Studio: Walt Disney Studio (Mickey Mouse)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Tom Cat, a slovenly tomcat who signs his name on the door, takes a swig of hooch, picks up his shotgun and goes hunting. The moment he is gone Mickey, who is here the size of a real mouse, rounds up a swarm of mouse friends and leads them into the cat's house through the keyhole. Inside they play. Mickey and Minnie dance up and down the piano keyboard to play a tune; others use the cat's phonograph, one mouse acting as the needle and another as the horn; others make an orchestra of the cat's instruments and his crockery. The party is in full swing when the film ends with Mickey and Minnie, alone at last, kissing on the keys.
Why It Matters
- It is the only early Mickey in which he is drawn to the scale of an actual mouse, small enough to run along a piano key, and the sequence in which the mice make music out of the furniture is the Disney studio's answer to the Fleischers' habit of turning objects into instruments; Iwerks and Sharpsteen animate the swarm of mice with real control.
- The cartoon is in the public domain in the United States as a 1929 publication. Tom Cat was briefly the name of the character who became Peg-Leg Pete, and an early script had the party broken up by the cat's parrot calling the police, an ending the finished film drops.
Notes and Trivia
- Ben Sharpsteen later supervised Pinocchio and Dumbo.
- The hooch is a Prohibition joke; the cat drinks before he hunts.
- See also: The Opry House (1929), The Barnyard Battle (1929), Steamboat Willie (1928).