Falsetto Frolics

Ever wonder how Mickey got his high voice? The answer may be in eight consecutive drawings from “Plane Crazy.”



Mickey doesn’t actually cry in pain during this part of the picture. Music and sound effects pretty much tell the story.

Fishy Bubbles

Another Disney camera pull-back opens the Silly Symphony Frolicking Fish (1930). The purpose of the cartoon seems to have been to impress people with how many bubbles could be animated. They’re all over the place in this cartoon. The camera finally reveals the bubbles are coming from a happy fish, who eventually turns and swims out of the cartoon.



Disneyshort.org says ten animators worked on this. With all those bubbles, it’s no wonder.

Fun With Fireflies

The first few years of the Silly Symphonies really did feature silliness. That was the whole point of them. None of that “illusion of life” stuff.

Here’s a good example from “Night” (released April 1930). Fireflies are dancing to the immortal song “Glow Worm.” They’re twanging their necks like jew’s harps.



Their heads get cut off and leap into the air.



The heads land upside down on the other’s body. No matter. They bounce back onto their proper bodies.



The glow worms ballet jump off stage, leaving their shoes behind.



The shoes leap up, blink their holes like eyes, and then tap their way off stage. End of song.



I’ll take the fun Disney over the am-I-impressing-you-with-this-old-mill-cartoon Disney any day.

The Disney Strike, 1925

“Alice’s Egg Plant” (1925) is interesting to watch with the hindsight of knowing the Walt Disney cartoon studio would be hit with a strike years later and Disney would blame it on Communists. That’s exactly what happens in this silent cartoon.

Here’s the dreaded Ruskie rooster planting a suitcase bomb under a railway track. I suppose that’s to set up his evilness because the cartoon never follows up on this as part of the plot. I guess the “A” that forms in his eyes stands for “Anarchist.”



Or maybe it stands for “Art Babbitt,” inciting a strike amongst the animators.



Rooster against rooster foreshadows animator against animator perhaps.



There are no animation credits on this short.

Night Owls

Bullrushes sway to the “Moonlight Sonata” to open Walt Disney’s “Night” (1930), then are joined by waves on a lake and a la-la-la-ing moon (in falsetto) as the song changes to “The Blue Danube.”

The scene switches to a pair of owls in a typical gag of the era. The male and female owls dance together, but the female draws the line at kissing. You can see what happens next. I’ve never tried to count the Disney and Harman-Ising cartoons where a character flips up a rump in contempt.



Disneyshorts.org reports seven animators worked on this.

Name That Circle

A black screen slowly becomes a black circle with white around it. What is it? The circle pulls back some more.



Just another pull-back opening for a Walt Disney cartoon. This is from “Mickey’s Choo-Choo” (1929).

Egyptian Melodies and Butts

What’s with Walt Disney and his butt violation jokes, anyway? I swear every single early Disney cartoon has someone getting shot, stabbed or whacked in the rear end, or characters shoving their tushes together (in 1931’s “Busy Beavers,” the title characters clunk their tales together).

Here are some examples from “Egyptian Melodies” (1931).



Despite this, the real point of the cartoon seems to have been an exercise in perspective (especially from about 1:14 to 2:00) and montage (toward the end). As you might expect, there’s no plot. Just a lot of dancing and butt piercing. Oh, and a hand-on-hip fey character.

Cavorting Cannibals

Swaying palm trees turn out to be anything but in the 1930 Walt Disney cartoon “Cannibal Capers.”



The “trunks” of the trees shrink down to real they’re actually legs of some African jungle dwellers.





The background drawing now drops into place.



Synchronisation to music was still novel enough in 1930 to base plot-less cartoons around it. These are a couple of extremes of the Africans engaging in their opening dance.

Disneyshorts.org reveals Burt Gillett directed this cartoon.