Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What was the first Mickey Mouse film?
Mickey Mouse is a funny animal cartoon character and the mascot of The Walt Disney Company. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at the Walt Disney Studios in 1928. An anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves, Mickey is one of the world's most recognizable characters.
In 1932 the editor Mario Nerbini decided to open a new weekly newspaper for kids, containing illustrated tales with Mickey Mouse. The first issue of "Topolino" was published on December 31, 1932: it contained Mickey's first Italian story drawn by Giove Toppi. In this story Mickey Mouse was chased by an elephant. However Nerbini hadn't correctly secured the publication rights, so when Emmanuel (Disney's representative in Italy) protested, Nerbini changed the title of the comic book into "Topo Lino" (Mouse Lino), replacing Mickey Mouse with "Topo Lino", another mouse. When Nerbini bought the publication rights from Disney and King Featured Syndacate, he changed the title back to "Topolino". Floyd Gottfredson's stories made their debut into "Topolino" #7 with a Sunday page featuring Mickey, his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, and Mickey's nephews Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse. "Topolino" published mainly Mickey Mouse Sunday pages; the daily strips were published on the supplement to the newspaper.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1984, but lost to Jimmy Picker's "Sundae in New York".
It was the first nomination for a Mickey Mouse short since "Mickey and the Seal" (1948). It was also the only Mickey Mouse short on which John Lasseter was involved as an animator (he later went on to work for Lucasfilm, Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios).
When the Cat's Away (April 18, 1929), essentially a remake of the Alice Comedy, "Alice Rattled by Rats", was an unusual appearance for Mickey. Although Mickey and Minnie still maintained their anthropomorphic characteristics, they were depicted as the size of regular mice and living with a community many other mice as pests in a home. Mickey and Minnie would later appear the size of regular humans in their own setting. In appearances with real humans, Mickey has been shown to be about two to three feet high.[27] The next Mickey short was also unusual. The Barnyard Battle (April 25, 1929) was the only film to depict Mickey as a soldier and also the first to place him in combat. The Karnival Kid (1929) was the first time Mickey spoke. Before this he had only whistled, laughed, and grunted. His first words were "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" said while trying to sell hot dogs at a carnival. Mickey's Follies (1929) introduced the song "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" which would become the theme song for Mickey Mouse films for the next several years. The "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" song sequence was also later reused with different background animation as its own special short shown only at the commencement of 1930s theater-based Mickey Mouse Clubs.[28][29] Mickey's dog Pluto first appeared as Mickey's pet in The Moose Hunt (1931) after previously appearing as Minnie's dog "Rover" in The Picnic (1930).
Mortimer "Morty" and Ferdinand "Ferdie" Fieldmouse are Mickey Mouse's twin nephews. They first appeared in Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Sunday strip story line titled "Mickey's Nephews" (1932). Since then they have appeared in lots of comic strips and comic book stories starring Mickey Mouse and Pluto. Morty and Ferdy were first shown as wearing shirts, but no pants or underpants. Pants were later added to their wardrobe.
Like all of Pluto's co-stars, the dog has appeared extensively in comics over the years, first making an appearance in 1931. He returned to theatrical animation in 1990 with "The Prince and the Pauper" and has also appeared in several direct-to-video films. Pluto also appears in the television series "Mickey Mouse Works" (1999–2000), "House of Mouse" (2001–2003), "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" (2006–2016), and the new Mickey Mouse shorts (2013–present).
Mickey's Garden is a 1935 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The film was the second "Mickey Mouse" cartoon shot in Technicolor (after "The Band Concert") and is also the first color appearance of Pluto. The cartoon is also the first color cartoon where Mickey speaks (though he only does so at the end when Pluto starts licking him). The film's plot centers on Mickey Mouse trying to rid his garden of insects, but they keep coming back. When he accidentally gets hit with his own bug spray, he begins seeing a warped reality.
"It is interesting that Mickey Mousing has come to represent the worst excesses of the Hollywood film score. Perhaps as contemporary spectators we are no longer used to Mickey Mousing in films (its use radically diminished in the fifties and after). Still, the practice of catching every moment with music has a visual equivalent, and Mickey Mousing has been made to bear the brunt of the criticism for an overobnoxiousness that it only partially creates."
In Mickey's early films he was often characterized not as a hero, but as an ineffective young suitor to Minnie Mouse. The Barn Dance (March 14, 1929) is the first time in which Mickey is turned down by Minnie in favor of Pete.
The Band Concert is a 1935 American animated short film produced in 3-strip Technicolor by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The 73rd short to feature Mickey Mouse, the film was the first "Mickey Mouse" film produced in color and remains one of the most highly acclaimed of the Disney shorts. The story is about a small music band conducted by Mickey Mouse which struggles through a distraction-filled public performance.
Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse is a 2001 American direct-to-video animated film produced by Walt Disney Television Animation and Toon City Animation. It is the first of two direct-to-video films spin off from the Disney Channel animated television series "Disney's House of Mouse". The events of the film take place during the "second season" of Disney's House of Mouse.
The Mickey Mouse universe is a fictional shared universe which is the setting for stories involving Disney cartoon characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Donald Duck and many other characters. The universe originated from the "Mickey Mouse" animated short films produced by Disney starting in 1928, but its first consistent version was created by Floyd Gottfredson in the "Mickey Mouse" newspaper comic strip. Real-world versions also exist in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, called Mickey's Toontown.
Mickey's Mouse Tracks is an American animated television series on The Disney Channel which ran from 1992 to 1995, and featured Disney cartoons and animated short films, dating from before the advent of The Disney Channel. A similar show was "Donald's Quack Attack". The show premiered on November 2, 1992, along with "Donald's Quack Attack", on The Disney Channel. The show was made to replace "Good Morning, Mickey!". A show identical to this show called "Mickey Mouse and Friends" premiered in 1994. It was not possible to know what episode was going to be shown on any given day, but the show "did" feature showings of some shorts that do not show up on "The Ink and Paint Club" along with some shorts made by the "Fleischer" brothers, and clips from the animated features, such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Pinocchio", "Dumbo", "Cinderella", and "Alice in Wonderland". In 1999, the show was replaced by "Mickey Mouse Works", later given a plot as "House of Mouse". In between each cartoon, a short segment featured a small clip of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, accompanied by the "Mouse Tracks" logo. In addition to airing on The Disney Channel from 1992 to 1996, the show also ran on Toon Disney from 1998 to 1999.
The name "Mickey Mouse" was first used in the films' title sequences to refer specifically to the character, but was used from 1935 to 1953 to refer to the series itself as in "Walt Disney presents a Mickey Mouse." In this sense "a Mickey Mouse" was a shortened form of "a Mickey Mouse sound cartoon" which was used in the earliest films. Films from 1929 to 1935 which were re-released during this time also used this naming convention, but it was not used for the three shorts released between 1983 and 1995 (Mickey's Christmas Carol, The Prince and the Pauper, and Runaway Brain). Mickey's name was also used occasionally to market other films which were formally part of other series. Examples of this include several Silly Symphonies, Don Donald (1937), and Goofy and Wilbur (1939).
As of 2018, the only complete re-release of the entire series has been in the "Walt Disney Treasures" DVD sets. The vast majority[34] of the series appears between four two-disc sets: "Mickey Mouse in Black and White" (2002), "Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume Two" (2004), "Mickey Mouse in Living Color" (2001), and "Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Volume Two" (2004). Film critic Leonard Maltin, who hosts the collection, implied that there was opposition to releasing the complete series because of some content now considered politically incorrect, such as racial and ethnic stereotypes. Maltin argued that releasing the material uncensored was the only way to "learn from the past". The only film not included in this collection was the subsequently released Get a Horse! (2013) which first premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and was shown ahead of Frozen.
In animation, Mickey's nephews first appear in the 1933 "Mickey Mouse" film "Giantland", although the film shows Mickey with as many as 14 nephews at the same time. The following year the nephews appear again in "Gulliver Mickey". The following film, "Mickey's Steam Roller", is the first to show Mickey with only two nephews, who can be presumed to be Morty and Ferdie, although they are unnamed in the film itself. This was two years after the twins debuted in the comic strip. Morty and Ferdie also make a cameo towards the end of 1938's "Boat Builders" and appear again in 1983's "Mickey's Christmas Carol" in speaking roles, albeit at different ages as one of the twins took on the role of Tiny Tim. In 1999 they make a cameo in the two part "Mickey Mouse Works" segment "Around the World in Eighty Days", which was used again in "Disney's House of Mouse".
Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas is a 2004 American computer-animated direct-to-video fantasy comedy anthology film produced by DisneyToon Studios and animation production by Blur Studio and Sparx Animation France. It is a sequel to "Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas". This feature is presented in five segments Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, Max, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and Scrooge McDuck in five different segments. Along with the Mickey's PhilharMagic theme park attraction, this production was one of the first to depict the Mickey Mouse characters with 3D computer animation. It is the final direct-to-video film to feature both Wayne Allwine and Alan Young, who both died in different years.
The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air, radio program aired in 1938 Celebration Mickey, a 2-foot-tall (0.61m), 100lb (45kg), 24-karat gold authentic Mickey Mouse sculpture Mickey Mouse Adventures, a short-lived comic starring Mickey Mouse as the protagonist Mickey Mouse universe, the phenomenon that has spawned from the Mickey Mouse series and other related characters Mouse Museum, a Russian museum featuring artifacts and memorabilia relating to Mickey Mouse Walt Disney (2015 PBS film) Mickey Mouse Protection Act January 1, 2024, the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, will pass into the public domain
In "Plane Crazy" (1929), the first produced Mickey Mouse story, Mickey is seen at a farm. In all of his early films Mickey is in a rural setting, but most commonly at a farm. This setting was succinctly presented in the first sentences of one of Mickey's first storybooks:
In The Godfather Part II, Fredo's justification of betraying Michael is that his orders in the family usually were "Send Fredo off to do this, send Fredo off to do that! Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere!" as opposed to more meaningful tasks. In an early episode of the 1978–82 sitcom Mork & Mindy, Mork stated that Pluto was "a Mickey Mouse planet", referring to the future dwarf planet having the same name as Mickey's pet dog Pluto. Actually, the planet was named about 20 years before the dog was. In 1984, just after an ice hockey game in which Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers beat the New Jersey Devils 13–4, Gretzky was quoted as saying to a reporter, "Well, it's time they got their act together, they're ruining the whole league. They had better stop running a Mickey Mouse organization and put somebody on the ice". Reacting to Gretzky's comment, Devils fans wore Mickey Mouse apparel when the Oilers returned to New Jersey.[82] In the 1993 Warner Bros. film Demolition Man, as Sylvester Stallone's character is fighting the malfunctioning AI of his out-of-control police car, he shouts for the system to "Brake! Brake! Brake now, you Mickey Mouse piece of shit!"[83] In the 1996 Warner Bros. film Space Jam, Bugs Bunny derogatorily comments on Daffy Duck's idea for the name of their basketball team, asking: "What kind of Mickey Mouse organization would name a team 'The Ducks?'" (This also referenced the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, an NHL team that was then owned by Disney, as well as the Disney-made The Mighty Ducks movie franchise. This was referencing the Disney/Warner Brothers rivalry.) In the United States armed forces, actions that look good but have little or no practical use (such as the specific manner of making beds in basic training or the polishing of brass fittings on board ship) are commonly referred to as "Mickey Mouse work." In schools a "Mickey Mouse course", "Mickey Mouse major", or "Mickey Mouse degree" is a class, college major, or degree where very little effort is necessary in order to attain a good grade (especially an A) or one where the subject matter of such a class is not of any importance in the labor market.[84] Musicians often refer to a film score that directly follows each action on screen as Mickey Mousing (also mickey-mousing and mickeymousing).[85] Software company Microsoft has been derogatorily called "Mickeysoft".[86] In the beginning of the 1980s, then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once called the European Parliament a "Mickey Mouse parliament", meaning a discussion club without influence.[87] In the British sitcom Red Dwarf, in the episode "Quarantine", after the team's substandard equipment nearly cost them their lives, Lister pointed out, "We're a real Mickey Mouse operation, aren't we?" The Cat replied, "Mickey Mouse? We ain't even Betty Boop!" The combined road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway used for the F1 U.S. Grand Prix has been described by Jacques Villeneuve and other competitors as "Mickey Mouse"[88] due to its slow uninteresting corners, and lack of challenging corners.
In 1928, to recover from the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney came up with the idea of a mouse character named Mortimer while on a train headed to California, drawing up a few simple drawings. The mouse was later renamed Mickey Mouse (Disney's wife, Lillian, disliked the sound of 'Mortimer Mouse') and starred in several Disney produced films. Ub Iwerks refined Disney's initial design of Mickey Mouse. Disney's first sound film "Steamboat Willie", a cartoon starring Mickey, was released on November 18, 1928 through Pat Powers' distribution company. It was the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon released, but the third to be created, behind "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho". "Steamboat Willie" was an immediate smash hit, and its initial success was attributed not just to Mickey's appeal as a character, but to the fact that it was the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound. Disney used Pat Powers' Cinephone system, created by Powers using Lee de Forest's Phonofilm system. "Steamboat Willie" premiered at B. S. Moss's Colony Theater in New York City, now The Broadway Theatre. Disney's "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho" were then retrofitted with synchronized sound tracks and re-released successfully in 1929.
Cook then returned to Disney in 1997, where he developed and produced the series "Nightmare Ned". In 1998, he returned to feature animation when he co-directed "Return to Never Land" for Disney. In 2001, he took on the challenge of directing the first feature-length film of "Mickey Mouse" series characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (Goofy had previously appeared in "A Goofy Movie" and its sequel). The film, "", premiered worldwide on DVD in 2004. He also served as a director for "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and "The Adventures of Kid Danger".
Mickey's House of Villains (also known as House of Mouse: The Villains) is a 2002 direct-to-video animated film produced by Walt Disney Television Animation and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures premiere to own by movie theater, Toon City Animation, Inc., Manila, Philippines, with animation coordination by Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida. It is based on the Disney Channel animated television series, "Disney's House of Mouse" and a sequel to the direct-to-video animated film "", starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Daisy Duck and Disney Villains that have appeared in past Disney productions. It was released on both VHS and DVD by Walt Disney Home Entertainment on September 3, 2002. It was followed by a 2004 direct-to-video animated film, "" and "Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas", produced by DisneyToon Studios. The events of the film take place during the "third and final season" of Disney's House of Mouse.
The first known use of Mickey Mousing was in "Steamboat Willie" (1928), the first Mickey Mouse cartoon by Walt Disney, scored by Carl Stalling. In the 1931 Van Beuren Studios animated short "Making 'Em Move" the "Mysterioso Pizzicato" theme is Mickey Moused to the action first to produce a "false sense of foreboding" as a curious visitor enters the animation factory, and then again to accompany the villain in a cartoon-within-a-cartoon. The entrance:
Although billed at the time as another "Mickey Mouse" cartoon, explaining the face of Mickey Mouse at the beginning of the original release, the film is actually the first installment of the "Donald Duck" series, and is the first to feature Donald as the primary starring character. The film also introduces a love interest for Donald.