6 NEWLY RESTORED CARTOONS ON DISNEY+

To celebrate the centennial of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney+ will be adding 27 newly restored cartoon shorts over the next few months. This is encouraging news for fans who have been disappointed with the dearth of classic short animation on the streaming service. This project, part of the ongoing Disney 100 Celebration, comes to us through the hard work of the Walt Disney Studios Restoration and Preservation team. The shorts range from well-known classics to lesser-known titles. The first 6 were uploaded on July 7th.

In The Skeleton Dance (1929), four human skeletons dance and make music in a graveyard. This was the first of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, a series of theatrically released cartoons where music was synchronized with animation. 

In another early short, Building a Building (1933), Mickey Mouse works at a construction site under the baleful supervision of Pete while Minnie sells lunches to the workers and contends with Pete’s lechery. This short was nominated for an Academy Award, loosing to Disney’s other popular short of that year, Three Little Pigs.  

This round gifts us two Goofy shorts. Aquamania (1961), where Goofy takes up water skiing, was the last Goofy short produced during Disney’s Golden era. Aquamania also features an appearance from an early incarnation of Goofy’s son, Max, then known as Goofy Jr.  The second Goofy short is a classic, Goofy Gymnastics (1949). Keen-eyed viewers will recognize this as the cartoon that Roger Rabbit and Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) watch in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The last two shorts, Bath Day (1946) and Figaro and Frankie (1947), are much more obscure. Both of these cartoons star Figaro, the plucky cat from Pinocchio. Walt Disney loved the character so much that he spun Figaro off into his own brief series of theatrical shorts. Notably, Figaro was one of only eight Disney characters to receive their own logo at the beginning of the cartoons. The others were Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip ’n’ Dale (on the same title card), and Humphrey the Bear. Apart from his own series, Figaro appeared in other shorts, usually as Minnie’s pet and/or Pluto’s nemesis.

-T.Z.