Happy 90th Birthday Mickey Mouse: Fun Facts about “Steamboat Willie”
This being the Mouse’s official “birth date”, I thought it would be good to share some of my research in regards to Mickey’s first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie.
This being the Mouse’s official “birth date”, I thought it would be good to share some of my research in regards to Mickey’s first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie.
Here’s the story of Mickey’s Surprise Party, the commercial short advertising Nabisco products, which was shown at the New York World’s Fair in 1939–40.
Tin Pan Alley–the establishment of the music industry at the time of Disney’s Cinderella–gave some of the songs from the score short shrift.
To understand why the Disney animation furniture is so revered, one has to look at Kem Weber’s earlier career and the design movements that influenced him.
Composed by Carl Stalling for the 1929 short Mickey’s Follies – “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo” was the Disney studio’s first original song.
The song–based upon an eighteenth-century English tune–was the biggest hit connected with a Disney production since “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” nearly two years previous.
The title song–a sweet and sentimental ditty–was the object of three singers, and their respective record companies.
Most are unaware that Walt Disney had the most optimal animation furniture designed for use at the new studio he was building in 1939.
This month will feature a series of profiles on different figures from the Golden Age of animation that merit further analysis. This week: Burt Gillett.
In the 1950s Walt Disney agreed to produce the Disneyland television series for ABC – and whenever Disney released a new film, he often arranged for an ABC-Paramount theatre to premiere it.