July 17, 1929 issue variety has a teaser for a hilarious new short film that features “skeletons clacking their hooves and hoofing around,” and the culmination of the fun is “a pair of skeletons using their femurs as hammers. “It reaches when you play another skeleton’s spine like a xylophone.” The last line of this strong recommendation reads: “Everything happens in cemeteries. Don’t bring children with you.” Unless the spectacle of them playing each other like xylophones is more comically sustained than I can imagine–but the last word adds a breathtaking irony. skeleton danceproduced and directed by Walt Disney.
Despite the power of the Disney name, this particular film is better understood as a Disney production. Ubu Iwerkshe animated most of it himself over about six weeks. He and Disney have been working together since at least the early 1920s, when he founded the short-lived Laugh-O-Glam Studios in Kansas City.
In fact, it was Iwerks who refined Disney’s rough sketches to create the figure we now know as Mickey Mouse, but who audiences in the ’20s first knew as Steamboat Willie. , his eponymous anime debut was Iwerks, which entered the public domain last year. skeleton danceDisney’s first “Stupid Symphony” Along with various other 1929 Disney shorts, the copyright was similarly released on Public Domain Day this year (Many of them feature Mickey Mouse).
The big innovation on display isn’t the synchronous sound itself, which has been around for a while. steamboat williebut the relationship between image and sound. According to animation historian Charles Solomon, “the first Mickey Mouse drawings needed to emphasize action,” but composer Carl Starling “suggested that the opposite could be done; , adding some animated action to the score, perhaps featuring things like skeletons and trees.” Move around according to the rhythm. Therein lies the origin of this manga. creepy danceThis was a breakthrough in the increasingly intimate fusion of animation and music, and a revelation to viewers who had never experienced anything like this before. Even today, laughter is probably the most natural reaction to technological developments that seem miraculous enough.
skeleton dance Voted the 18th greatest cartoon of all time by 1,000 animation experts in a 1994 book 50 greatest comics. find a copy here.
Related content:
Things that will be in the public domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, early Hitchcock films, Tintin and Popeye cartoons, etc.
The evolution of animation, 1833-2017: From Phenakistiscope to Pixar
How Walt Disney’s cartoons are made: A 1939 documentary looks inside
Celebrate the Day of the Dead with Jose Guadalupe Posada’s classic skeleton art
Initial version of Mickey Mouse enters public domain on January 1, 2024
Disney artist who developed Donald Duck and remained anonymous for many years despite being “the world’s most popular and widely read artist and author”
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
