Steamboat Willie 1928

The story

A steamboat on a river. Mickey Mouse is at the wheel, whistling. Captain Pete, a large cat in a captain's cap, orders him off the bridge and aims a kick. Mickey blows a raspberry, Pete misses, and Mickey slips on a bar of soap. A parrot laughs at him, so he throws a bucket of water over it.

At Podunk Landing the boat takes on a cow, which Mickey loads by shoving hay down its throat. Minnie runs up too late, and Mickey hauls her aboard with the cargo crane, hooked by her bloomers. She drops a ukulele and her sheet music, and a goat eats both. Turning the goat's tail makes it play "Turkey in the Straw", and the two of them then play the livestock like a band: a cat's tail, a goose's throat, a row of piglets, a sow. Pete is not amused, and Mickey ends up peeling potatoes. The parrot returns, and a half-peeled potato sends it into the river.

Almost everything is pantomime. The only plain speech is the parrot's, "Help! Help! Man overboard!", and it was spoken by Walt Disney himself.

Where Mickey came from

Disney's distributor in 1928 was Charles Mintz, and the character was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was owned by Universal. In February Disney went to New York to negotiate and found that Oswald was not his to keep. Mintz had also signed most of Disney's animators. The story goes that Walt thought up a mouse on the train home. Dave Smith, the Disney company's first archivist, says only that Walt "may have been recalling" a mouse that lived in his Kansas City studio, and that after his return he "met with several of his staff members, and they came up with Mickey Mouse". Ub Iwerks was tasked with designing the character.

Two silent Mickey cartoons followed, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Disney could not sell either to a distributor. The Jazz Singer had opened the previous autumn, and Disney bet on sound. Steamboat Willie was the third Mickey cartoon made and the first released.

Who made it

Disney and Iwerks are credited as directors. Iwerks animated almost the whole film himself, by Smith's account. Wilfred Jackson animated Minnie running along the bank, his first animation, and Les Clark is credited with the hay-and-cow scene. Smith says Carl Stalling, a friend from Kansas City, composed the score. Other accounts name Jackson and Bert Lewis as arrangers, so the credit is not settled. The cartoon cost $4,986.69 according to Roy Disney's ledger. To pay for it Walt took out a new mortgage and, by his archivist's account, sold his car, a Moon.

The title nods at Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., also of 1928. Mickey whistles "Steamboat Bill", and the other tune is the folk song "Turkey in the Straw".

The sound

Nothing like this had been done, so Disney's team felt their way. Jackson suggested a metronome, and made the first bar sheet to lay out sound against pictures. To test the idea Disney put a projector outside a studio window with a bedsheet for a screen. Behind the sheet his staff made simple noises, and Jackson played the two tunes on a harmonica. An audience of staff wives liked it.

Disney found nobody on the West Coast to record it, so he went to New York. He passed over the big systems and settled with Pat Powers, who sold a process called Cinephone. The first recording, on 15 September 1928, went badly: the orchestra, of 15 to 17 players depending on the source, with three sound-effects men, could not keep up with the picture. A bouncing ball was added to the film so the conductor could follow it. The second session, two weeks later, worked. The band is usually named as the Green Brothers Novelty Band, conducted by Carl Edouarde.

Premiere and reception

Harry Reichenbach, who ran the Colony Theatre on Broadway, offered a two-week run. The cartoon opened on 18 November 1928, ahead of the feature Gang War. Reviews were warm: Variety praised the synchronisation, and the New York Times found it fun. Disney was paid $500 a week, and the film made the studio's name. Disney later counted 18 November as Mickey's birthday.

In the 1950s one gag was reportedly cut for television: the sow played like an accordion. The uncut cartoon is now on home video and Disney's streaming service.

What "first" means

Disney's own archive calls it the first cartoon with synchronised sound. Film historians are more careful. The Fleischer studio put sound into its Song Car-Tunes from 1924, though without perfect sync. Paul Terry's Dinner Time also had sound, came out in October 1928, and did not do well. Variety, in 1928, is reported to have said it was not the first synchronised cartoon but the first to attract favourable attention.

Public domain

Under the original 56-year term, Steamboat Willie would have lapsed in 1984. The 1976 law lengthened it, so that it was due to expire in 2004. Then the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act added twenty years, to 95 in all, and the film entered the United States public domain on 1 January 2024. Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain is clear on the limits. What is free is this film and the silent Plane Crazy, and Mickey and Minnie as they look in them. Not free: later versions, such as the Mickey of Fantasia, and Disney's trade marks on the name and images. Outside the United States other terms apply.

Why it matters

It made Disney. Smith calls the success "phenomenal", and says it put Walt Disney in the animation business to stay.

It showed what synchronised sound could do for a cartoon. Every squeak, whistle and note lands on the action it belongs to. Music that follows the picture beat for beat is still called mickey-mousing.

It is a lesson in who owns a character. The loss of Oswald is why Mickey exists, and the question of how long Disney could keep him hung over American copyright law for decades. Critics nicknamed the 1998 extension the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

It is where Mickey Mouse begins. Disney has counted 18 November 1928 as his birthday ever since, and in 1998 the Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry.