Here's Steam Boat Willie itself, I advise watching it after reading what is below...
Earlier this month Disney historian Jim Korkis came to the Walt Disney Family Museum to give a few lectures. One of them was specifically for volunteers and staff members about Steamboat Willie so I was able to attend. Steamboat Willie is an important part of Disney history because it was Walt's first major success starring his most popular character Mickey Mouse. While the short film was made with technology much different to what we use for video now I thought it would be interesting to discuss for this class because it shows how far we have come in less than 100 years. The black and white cartoon was released on November 18, 1928 and was the opening to the movie Gang War. It was reported by Jim that the Mickey short actually made A LOT more press than the gangster movie itself, most critics completely ignored the feature film.
Jim's blog states: Variety declared "Steamboat Willie" was “a high order of cartoon ingenuity” and “a peach of a synchronization job all the way.” The New York Times said "Steamboat Willie" was "an ingenious piece of work with a good deal of fun. It growls, whines, squeaks and makes various other sounds that add to its mirthful quality."
Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon to successfully combine sound effects, voice, and music into an animated story with a beloved character still cherished to this day. Walt always held this cartoon close to his heart and Disney Archivist, Dave Smith stated that when Walt died they found six original drawings from Steamboat Willie still in the bottom drawer of his desk at work.
Lots of people wonder why this cartoon received the title it did. It got its name from a movie released earlier that year called Steamboat Bill Jr. There was no point in changing the "Bill" to "Mickey" because no one really knew who Mickey Mouse was yet... Hard to imagine a time when no one was familiar with that name!! Steamboat Bill was also the name of the song whistled by Mickey in the short. The lyrics to the song went like this:
“Steamboat Bill, steaming down the Mississippi.
Steamboat Bill, a mighty man was he.
Steamboat Bill, steaming down the Mississippi.
Out to break the record of the Robert E. Lee.”At the time Walt and his crew thought the song was in public domain, but turns out it wasn't when they used it. An issue us artists still need to worry about today.
Most of the film was drawn by Ub Iwerks who was known for creating hundreds of drawings a day for Walt early in their careers. Unlike the two other Mickey Mouse cartoons realeased at this time Ub had a bit of help for this one from Wilfred Jackson and Les Clark.
If you watch the animated short all the way through you will notice that there are several instances where objects disappear when they weren't necessary and reappear again when they are. These include the rope chord Mickey uses for the boats whistles, the goat's goatee, and some of the instruments around Mickey while he swings the cat in the "Turkey and the Straw" sequence. This happens because there were so many different frames animators had to repeat over and over. If something wasn't important might as well not waste their time drawing it, or some small details just got overlooked in the rush of producing the cartoon. Some of the gags were recycled from Walt's old Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts. Another fun fact is that Walt played the voice of the parrot who teases Mickey throughout the short. By the end of creating Steamboat Willie it ended up costing Walt $4,986.69.
I thoroughly enjoyed Jim's talk, he has endless amounts of knowledge on subjects I love most. He has written several books on Disney films and theme parks. His first one being The Vault of Walt published in 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment