’s eye’ into a large thorn sticking out of a rosebush stem. Now, for me, the idea itself was not funny—especially happening to a pathetic little flying mouse. But I had been previously overruled in story, so when the picture got to me, I decided to play the impaling idea down as much as possible. However, Walt caught up with me when I was getting it ready for the animator. We had more argument, and I lost. Walt insisted that I make the thorn long, dark, and sharp—and that the mouse’s rear end get buried clear up to the hilt. And further to this, that I have the music build up to a ‘screech’ accent. That poor mouse! The audience did not laugh at it, but it was one of the many instances where I found Walt to be surprisingly sadistic. He seemed to enjoy ‘hurt’ gags more than a lot of people."]

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