Studio: Walt Disney Studio (Mickey Mouse)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Mickey, in a pith helmet, rides an elephant into the jungle with a rifle and an accordion. He meets lions, monkeys and bears, and the hunt quickly becomes a concert when a monkey and a parrot take up his accordion and start to play. The jungle animals gather, and Mickey dances with a lion, a bear and a pair of monkeys to "The Blue Danube". A pair of ostriches dance to "Auld Lang Syne", which Mickey plays on a saxophone improvised from whatever is to hand, and he runs through "Aloha 'Oe", "Turkey in the Straw" and "Yankee Doodle" with the animals as audience and orchestra, until the whole jungle applauds and the film ends.
Why It Matters
- It is the purest example of the early Mickey musical, a film with no plot at all, only a medley and a set of dances, and it shows how completely Carl Stalling's scores drove the studio's output in 1929; the dance with the lion, a predator turned partner, is the kind of image that made the character loved.
- Like every 1929 Disney short it is now public domain in the United States. Decades later Disney used it as a level in the 2010 video game Epic Mickey, one of several early shorts the game treated as forgotten territory, which is a fair description of its place in the canon.
Notes and Trivia
- Mickey as big-game hunter returned in later cartoons, including Mickey's Man Friday and the 1933 Mickey's Mellerdrammer.
- "Aloha 'Oe" was a Hawaiian standard every 1929 band played.
- See also: The Jazz Fool (1929), Mickey's Choo-Choo (1929), Monkey Melodies (1930).