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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that digs deep into history one day at a time.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're kicking off

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Speaker 1: the spooky season a little early by talking about a

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Speaker 1: groundbreaking cartoon about a group of capering cadavers. The day

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Speaker 1: was August twenty second, nineteen twenty nine. The animated short

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Speaker 1: The Skeleton Dance held its official premiere at the Roxy

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Speaker 1: Theater in New York City. The five and a half

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Speaker 1: minute black and white cartoon showcased the spookier side of

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Speaker 1: the Disney Studios by depicting a merry band of undead

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Speaker 1: skeletons frolicking in a graveyard. The Macobs subject matter marked

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Speaker 1: a major departure from the happy, Go Lucky Mickey Mouse

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Speaker 1: shorts that had come before it, but thanks to its

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Speaker 1: upbeat music and comical choreography, The Skeleton Dance managed to

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Speaker 1: strike the perfect balance between silly and scary. Audiences young

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Speaker 1: and old fell in love with the short, and nearly

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Speaker 1: one hundred years later, many families now count it as

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Speaker 1: essential viewing during the Halloween season. After the success of

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight s Steamboat Willie. Walt Disney and his

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Speaker 1: team were eager to continue experimenting with synchronized sound. The

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Speaker 1: studio's next innovative idea on that front came from Carl Stalling,

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Speaker 1: the composer who wrote the scores for the early Mickey

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Speaker 1: Mouse cartoons. He proposed that instead of animating a short

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Speaker 1: and then adding the sound later, as had been done

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Speaker 1: for Steamboat Willie, they should try creating the music and

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Speaker 1: the animation at the same time. That way, the acttiontion

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Speaker 1: could take its cues from the music while still leaving

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Speaker 1: room for the music to react to and punctuate key

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Speaker 1: moments of action. Stalling believed this new, more collaborative approach

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Speaker 1: would make everyone's jobs a lot easier, while also providing

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Speaker 1: a more immersive experience for the audience. Walt Disney signed

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Speaker 1: off on the idea and began developing a new series

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Speaker 1: of shorts called the Silly Symphonies to highlight the music

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Speaker 1: forward approach. A total of seventy five shorts would be

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Speaker 1: produced for the series between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty nine, and the first one out of the gate

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Speaker 1: was The Skeleton Dance. Once again, it was Carl Stalling

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Speaker 1: who came up with the initial premise. In nineteen twenty nine,

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Speaker 1: he met with animator ub Eyeworks, the creative visionary behind

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Speaker 1: the design of Mickey Mouse, and pitched him the idea

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Speaker 1: of making their first silly symphony a graveyard jamboree. The

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Speaker 1: storyline of the short was appropriately bare bones in a creepy,

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Speaker 1: wind swept cemetery, a church bell chimes at midnight and

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Speaker 1: the landscape springs to life. Bats pour from the belfry,

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Speaker 1: A bony dog howls at the full moon, and two

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Speaker 1: black cats fight on top of gravestones. Suddenly, a menacing

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Speaker 1: skeleton rises between them and scares all the animals away.

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Speaker 1: The bony figure then skulks and skips through the graveyard,

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Speaker 1: eventually attracting the attention of three other skeletons. The gruesome

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Speaker 1: quartet proceed to dance together while at various times holding hands,

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Speaker 1: spinning in circles, and using each other as pogo sticks.

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Speaker 1: At one point, one of the skeletons falls to pieces,

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Speaker 1: only to be reassembled as a xylophone, which one of

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Speaker 1: the other skeletons then plays using a pair of thigh bones.

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Speaker 1: The crew is clearly having the time of their after lives,

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Speaker 1: but their fun is cut short by the row of

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Speaker 1: a rooster. With the morning sun about to rise, the

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Speaker 1: skeleton's end their dance for the time being and make

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Speaker 1: a mad dash back into the grave. Carl Stalling's inspiration

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Speaker 1: for this supernatural frolic was a mail order skeleton puppet

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Speaker 1: he had owned as a child. As he later explained

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Speaker 1: in a nineteen sixty nine interview quote, the skeleton dance

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Speaker 1: goes way back to my kid days. When I was

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Speaker 1: eight or ten years old, I saw an ad in

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Speaker 1: the American Boy magazine of a dancing skeleton, and I

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Speaker 1: got my dad to give me a quarter so I

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Speaker 1: could send for it. It turned out to be a

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Speaker 1: pasteboard cutout of a loose jointed skeleton slung over a

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Speaker 1: six foot cord under the armpits. It would dance when

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Speaker 1: kids pulled and jerked at each end of the string.

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Speaker 1: Ever since I was a kid, I had wanted to

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Speaker 1: see real skeletons dancing. Stalling eventually concluded that cartoon skeletons

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Speaker 1: would be the next best thing, and luckily for his

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Speaker 1: inner child, of Iworks and Walt Disney agreed with him.

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Speaker 1: Once the project was greenlit, Stalling got to work on

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Speaker 1: the music. The initial plan was to set the short

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Speaker 1: to an eerie nineteenth century tone poem called Dance Macabre

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Speaker 1: by Camille Sansans. However, the studio was unable to secure

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Speaker 1: the rights to use the music, forcing Stalling to come

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Speaker 1: up with his own spooky track. He used Edvard Grieg's

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Speaker 1: March of the Dwarfs as a starting point, but then

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Speaker 1: pivoted to writing an original foxtrot piece. He set the

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Speaker 1: tune in the minor key to make it suitable for

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Speaker 1: a graveyard, but still kept things lively enough to appeal

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Speaker 1: to the jazz age crowd. Take a listen. Meanwhile, as

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Speaker 1: Stalling hammered away at the score of Iworks, headed to

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Speaker 1: the library for inspiration. He found photographs of Etruscan tombs

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Speaker 1: with dancing skeletons painted on the walls, and he studied

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Speaker 1: illustrations of dancing skeletons drawn by the eighteenth century English

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Speaker 1: artist Thomas Rowlinson. With these models to draw from Iworks,

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Speaker 1: began crafting his own skeleton soiree in January of nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty nine. It took him less than six weeks to

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Speaker 1: finish animating the entire short, with almost every frame of

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Speaker 1: it drawn by his own hand. Around the same time,

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Speaker 1: in late February, Stalling recorded the short's finished soundtrack at

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Speaker 1: the Pat Powers Cinophone Studio in New York City. The

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Speaker 1: Disney Studio's first attempt at non post zync sound proved successful.

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Speaker 1: The Skeleton Dance combined physical gags with music in a

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Speaker 1: way that had never been done before. The skeletons gnashed

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Speaker 1: their teeth in rhythm with the music, and sped up

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Speaker 1: or slowed down their movements to match the tempo. There

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Speaker 1: were even whimsical touches, like when one skeleton plays the

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Speaker 1: spine and ribcage of another like a makeshift xylophone, and

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Speaker 1: the music we hear switches to that same instrument. Still,

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Speaker 1: no matter how innovative or amusing the Skeleton Dance was,

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Speaker 1: there was no getting around the grim nature of its

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Speaker 1: subject matter. There just hadn't been anything like it in

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Speaker 1: American animation, so there was no telling what audiences might

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Speaker 1: think of it. For that reason, many theater owners were

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Speaker 1: reluctant to screen the short, fearing that it might upset

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Speaker 1: or offend their customers, and because Disney had only released

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Speaker 1: a handful of Mickey shorts. At that point, he didn't

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Speaker 1: yet have the sway to convince them to take a gamble.

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Speaker 1: As a result, Walt Disney spent four months trying to

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Speaker 1: find a movie theater that would even show The Skeleton Dance. Finally,

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Speaker 1: in mid June, he struck a deal with the manager

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Speaker 1: of the Cartha Circle Theater in Los Angeles. The prestigious

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Speaker 1: movie palace agreed to screen the short in front of

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Speaker 1: the feature film Four Devils, but only for a single night.

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Speaker 1: A couple other exclusive screenings were booked over the next

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Speaker 1: two months, including at the Fox Theater in San Francisco

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Speaker 1: and the Roxy Theater in New York City. The positive

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Speaker 1: reception to these sneak previews helped Disney to finally land

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Speaker 1: a distributor. In early August, Columbia Pictures signed a contract

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Speaker 1: to distribute the Silly Symphony series nationally, starting with The

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Speaker 1: Skeleton Dance. The short was given an official premiere at

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Speaker 1: the Roxy Theater on August twenty second, nineteen twenty nine,

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Speaker 1: making it the first picture in the theatre's history to

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Speaker 1: have a second engagement. Although the bizarre premise had put

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Speaker 1: people off at first, the Skeleton Dance won over audiences

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Speaker 1: and critics alike with its spooky brand of humor. The

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Speaker 1: Film Daily called it one of the most novel cartoon

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Speaker 1: subjects ever shown on a screen, and Variety gave a

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Speaker 1: similarly glowing review, encouraging viewers to go see the short,

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Speaker 1: but not to bring their children. The success of The

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Speaker 1: Skeleton Dance proved that Disney had a future beyond just

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Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse. It encouraged the studio to commit to The

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Speaker 1: Silly Symphony's format, and in doing so, it paved the

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Speaker 1: way to Disney's first feature length film, nineteen thirty seven's

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Speaker 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a film that managed

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Speaker 1: to be pretty scary in its own right even without

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Speaker 1: dancing skeletons. I'm gay, Blues gay, and hopefully you now

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Speaker 1: know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to keep up with the show, you

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Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI

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Speaker 1: HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,

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Speaker 1: feel free to send them my way by writing to

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Speaker 1: this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias

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Speaker 1: for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.

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Speaker 1: I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day

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Speaker 1: in history class,