Studio: Walt Disney Productions (Silly Symphonies)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
On the sea floor the fish dance and make music. One rides a seahorse; another plays with an anchor; a school dances round a sunken chest until an octopus bursts out of it and chases them, and they escape. Near a wreck a fish dance is led by two lobsters; a narwhal conducts three fish on conch shells and a fish skeleton on maracas; a lobster plays a harmonica; starfish and clams dance in a line. A group of small fish jump one by one on the belly of a large fish, which blows a bubble for each, and the fish play with the bubbles until the octopus pops them and the chase resumes, with the octopus's eight arms against the whole reef until he is tied in his own knots.
Why It Matters
- It is the Silly Symphonies' first underwater film, and the sea floor, with its bubbles, swaying weed and sunken ship, gave Gillett's animators a new set of movements to time to music; the fish skeleton on maracas is a souvenir of The Skeleton Dance, and the octopus villain is the series' first proper antagonist.
- Released in 1930, it has been public domain in the United States since January 2026. Motion Picture News thought the public was "fed up on this type of stuff" and reported no chuckles from a New York audience, a sign that the dancing-animals formula was already wearing thin a year into the series; Disney's answer, a year later, was colour.
Notes and Trivia
- The undersea setting returned in Disney's Merbabies of 1938 and, at feature length, in The Little Mermaid.
- The series was by now being advertised as "Mickey Mouse presents a Walt Disney Silly Symphony" to borrow the mouse's drawing power.
- See also: Cannibal Capers (1930), Arctic Antics (1930).