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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,

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Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: We hope it makes previous episodes for this date easier

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Speaker 1: to find in the feed. Welcome to this Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class from how Stuff Works dot com and from

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Speaker 1: the desk of Stuff you missed in History Class. It's

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Speaker 1: the show where we explore the past one day at

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Speaker 1: a time with a quick look at what happened today

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Speaker 1: in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,

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Speaker 1: and it's November eighteen. Steamboat Willie made its debut on

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Speaker 1: this day in nineteen. This is often remembered as the

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Speaker 1: first animated appearance of Mickey Mouse, but that's not quite right.

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Speaker 1: So here's the story. Walt Disney had started an animation

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Speaker 1: company in Hollywood with his brother Roy In, but they

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Speaker 1: hadn't quite gotten it financially successful yet. The company had

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Speaker 1: created two animated series, One was Alice Comedies and one

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Speaker 1: was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald was pretty popular, but

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Speaker 1: then in n eight Disney went to what he thought

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Speaker 1: was going to be a contract negotiation with his distributor,

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Speaker 1: Universal Pictures, but he found out that Universal actually owned

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Speaker 1: all of the rights to the Oswald cartoons, so he

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Speaker 1: needed to come up with a new lead character. That

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Speaker 1: character was, of course, Mickey Mouse, and the first two

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Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse cartoons were finished in the spring of One

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Speaker 1: was called Plane Crazy. Plane is spelled p L A

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Speaker 1: n E. The other was The Gallop and Gaucho, and

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Speaker 1: like his earlier cartoons and a lot of other films

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Speaker 1: at the time, even most other films at the time,

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Speaker 1: these were silent. Synchronized sound was still in its infancy.

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Speaker 1: The first feature film with synchronized sound and dialogue was

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Speaker 1: The Jazz Singer What had come out just a year before,

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Speaker 1: so Disney thought that this might give him an opportunity

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Speaker 1: to make an animated film with synchronized sound featuring his

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Speaker 1: newly created Mouse character. The title of their work in

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Speaker 1: progress was an homage to Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr.

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Speaker 1: Which had come out that year as well, and the

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Speaker 1: film featured Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Pegleg Pete and

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Speaker 1: a mostly lighthearted set of scenes set aboard a steamboat,

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Speaker 1: a lot of it to the tune of the song

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Speaker 1: Turkey and Straw. Another misconception about all this is that

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Speaker 1: Disney himself did all the creative work with this, but

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Speaker 1: like very many of the other early Disney cartoons, it

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Speaker 1: was really animated by of Iye Works. This process of

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Speaker 1: creating the film was full of trial and error because,

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Speaker 1: like I said, synchronized sound was really new. The whole

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Speaker 1: idea of animating film where the sound was going to

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Speaker 1: match up to what was happening on screen was really

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Speaker 1: complicated and also knew. So they started out using a

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Speaker 1: metronome for timing, and they did a lot of tests

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Speaker 1: and then worked days and nights to finish it. Scoring

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Speaker 1: this film was also a huge challenge. The orchestra A

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Speaker 1: needed to match what they were playing to what was

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Speaker 1: happening on the screen, and that turned out to be

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Speaker 1: a lot harder than you might expect. They finally added

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Speaker 1: a bouncing ball to the print for the conductor to

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Speaker 1: use as a guide, and that was a massive improvement

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Speaker 1: over their first attempts to play the score. Recording for

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Speaker 1: this film was extremely expensive, and Disney had to sell

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Speaker 1: his car to make payroll just two weeks before the

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Speaker 1: film debut, and they had to borrow money from promoter

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Speaker 1: at Harry Reichenbach to get the film screened at all

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Speaker 1: and the end though it all worked out. Steamboat Willie

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Speaker 1: was released at the Colony Theater in New York on

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Speaker 1: November eight. They wanted it to open on Broadway so

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Speaker 1: that it would be reviewed, and the audience loved it,

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Speaker 1: and so did the reviewers. It got very positive write

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Speaker 1: ups in publications like Variety and The New York Times.

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Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie spent two weeks exclusively at the Colony Theater

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Speaker 1: before being sent on to other theaters to show there

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Speaker 1: as well. Money continued to be tight for Walt and

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Speaker 1: a Disney though even after this happened, that went on

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Speaker 1: for a really long time. But this was the first

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Speaker 1: of a lot of successes, and of course it put

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Speaker 1: Disney on the path to creating feature length animated films

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Speaker 1: and what would grow into a massive media empire. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Eve's Jeff Cope for her research work on today's

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Speaker 1: episode into Casey Pigram, and Chandler May's for their audio

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Speaker 1: work on the show. You can subscribe to the Stay

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Speaker 1: in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google podcast and We're

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Speaker 1: about to get your podcast and you can tune in

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Speaker 1: tomorrow for a Prime Minister who was not just a first.

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Speaker 1: At this point, she's an only