Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 10: Mickey's Follies

Mickey's Follies is comprised of a vaudeville-type revue being held in a ramshackle barnyard. Mickey cedes the screen to his opening acts for the short's first half. These performers include a quacking quintet of dancing ducks and an operatic, offkey pig, who is booed off the stage by the raucous crowd. The strangest and therefore most interesting section comes from a hen and rooster who throttle one another in a slapstick routine. After smacking and choking one another to the delight of the spectators, the hen pauses the shenanigans and mumbles something to the rooster before scuttling offstage. It looks as though the hen has excused herself to relieve herself and in a way she has. We see her climb atop a wooden box where she stresses and strains to expel an egg. As the egg tumbles down a series of pipes before landing in a pan for the audience to see and cheer, the rooster appears, puffing out his chest, another proud father. Despite their strange shenanigans, none of these performers have the panache of the follies' titular star.

Unfortunately for the film's sake, once Mickey does take over it is in the worst way possible, performing a hackneyed musical number in a completely uncharacteristic voice that is introduced boldly as Mickey's Theme Song. The song, officially entitled "Minnie Yoo Hoo", is the first original song written for a Disney production. "When You Wish Upon a Star" it is not. The song does fit its ramshackle performance but it does not leave much of an impression. It is a generic pop song of the day with Mickey Mouse talking of his "sweetie in the hen house". Before we start to think that perhaps the proud rooster may not in fact have paternal rights to the recently revealed egg, the camera cuts to Minnie in the audience, waving to her grinning, gesticulating beau.

Mickey hams his way through the tune and we get one more crowd shot which concludes with two cats falling through the roof an outhouse upon an unsuspecting pig. This would not be the last time that Mickey, the ostensible star of his shorts, stepped aside for the performances of other cartoon creations. These cameos would allow the studio to work with other designs and test out new ideas for future films. While some characters stuck around, none would come close to claiming the spotlight of the studio's flagship creation. That is, not until 1934 when another dancing duck, this one cursed with one heck of a temper, demanded to be seen.

Viewing Verdict: Avoidable

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 9: Mickey's Choo-Choo

The best moment of Mickey's Choo-Choo comes at the very beginning. We see a train chugging along down the track, happily making its own percussive soundtrack as it goes. Like the monkey drummer in The Karnival Kid, the music the locomotive generates is surprisingly contemporary. It calls to mind the rhythm bed that makes up German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk's landmark "Trans-Europe Express". The rest of the short is comprised of Mickey and Minnie making music once again with whatever objects they find before they are trapped on a calamitous runaway train car.

A lot of the gags here are recycled from previous shorts. Mickey plays the belly of a howling dog in the same gleeful, slightly sadistic fashion that he did the menagerie of Steamboat Willie. Later he checks his watch which is fastened underneath his skin, requiring him to "roll up his sleeve" in a fashion similar to the many casual mutilations of The Karnival Kid. A fantastic piece of animation in Mickey's Choo-Choo comes when the anthropomorphised locomotive slowly starts moving down the track. The animation clearly recalls the movements of a figure skater on the rink, pushing one foot back while leaning forward.

Running cow - Plane Crazy

Running cow - Mickey's Choo-Choo

Mickey's Choo-Choo is the first short to blatantly recycle animation from a previous film. This is not entirely unexpected considering the insane work schedule the small studio was undertaking. In 1929 alone Walt Disney released a dozen films. Keeping up with that work load must have been daunting. In Mickey's Choo-Choo we see a return of the beleagured bovine that previously attempted escape from Mickey and Minnie's wayward airplane in Plane Crazy. Here the cowering cow is besieged by the runaway train. The vehicle may be different but the motion and facial expressions are the same.

Viewing Verdict: Avoidable

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 8: The Karnival Kid

The Karnival Kid sees Mickey slinging hot dogs at a ramshackle fairground. He incurs the ire of a carnival barker whose showmanship is questioned by Mickey's unconsciously competitive and much more honest shouts. Mickey ends up moving his food cart elsewhere and he meets Minnie. The couple then play meet cute over a grill of living, dancing weiners. The short is slim on plot, almost entirely devoid of humor and unpleasant to listen to. The caterwauling that constitutes the two musical numbers is intentional but that does not make them any easier to stomach.

For the most part, The Karnival Kid is just plain weird. The aforementioned spotlight showered upon living hot dogs aside, a strange recurring gag throughout the short involves characters removing parts of their bodies or pulling back their skin. The first one to do it is Mickey, ever the gentlemen, who in lieu of tipping his cap to Minnie pulls off his ears along with the upper part of his cranium in deference to her. We even get a glimpse of the hollow hole inside his head. Shortly thereafter Minnie peels back her leg to retrieve money to purchase a hot dog. The gag is surreal and surprisingly disconcerting but the short doubles down and we get at least four such instances of casual mutilation, each version less effective than the last.

One promising element of the short is its inclusion of a larger character population. Earlier shorts, especially the last few, have seen mostly clones of Mickey and Pete as the tertiary characters. Here, the fairgoers represent the most diverse menagerie we have seen thus far. Of course, cats and mice still take center stage but we get glimpses of a monkey musician (whose beats sound surprisingly contemporary), as well as pigs, cows, and other barnyard animals. These characters have yet to be more fully integrated into the plots but their background appearances make the film's world feel that much larger and is a sign that the productions going forward will be richer.

Viewing Verdict: Avoidable

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 7: The Barnyard Battle

War is hell. It is chaotic, ugly, and dehumanizing. Rare is the film that manages to outweigh the death and destruction with the virtuous and noble. Certainly there are heroes but they too are forced to commit atrocities. The fifth Mickey Mouse short of 1929, The Barnyard Battle brings several iterations of war home, pitting a ragtag group of neighborhood mice against the hulking, vicious felines that stalk the land. The short depicts a sort of cinematic fever dream of war, incorporating imagery of the First World War - the trenches and inexhaustible barrage of bullets - as well as harkening back to the primitive reality of the Civil War, with a marching band playing "Dixie".

The film begins with enlistment and we see Mickey going through a demeaning physical, where he is stripped naked and his insides are throroughly examined by a sadistic superior. Deeming the recruit fit for death on the battlefield, the physician brands the cadet with a stamp on his buttocks. OK. Once the war begins, we get several wonderful shots of angled perspective, the two best being the introduction of the ugly, monstrous cats who stalk into the frame before swallowing it whole, and then the shot from the battlefield as bullets and cannonballs fly hither and thither, exploding directly in front of the camera, showering the screen with exploding boulders. The short once again showcases Disney's inherent grasp of music. At the onset, a bugler playing reveille strains so hard for the high notes that he loses weight. Later, holed up in a house with a submachine gun, Mickey runs out of ammo and must resort to using the keys of a nearby piano, which when fired plays a descending scale as the ivory flies out the window.

While The Barnyard Battle is short on plot, it crams a lot of scenes and gags into its seven minutes. The short feels much faster paced than those that preceded it. However, the best cinematic moment of the film is when the proceedings actually slow down. Pete has trapped Mickey in the house. Fearing for his life, Mickey finds salvation when he grabs a shotgun from a nearby wall. Unfortunately, the gun is nothing more than a toy, which Mickey learns only after pulling the trigger. Here the film slows down to a glacial pace as Pete towers over Mickey, fuming and preparing for revenge. Mickey meanwhile tries to play off the fact that he just tried to murder Pete. Whistling a tune, chuckling to himself and walking around in circles. The scene drags on well past the point of credulity - certainly Pete would have assaulted Mickey by this point - and turns into a sort mini-burlesque, with Mickey the hapless performer and Pete a captive audience.

Viewing Verdict: Worthwhile

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 6: When the Cat's Away

The design of Mickey Mouse is truly a wonder. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a short like When the Cat's Away which sees Mickey interacting with a number of other mice. To differentiate the secondary mice from the star their design is slightly more angular in the face and that makes all of the difference. These peripheral mice look like rodents while Mickey and Minnie on the other hand remain as cuddly as ever. In this minor but pleasant short, the mice have broken into the home of one Tom Cat who has drunkenly gone off with his shotgun for the day in a tantalizingly unanswered side story. Shaping a colleague into a key, Mickey unlocks the padlock and the mice run rampant in the house.

Tom must be some sort of musical virtuoso because he possesses a piano, violin and saxophone, as well as a robust record collection. The short plays out with the mice finding clever ways to play the instruments and culminates in one mouse twisting himself into a makeshift record player while another uses his tail and a funnel to amplify the sound. The best part of the short is Disney and Iwerks's attention to getting the musical bits synched correctly. Whether it is Minnie and Mickey dueting on the piano keys or a when a piece of swiss cheese is used as a roll of music in the player piano, the actions and presumably the notes are right. This difficult and subtle effect makes the short much more engaging. Another great thing about the film is that Mickey and Minnie are the correct proportions for their species. When they pop out of a hole on Tom's porch they are tiny little creatures. This small size adds to the charm of the early versions of the mischievous mouse. He remains endearing because he is so plucky. One would never mistake this David for a Goliath.

Mickey gets some decent moments here, the best being when he stretches his tail to avert a mouse trap which he eventually uses to bound up to a high shelf to retrieve the soon-to-be-musical cheese. (It's also a clever gag that the depiction of a mouse acquiring cheese does not result in the cheese being eaten.) However, the best moment in the short comes from one of the secondary mice. After Mickey and Minnie play their piano piece, the film cuts to a group of mice applauding enthusiastically, save for one, who for some reason is displeased with the performance. He stands defiantly in the front and interrupts the cheering with a loud raspberry, which he repeats offscreen as Mickey and Minnie plan their next number. This little guy is onscreen for perhaps five seconds and he steals the show!

Viewing Verdict: Worthwhile

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 5: The Opry House

The Opry House is a simple delight released in 1929. The plot sees Mickey and Minnie working and performing at a local vaudeville show. The short opens with Mickey out front of the performance hall, sweeping the entryway. Here he gets into some very Chaplin-esque pantomine with his broom, which in his hands becomes a rifle, a flute (playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy"), a dancing partner, and a horse. Disney and Iwerks exhaust nearly every conceivable role the broom can play in a brief, fluid sequence. The following gag that sees Mickey attempting to push a very rotund patron through the front door does not maintain the wit or invention of the broom bit.

The short is still a little too enamored with its integration of sound, an understandable flaw considering its vintage, but the gags incorporated just to highlight the soundtrack slow the proceedings down a bit. A sequence showing the house orchestra playing on their raggedy equipment falls back on gags similar to those performed with more gusto in Steamboat Willie the year before. A drummer pounds away on his instrument, then pulls the tails of three cats to punctuate the tune. The saving grace of the bit is how perfectly ramshackle the band sounds playing their tune.

However, there are a number of bits that utilize the soundtrack that are also great visual gags in and of themselves. This marriage is where the potential of the Mickey shorts comes into focus. For example, there is an absolutely splendid piece that closes out the short, showing Mickey playing an animated piano. The two performers, musician and instrument (along with a third, a dancing piano stool) parry with one another, Mickey ultimately resorting to fisticuffs with the keys to play his composition. The three then end their performance by taking a bow, showing that their antagonism was just part of the act. It is a wonderful piece of animation and visual humor.

Viewing Verdict: Worthwhile

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 4: Plane Crazy

In terms of production, Plane Crazy was truly the debut of Mickey Mouse. While the film was not released until after Steamboat Willie's success and a post-production soundtrack was added, the antics and actions contained within are the first ever created for the world famous mouse. It is surprising to note that Plane Crazy was produced just a few short months before The Gallopin' Gaucho and Steamboat Willie. The short feels much more primitive than the two films released in 1928. Mickey as a character is almost completely undefined here, he is just a cipher for the pratfalls and mishaps that transpire. Ever savvy, Walt Disney was well aware of the short's faults and shelved it until the character was more established and he could use it more as a crowd-satiating stop-gap between current productions.

The short sees Mickey inspired by the exploits of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. With varying degrees of success he attempts to fly a plane of his own. His first vehicle fails to launch and while the second becomes airborne, it ultimately crashes. There are nary any gags to speak of in the short, the closest we get is Mickey mussing up his hair to look like Lucky Lindy and Minnie uses her bloomers as a parachute. The one saving grace visually comes from three point-of-view shots framed from inside the plane, the first as it chases down a cow, the second as it bounces between light poles, and the third as it crashes down to earth. Ub Iwerks's delightful sense of perspective is given brief opportunities to shine here.

All in all, Plane Crazy is a directionless short without much merit. The characters never connect, there is very little humor and most of the animation is rote and uninspired. Humble beginnings to be sure. While Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney would go on to worldwide fame and success, their first production does little to hint at the creative and commercial potential that lay ahead. It never really gets off the ground.

Viewing Verdict: Avoidable

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 3: The Barn Dance

The Barn Dance was the first short produced after Steamboat Willie, meaning it was the second film to be produced with a synchronized soundtrack. This is evident from the short's subject matter which is mostly set at the titular party, featuring a trio of barnyard animals playing a hootenanny version of "Pop Goes the Weasel". Unfortunately, the film does little more with its soundtrack besides an extended bit of Pete and Mickey vying for Minnie's attention by honking on their vehicle's respective horns, (Mickey's is a borrowed duck).

Minnie comes off quite poorly in the short, her character bouncing between her two suitors at the very moment one of their prospects change. At first, she gladly climbs aboard Pete's flashy automobile, a more distinctive ride than Mickey's horse-driven cart, but as soon as the car breaks down she jumps ship for Mickey's affections. Arriving at the barn she first dances with Mickey until he proves he has no moves by stepping not only on her feet but also her elastic legs. She then waltzes with Pete until Mickey concocts a scheme to give himself a lighter stride by inserting a helium balloon in his shorts.

This bit of animation with a gracefully floating Mickey is easily the highlight of the film. The action is composed perfectly, with the mouse's slow aerial arcs providing a dreamlike quality to the scene. His subsequent deflation courtesy of a nail thrown by Pete comes with shock as the character is instantly suffused again with horrible gravity, plummeting crushingly to the floor, where he weeps as his girl leaves with the other man. Unfortunately this final sequence is the only truly successful section of an otherwise forgettable film.

Viewing Verdict: Avoidable

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 2: The Gallopin' Gaucho

The Gallopin' Gaucho was the second short produced by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks after Plane Crazy and the second film released after the blockbuster Steamboat Willie. The short was originally silent, music and sound effects were only added after Willie's phenomenal reception. This post-production work is readily apparent as the music throughout The Gallopin' Gaucho is more generic than Steamboat Willie's hit parade jamboree. Also, every time a character makes a sound, for example, when Mickey whistles or laughs, we not only get the sound of it but onscreen visual cues such as musical notes and the word "ha-ha". This lack of synchronicity hinders Gaucho, but it is still a fun production. Like Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin' Gaucho is a loose parody, this time of the Douglas Fairbanks film The Gaucho released the year before, in 1927. The short's plot sees Mickey ride up to an Argentinian cantina on an ostrich to smoke, have a beer and watch Minnie dance. However, the sultry chanteuse is soon abducted by the villainous Pete and Mickey sets off to save her.

The greatest bit of character animation in the film comes when Mickey leaves the cantina to chase Pete down. He calls for his ostrich who comes out of the bar drunk as a skunk. Iwerks's depiction of the tottering, giddy bird trying to keep it together is an absolute delight. Meanwhile, the film possesses quite a number of great gags. When Mickey arrives at the cantina, he climbs in through a high window, where he remains perched to watch the show. He takes off his shoe to roll a cigarillo with his foot and his shoe just hangs there in mid-air, an early version of the classic cartoon depiction of gravity defiance. Later, when Mickey arrives at Pete's three-storey hideout, he stretches his tail and uses it as a rope to pull himself upstairs. To do this he brandishes a wind-up key that he inserts into his belly to reel himself in. But the best bit comes at the end, as Mickey and a rescued Minnie ride off together on the bouncing ostrich. They try and kiss one another but the bird's movement thwarts their amorous attempts, so they both twist their tails into springs to cushion the bumping and allow them to make-out. Adorable.

Overall, the animation in The Gallopin' Gaucho is more flat than in Steamboat Willie. The short does not change perspective or try and create a three-dimensional atmosphere. Characters move back and forth across the screen, never forward or backward, and the simple backgrounds remain almost entirely static. But there is a charm to this threadbare style, a ruggedness that works with the characters and this setting. It would be more distracting if the short took place say, in a bustling cityscape, but in a dusty, depopulated South American locale, the design works. Had The Gallopin' Gaucho been released first, the saga of Mickey Mouse may be very different today. It is a thin, ramshackle entertainment, but entertaining nonetheless.

Viewing Verdict: Worthwhile

Mickey Mouse Mondays: Week 1: Steamboat Willie

Few events in cinema history are as apocryphal as the release of Steamboat Willie, the first fully post-produced sound cartoon and an unqualified success for the young, newly independent creators Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney. Disney had recently lost control of his previous cartoon creation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to producer Charles Mintz. Upon returning home to California, Walt instructed Iwerks to develop a new character, perhaps one based on a mouse he had on his boyhood farm. After approving Iwerks' design, Walt wanted to name the new character Mortimer before his wife Lillian suggested Mickey.

Steamboat Willie would not in fact be the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. Both Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho were produced as silent shorts but their lackluster reception at test screenings left them on the shelf as Disney and Iwerks tinkered with an attempt to marry sound to animation. The young company, run with help from Walt's brother Roy, exhausted their coffers to produce the soundtracked cartoon, Walt even had to sell his car to finance the production. Luckily, Steamboat Willie was an immediate success and Mickey Mouse became an instant celebrity. Sound was quickly added to the two previous shorts which were then rushed to theatres to satiate demand.

The name and setting of Steamboat Willie is a parody of the great Buster Keaton feature Steamboat Bill, Jr. released earlier in 1928. The short opens with a diminutive mouse steering the ship down river and whistling the tune, "Steamboat Bill". Walt Disney himself provided the voice of Mickey Mouse, as well as every other character in the film, including Pete and Minnie. Current Walt Disney animated features use this introductory scene of the whistling Mickey as their logo, highlighting both the studio's most famous creation while subtly incorporating the company's creator. Pete, the ill-tempered captain of the ship catches Mickey at the wheel and boots him to the deck below. The boat then stops in port to pick up cargo, along with Minnie Mouse, and then turns into the setting of a manic musical. 

The funniest gag in the short comes when a goat eats up Minnie's ukulele and the sheet music for the ice cream truck staple, "Turkey in the Straw". A few stray musical notes fall out of the goat's mouth, tinkling their respective tones as they hit the deck. Minnie discovers the goat's bad behavior and she and Mickey turn the animal into a makeshift music box by wrenching open its mouth and winding its tail. The remainder of the film showcases Mickey jamming out to the song with any object he can find on deck. He starts with trash can percussion before moving on to pots and pans and then a series of evermore bizarre instruments, culminating in him playing the teats of a mother pig.

The design of Mickey Mouse has often been ascribed as the reason for his popularity. Psychologists and sociologists point to his rounded form as a subconsciously comforting creation and even here in his very first appearance, Mickey is absurdly adorable. What works best with the character in Steamboat Willie is that he is so small, not only in relation to the towering Pete, but even a cow that he is trying to bring onboard the vessel. Later in his existence, Mickey would grow in stature, in part to better work alongside characters like Donald Duck and Goofy, but here he truly feels like a little rodent. 

Meanwhile, the surrounding animation, all completed by Ub Iwerks, is a delight. Iwerks had a knack for injecting strong personality into even the most mundane objects, as evidenced early on by a family of steamboat whistles. Iwerks, with Disney's guidance, chooses some very interesting angles of perspective, the best being a view downriver as the boat chugs along with a chasing Minnie running beside onshore. These early shorts also have a tendency to use the confines of the film frame to its advantage by occasionally having a character lean forward, thus completely filling the image. Here, Mickey stretches the neck of goose who howls out the song and almost entirely engulfs the screen.

Steamboat Willie introduces the world to a mischievous, fun-loving, darling little mouse whose continuing exploits would charm generations of moviegoers. The short is the launch pad for one of the most successful, fertile imaginations in American history. Without Steamboat Willie there would be no Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (released less than a decade later!) or Disneyland. While there is no way to predict the future from this enjoyable, yet innocuous short, its strengths prove thoroughly tantalizing.  

Viewing Verdict: Essential 

Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse!

On this date eighty-four years ago, Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon premiered. As has become a custom here on UP, we celebrate a birthday by selfishly plugging an upcoming personal project. Read on!

Now that this year's Disney Daze project is winding down, one needs to look towards the future, which this time around means delving ever further into the past. Starting on Monday, 7 January and running until I am finally committed to the mental institution I have successfully evaded for the last three decades, I will be watching Disney's Mickey Mouse shorts in chronological order and writing about them here. For now I only have plans to tackle the 74 black-and-white shorts, all released between 1928 and 1935, which for those of you who can count will easily take me into 2014. The reasons for this are three-fold. One, that's a heck of a lot of shorts. Two, the earliest incarnations of Mickey are the ones that truly interest me, back when he was more of a rapscallion and less of a corporate cipher. Lastly, I only own the two-volume Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White sets. (If someone wants to spring for the two-volume In Living Color sets--Jim Carrey-free, I assure you--I will accept them with open arms.)

A couple of notes regarding these posts. Since a Mickey Mouse short has a tenth of the running time of the typical Disney feature, expect a tenth of the wit, a tenth of the ribald humor, and a tenth of the penetrating insight associated with the Disney Daze posts. And I'd say expect about a third of the word count. You're not getting off that easily! I will also be classifying each short under one of the following three headings: Essential, Worthwhile, Avoidable. This will help separate the wheat from the chaff for those who need pithy answers to life's big questions.

Oh boy!