On this day in 1929, a pixie-like actress named Peggy Lynch was born. She began her acting career at the age of four, and as a teenager she was cast in the 1948 musical comedy film If You Knew Susie, with Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis. The popular singer, Eddie Cantor, decided that young Peggy …
See more
If you’ve ever wondered when Disney first got its singing voice, it was on this day in 1929 with the release of The Opry House. The short marked the first real Disney musical—the prelude to Silly Symphonies and the foreshadowing of full-length animated musicals to come. In the film, Mickey Mouse, the proprietor and the …
See more
Walt Disney directed the fourth Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Barn Dance, released on this day in 1929, and the film is notable for the way our beloved ambassador to the world endures a series of setbacks over the course of a seven-minute short. He arrives at Minnie’s home on a horse-drawn cart to escort her …
See more
It was on this day in 1928 that Mickey Mouse first galloped into theaters aboard his trusty ostrich in The Gallopin’ Gaucho. Although Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released in theaters, it was the third movie produced. The silent films Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho were the first two Mickey cartoon …
See more
Hiya, folks! Today is a milestone in the history of The Walt Disney Company, because it is the birthday of Mickey Mouse. It was on this day in 1928 that the first Mickey Mouse cartoon short was released at the Colony Theatre in New York. This first synchronized sound cartoon is actually a parody, loosely …
See more
Before there was Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney created Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, who appeared in a total of 26 cartoons between 1927 and 1928. The films were made for Charles Mintz, who contracted with Universal to handle distribution. Walt, however, would lose the rights to his rabbit character, and on this day in 1928, the …
See more
Hiya folks! On this day in 1928, Walt Disney Enterprises filed to trademark “Mickey Mouse” with the United States patent office, and to get more insight into this historic event, we turned to the CEO of Trademarkia.com, Raj Abhyanker, who is also an Intellectual Property attorney. “This is both a name mark and a logo …
See more
There is no copy today of Ride ’em Plowboy, an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon released on this day in 1928, but fortunately production materials and storyboards survive. We turned to animation expert and Oswald enthusiast expert David Gerstein for his analysis of the short. “Ride ’em Plowboy is a classic farmyard story with Oswald …
See more
As an inhabitant of the silent era, the mischievous Oswald the Lucky Rabbit didn’t, as animation scholar and frequent D23 contributor David Gerstein notes, have to “stop everything to play music on barrels and lily pads twice a minute.” To Gerstein, the silence was golden, giving animators more time to spend on gags and story. …
See more
It was on this day in 1928 that the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon short Neck ‘n’ Neck was released in theaters. When Oswald takes a lovely lady rabbit out for a ride in his old jalopy, he soon finds himself racing a chasing police car. When the film was released, Walt didn’t own Oswald …
See more