Mickey's a Hit

So much has been written about Steamboat Willie that I am loath to say much about it on this blog. Mind you, I said that the last time I briefly posted in 2018 about its debut.

However, I came across a 1928 clipping from Kansas City where, I’m sure you know, Disney and a slew of people involved in animation came from. It’s about a showing at the Madrid Theatre at 38th and Main.

Ads for the Madrid in the Kansas City Star for the week ending Saturday, December 1 don’t mention any cartoon at all (with the exception of a Fable shown on the Monday). The newspaper did publish an article about it on December 2. The name of the cartoon isn’t given, so I can only guess it is Steamboat Willie. The story is not bylined.

A Madrid theater audience last week was entertained with a well-appreciated although unadvertised short subject from the Walter Disney studios. It was an animated and synchronized cartoon, “Mickey Mouse,” and marked the entrance of three Kansas City men—Mr. Disney, Carl W. Stalling and H. O. Wheeler—into the synchronized animated cartoon field.
Synchronization of such a subject differs from that of a legitimate movie. All the cartoons must be drawn and photographed, the score written, and then the accompanying music played by an orchestra and recorded. In the case of “Mickey Mouse,” the picture was made in Hollywood and the music recorded in New York. The score was written by Mr. Stalling, who also directed the orchestra. Mr. Wheeler assisted in the arrangement of the music.
Trade papers have given the Disney synchronized cartoons most flattering reviews. The Disney studios are synchronizing on the Powers Cinephone, but the records are made on both film and record and are interchangeable with Phototone, Movietone and Vitaphone.

If I have to explain who Carl Stalling is, you are reading the wrong blog. Henry O. (Harry) Wheeler died in Kansas City in 1940. He was a music teacher and band leader there for decades and, at one time, the arranger for the Newman Theatre Orchestra, the theatre where Disney drew the animated Laugh-O-Grams before going west.

Considering the torrents of publicity Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney and his studio have flooded the public with over the generations, it’s surprising to see very little talk about them in the studio’s early months. Unfortunately, newspapers then didn’t always list the cartoons they were showing. And some haven’t been scanned well to show the correct text on-line.

The Mark Strand Theatre at Fulton and Rockwell in Brooklyn (“The House of Talkies”) showed Mickey Mouse cartoons toward the end of 1928 and into 1929. Newspaper theatre stories conflict but it would seem Steamboat Willie played a week starting on December 29, 1928, with The Gallopin' Gaucho appearing on screens beginning January 12, 1929.

There are some reviews. Willie was advertised with the Warners all-talking On Trial starting January 13, 1929 at the Fabian (“The House of Sound Talking Pictures”) in Paterson, New Jersey. The Morning Call of January 18 had this to say:

One of the latest novelties that has been produced with sound accompaniment is a Walt Disney cartoon, making this individual subject the most popular subject on the program. It is the first time since the sound motion pictures have been at the Fabian that great applause has greeted any one subject.

The Wilmington, Delaware Every Evening of January 29, 1929 simply said “Sound has been added to comedy cartoons and in ‘Steamboat Willie’ now at the Aldine, there are many original laughs.”

The Buffalo Times of Feb. 4, 1929 announced it was being shown with the H.B. Warner-Louise Fazenda “100% Talking Picture” at the Great Lakes Theatre (another Warners house). Its review:

One of the outstanding features on the bill is a cartoon, “Mickey Mouse,” in sound. The ink comedies that always drew laughs before the advent of sound pictures, now throw the audiences into a paroxysm of mirth with such incidents as a mouse “razzing” a cat, and a goat who swallowed a sheet of music, singing “Turkey in the Straw.” It is as entertaining as it is unique.

With favourable comments like these and theatres in early 1929, perhaps reluctantly, realising sound pictures were here to stay, is it any wonder that the Fleischers started production on the Screen Songs, both Oswald the rabbit (Lantz, sound was announced in Exhibitors Daily Review on Nov. 19, 1928) and Krazy Kat (Mintz) began making noise, and Van Beuren added music and effects to the Aesop’s Fables in May (against the wishes of Paul Terry, who was fired).

Recently, Steamboat Willie itself has taken a back seat to all the chatter about going into the public domain, but it’s not only a significant cartoon in the history of animation, I think it’s still a fun one.