Studio: Walt Disney Studio (Mickey Mouse)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
At a bustling carnival the barker Kat Nipp is drumming up custom for Minnie, the Shimmy Dancer, while Mickey sells hot dogs nearby and heckles him. The hot dogs are alive; they bark, run away and have to be spanked. Mickey calls "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!", and Minnie, between shows, orders one, taking a coin from her stocking, which Mickey refuses because he is smitten. The hot dog screams when she bites it and bolts, and Mickey catches it and spanks it into submission. That night Mickey serenades Minnie's caravan with "Sweet Adeline" on the guitar, joined by two alley cats who sing in the deadpan monotone of the vaudeville team Shaw and Lee. Minnie is charmed; Kat Nipp, woken in the next caravan, is not, and throws everything he owns at the singers until a whole bed lands on Mickey.
Why It Matters
- "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" are the first words Mickey Mouse ever spoke, and the film shows how hard lip-synchronisation was, with his mouth contorting through every syllable; Pat Powers, the distributor, worried that a talking Mickey would hurt foreign sales. Carl Stalling, who voices the barker, scores the shimmy to "The Streets of Cairo".
- A 1929 work, it belongs to the American public domain. The hot-dog gags were lifted from Disney's own Oswald cartoon All Wet of 1927, and the two deadpan cats are a direct caricature of a vaudeville act then playing in Los Angeles.
Notes and Trivia
- Kat Nipp, the barker, was one of several proto-Petes of 1929.
- Six animators are credited; the studio had by now a dozen on staff.
- See also: The Plowboy (1929), Mickey's Follies (1929).