Studio: Walt Disney Productions (Mickey Mouse)
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Mickey, Horace Horsecollar and a crew of animal firemen are asleep in the firehouse when the alarm rings. They scramble into their boots and helmets, slide down the pole, harness up and race through the streets with the engine, the ladder truck and the hose cart colliding and untangling as they go. The fire is in an apartment house, and Minnie is trapped on the top floor, screaming from the window as the flames climb. The firemen's ladders fall short and their hoses misfire. Mickey climbs the building by the clothes line, catches Minnie as she faints, and brings her down the line as the building burns. She comes to on the ground, sees who has saved her, and the two sing each other's names, kiss and embrace as the picture irises out.
Why It Matters
- The firehouse scramble and the race through the streets are the kind of ensemble action the Disney studio was beginning to do better than anyone, with Horace Horsecollar in his first speaking part and the crew's collisions timed to Bert Lewis's score; it is a model for the dozens of fire-brigade cartoons that followed from every studio.
- A 1930 release, it entered the American public domain on 1 January 2026. It is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon directed by Burt Gillett, who would direct most of the series through 1933 and win the studio its first Academy Award with Flowers and Trees, and one of the first distributed by Columbia after the break with Pat Powers.
Notes and Trivia
- Mickey fought fire again in Mickey's Fire Brigade in 1935, with Donald and Goofy.
- The clothes-line rescue is a gag borrowed from the Oswald cartoons.
- See also: The Cactus Kid (1930), The Gorilla Mystery (1930).