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.