Early in 1928 Walt Disney traveled to New York to negotiate
with his distributor only to find he’d lost the rights to his character “Oswald
the Lucky Rabbit.” Walt said he came up with his cartoon mouse on the train ride
back to California. Walt’s small studio quickly whipped up two shorts, “Plane Crazy”
and “The Gallopin’ Gaucho.” Walt tried desperately to find a new distributor
for a series based on those two silent cartoons, but was unsuccessful. Taking a
hint from Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer”
(1927), Walt added synchronous sound to his third Mickey Mouse cartoon and was
finally able to sell the idea. “Steamboat Willie” premiered November 18, 1928.
The title and the little tune Mickey whistles are both from the 1928 Buster
Keaton silent film, “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” It may come as a surprise, but “silent”
films were almost never experienced in silence. They usually came with music to
be played with each scene.
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