As many of the Disney short films from the studio’s early days near a century (or more!) in age, slowly but surely each one enters the public domain. Last year, it was headline news when Steamboat Willie and that version of Mickey Mouse became available for all to use.
Now in 2025, a number of other Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly Symphonies are entering public domain, including the first ever Mickey Mouse cartoon to be animated, Plane Crazy and the first Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance. Take a look at all 19 below.
The Gallopin’ Gaucho
Following Plane Crazy but before Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin’ Gaucho is the second Mickey Mouse short to be created and animated. Completed in August 1928 as a silent film, the short was not released in order to work on Steamboat Willie. The Gallopin' Gaucho was released, now with sound, after Steamboat Willie on December 30 of 1928.
The short was intended as a parody of Douglas Fairbanks's The Gaucho, a film first released on November 21, 1927. Similar to the original source material, the events of the short take place in the Pampas of Argentina with Mickey cast as the titular gaucho.
In the short, Mickey is introduced as he is on his way to a local bar and restaurant. He enters the establishment with the apparent intent to relax with some drinking and smoking. However, thanks to details on the wall, it is clear the Mickey is a bandit or a crook as we see a wanted sign for Mickey saying El gaucho.
Already at the bar are the resident barmaid and dancer Minnie Mouse and a fellow customer – Pete – who is also introduced as a wanted outlaw.
Minnie performs the tango and salsa, and both customers start flirting with her. Pete then attempts to put an early ending to their emerging rivalry by proceeding in kidnapping her. Mickey gives chase and soon catches up to his rival, where they then proceed in challenging each other to a sword duel. Of course, Mickey wins, in this case by covering Pete's head with a chamber pot he pulls out from under a bed.
It is also important to note that this version is the full, uncensored version of The Gallopin’ Gaucho, as it was when it was released. At the time, cartoons weren’t considered a largely family or children’s medium, rather just another type of filmmaking. As such, the short contains a racial stereotype as well as Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette and drinking beer.
The Barn Dance
In the same vein as the saying “If you’re not first, you’re last”, The Barn Dance is oft overlooked because it was the second animated short with synchronized sound, trailing behind Steamboat Willie. Like Steamboat Willie and unlike our next entry, The Barn Dance was planned as a sound cartoon, and there are many sound gags, including Mickey using a passing duck as a horn for his car. The Barn Dance also demonstrates the studio's increasing facility with mixing cartoon action with musical rhythm.
In the short, the titular event brings together Minnie Mouse and her two suitors: Mickey and Pete. The latter two and their vehicles are first seen arriving at Minnie's house in an attempt to pick her up for the dance, where Mickey turns up in his horse-cart while Pete in a newly purchased automobile.
Minnie initially chooses Pete to drive her to the dance but the automobile unexpectedly breaks down and she resorts to accepting Mickey's invitation. They are later seen dancing together, but Mickey proves to be a rather clumsy dancer as he repeatedly steps on Minnie's feet. She consequently turns down his invitation for a second dance. She instead accepts that of Pete, who proves to be a better dancing partner.
To remedy this, Mickey places a balloon in his shorts to allow him to be “light on his feet.” When he asks Minnie to dance once again, she accepts and is surprised to find his dancing skills to have apparently improved.
Pete soon discovers Mickey's trick and points it out to Minnie, who is disgusted by this attempt at deception. As a result, she leaves Mickey and resumes dancing with Pete, leaving a defeated Mickey crying on the floor.
Notably, this is a cartoon in which Mickey DOES NOT end up with Minnie, with her choosing the adversarial Pete instead.
In 2013, Walt Disney Animation Studios released a new short, Get A Horse! Which borrowed the look of Pete’s clothing and his car from The Barn Dance.
Plane Crazy
Here it is folks, the short that will always be a frustrating piece of trivia for those at a local pub or even on a cruise – unless of course, you’re in the know. The cartoon is the first animated project that stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, finished entirely in secret as Walt’s contracts surrounding Oswald the Lucky Rabbit were being finished. Plane Crazy was originally a silent film, and it was given a test screening to a theater audience and potential distributors on May 15, 1928, but failed to get a distributor. The screening took place a little over six months before the debut of Disney’s first cartoon in sound which also starred Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willie. Willie was a huge success and Plane Crazy was officially released as a sound cartoon on March 17, 1929. Despite being the first project animated with Mickey Mouse, it is actually the fourth Mickey short film to be given a wide release after Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin' Gaucho and The Barn Dance.
In the short, Mickey is attempting to fly an airplane while doing a caricature of then-relevant Charles Lindbergh. After building his own airplane, he does a simulation to ensure that the plane is safe for flight, but the flight fails, destroying the plane. Mickey then takes a roadster, a turkey's tail and the remains of his plane to create a new plane, asking Minnie to join him for its first flight after she presents him with a horseshoe for good luck. Together, they take an out-of-control flight with exaggerated, impossible situations that also features an appearance from Clarabelle Cow.
Interestingly, the silent version of the film is already in the public domain as of last year, considering its screening in 1928. Now, the sound version is available as well.
So the next time you’re at a trivia contest, pay attention to the phrasing of the question.
The Opry House
The Opry House is notable for introducing Mickey's signature white gloves in animation, which had previously been seen in title cards and posters before ever appearing in motion.
The cartoon starts with the opening of a theater and Mickey Mouse sweeping with a broom that he is using as an instrument and a dance partner. The band takes over, with a large variety of short gags occurring throughout, and Mickey becomes the star of the show, taking on the multiple roles of a vaudeville star. The cartoon ends with a humorous fight between Mickey, a piano and a stool, and his interactions are highly stylized in order to capture the essence of what a vaudeville performance should be.
Fans might also catch on that Mickey’s performances are synced with music, some of which is known, including "Yankee Doodle", Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C-sharp Minor (Op. 3/2)", Georges Bizet's Carmen, the Klezmer tune "Chusen Kala Mazel Tov", and "Goodnight, Ladies". The short also marks the first appearance of "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt in a cartoon.
This helps make The Opry House an early predecessor to what would come later in the Silly Symphonies, and further down the line with Fantasia. The concept was also borrowed by other studios, including the Merrie Melodies from Warner Bros., as well as other Tom & Jerry and Woody Woodpecker shorts.
Before this short entered the public domain, it had previously only been available as part of the Walt Disney Treasures DVD set, Mickey Mouse in Black & White Volume 2.
When the Cat's Away
Normally viewed as the size of all their friends, this short features Mickey and Minnie as actual mice-sized mice, where the antagonistic Tom Cat is quite large in comparison. After Tom Cat leaves his house, Mickey organizes all his mice friends to break into the cat's house. Once inside, Mickey and Minnie play the piano by dancing on the keys and, later, others play some of the cat's musical instruments and records (using themselves as the speaker and stylus).
When the Cat's Away recycled the premise from one of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks' earlier films, a 1925 Alice Comedies short called Alice Rattled by Rats. Although the titular cat signs his name as "Tom Cat," the character is actually known as Kat Nipp. Like Pete, this foe of Mickey's goes by multiple names.
The Barnyard Battle
As the title implies, this short features a battle between an invading army of cats and an army of mice trying to defend their homes and farm.Pete is depicted as a leading soldier of one army, and Mickey as a conscript of the other one. Before joining the army, Mickey has to pass a physical examination and go through training, where we see Mickey given a machine gun and sent to battle. Mickey's combat efforts are comical in depiction but prove effective enough in forcing the enemy to retreat. In the end, Mickey smacks a line of advancing soldiers on the head with a mallet, and is hailed as a hero by his fellow soldiers.
This is notably Mickey Mouse’s first appearance as a soldier, and the physical examination scene has since often been edited out, often noted as being disturbing. However, this scene is often pointed to as being the most memorable of the short film.
This isn’t the first time that one of Disney's cartoons sent the main character to war – Julius the Cat calls an army together in the 1926 Alice Comedies short Alice's Little Parade, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit goes to war in the 1927 cartoon Great Guns!
Also of note, The mouse officer shouting "Company, forward march!" is the first mammal character in the Mickey Mouse cartoons to speak a full sentence. Before this, characters have only communicated in single-syllable sounds and laughs, or in the case of Minnie Mouse, the greeting, "Yoo-Hoo!"
The Barnyard Battle also caused a bit of controversy on its international release. Walt Disney served as an ambulance driver in France during World War I, and the cats wear helmets that evoke Germany's helmets from that same period. As such, the short was considered offensive in Germany and was banned. In spite of this, Mickey Mouse became popular in Germany before the second World War broke out.
The Plowboy
Set entirely on a farm, Mickey and Minnie find whimsy through chores. As Mickey plows the field, Minnie milks the cow.
As the title implies, Mickey is depicted as a farmer, first seen with his horse while plowing a field. Then Minnie comes along with her cow. She has Mickey milk the cow for her. Mickey eventually manages to present Minnie with a full bucket of milk. At another point, the horse is stung by a bee, panics and starts galloping. By the time the horse calms down again, the plow has just broken. By the end, Mickey resorts to using a pig as a plow.
Although the horse in this short doesn't bear much resemblance to the Horace Horsecollar we know today, studio publicity in 1933 claimed The Plowboy as his first appearance, debuting on June 28th, 1929. The cow in this short is also Clarabelle Cow who, like Horace, would eventually become as anthropomorphic as Mickey and Minnie (Clarabelle's debut was in "Steamboat Willie" where she was, again, a regular cow).
The Plowboy marks Minnie Mouse's first time wearing gloves in animation. She was also voiced in this short not by Walt Disney, as she had been before, but by Marjorie Ralston, who was reluctantly recruited for the part from her normal job in Disney's Ink & Paint Department. Voice work wasn't something she particularly enjoyed, and she is only known to have voiced Minnie in 3 shorts, all of which were released in 1929.
The Karnival Kid
While we heard more dialogue than before in The Barnyard Battle, The Karnival Kid is especially important as it marks the first time we hear Mickey himself say actual words. Those words: “Hot Dogs! Hot Dogs!” would serve as the basis for one of Mickey’s trademark phrases – “Hot Dog!” and also later became the theme song for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
While Walt Disney had been squeaking for Mickey since Steamboat Willie, in The Karnival Kid, he only voices Minnie Mouse. Mickey's first words ever spoken were actually provided by composer Carl W. Stalling.
The Karnival Kid is broken into two distinct segments. The first segment features Mickey selling hot dogs at a carnival. The second segment is set later that night and features Mickey, accompanied by two cats, in a moonlight serenade.
Like many of Mickey's earliest shorts, The Karnival Kid reuses a lot of gags and even the premise from the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short All Wet. It would be recycled again, outside of Disney, when Ub Iwerks left and helped the Flip the Frog series in the 1932 short Circus"(distributed by MGM).
Also of note, the short features a moment where Mickey, in lieu of tipping his hat, actually tips his ears to Minnie Mouse. A moment that is said to have inspired the creation of the Mouse Ears hat that is still available for purchase to this day.
The 2013 Mickey Mouse short, New York Weenie, also shares a number of themes similar to that of The Karnival Kid. All of this combined makes The Karnival Kid a fairly significant animated short in the Disney canon. That said, prior to this, it has only been available on the home release of Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White.
The Skeleton Dance
The first entry in Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony series, The Skeleton Dance was produced and directed by Walt Disney himself, and animated by Ub Iwerks. In the short film, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard (making it a modern film example of medieval European "danse macabre").
Walt asked an old friend, Carl Stalling, to produce the soundtracks for his first Mickey Mouse cartoons (The Gallopin’ Gaucho and Plane Crazy) where Stalling suggest to Walt creating a series of "musical novelty" cartoons combining music and animation (which became the genesis for the Silly Symphony series) and reportedly pitched an idea about skeletons dancing in a graveyard.
The short is full of visual gags as the skeletons emerge and start dancing, including one where a skeleton takes two bones and plays its partner's spine and head to produce music. Another skeleton dances alone and then plays a cat's tail as if it were a violin.
The short is considered a classic, and has been released on various forms of home media over the years. In 2023, a remastered version of The Skeleton Dance arrived on Disney+. Stalling would eventually join Disney's studio as staff composer.
Mickey's Follies
Long before "Mickey Mouse March" and "The Hot Dog Song," there was "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo," which originated in Mickey's tenth short, Mickey's Follies. Released on August 28th, 1929, the short found Mickey Mouse and his barnyard pals putting on a Ziegfield Follies-style review.
Directed by Ub Iwerks and Wilfred Jackson, Mickey's Follies was Disney's second attempt at synchronizing words with animation, this time through song. It was no easy task, and Mickey's mouth has more teeth than he later would, as this process was still trial and error.
The song, "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo," was Disney's first original song, with shorts prior to this comprised of instrumental versions of well-known ditties. It was written by Carl Stalling and Walt Disney, both of whom also sing on this version. However, it's Carl Stalling who sings for Mickey, while Walt provides Minnie's titular "yoo hoo"'s. The song was intended to become Mickey Mouse's theme song (as evidenced by the chicken who advertises it as such), and an instrumental version would introduce most of Mickey's shorts going forward through 1933.
The song also became the anthem of the Mickey Mouse Club, local chapters of fans who would gather in movie theaters to rewatch the shorts.
Mickey's piano-top dance will be familiar to frequent viewers of Disney Channel in the 90s, where he appeared inside a Mickey-shaped TV in bumpers and chyrons.
El Terrible Toreador
The second SillySymphony was directed by Walt Disney himself, released on September 26th, 1929. Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen was primarily used to underscore the story, set in Spain.
A humble toreador and a wealthy man fight over a restaurant server. When the toreador enters the ring at the bullfight, he is cheered on by the waitress as the wealthy man subtly carries out a plot to make him look like a fool.
El Terrible Toreador was successful in its initial run, but the increasing quality of the Silly Symphony series has led to it being largely forgotten today, especially in the wake of The Skeleton Dance. It doesn't help that the premise and antics of the short are so similar to the more polished output from the Mickey Mouse series. Aside from the toreador destroying the bull by pulling out his innards, you can easily see the three main characters being played by Mickey, Pete, and Minnie without much structural change.
In fact, that very scene with the bull is what landed it in the “In The Vault” section of the Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies, Volume 2 DVD, which was the only home media release of the short.
Mickey's Choo-Choo
The cartoon opens with Mickey piloting an anthropomorphic steam engine, ringing his bell and blowing the engine's whistle. An early showing of Walt’s love of trains.
As the engine and its coal tender back to collect a boxcar, the engine rests with Mickey, its engineer, fuelling it, and feeding his engine with coal from the tender. As the engine eats too much coal and burps, Mickey decides to have some spaghetti, until Minnie comes along.
Minnie plays a musical song (Dvořák's Humoresque) while Mickey does the same. As Mickey looks at his watch, only to realize that they are late, he yells 'All aboard!' to the engine, which whistles in cheerful response after Mickey gets on board. While climbing a hill, the engine ends up having problems, with a finale sequence that features a runaway train car that runs into a cow, and explodes into a tree. In the final shot, Mickey and Minnie ride a handcar into the sunset.
Some of the gags are pulled from or reminiscent of the Oswald short, Trolley Troubles, and the closing shot of Mickey and Minnie on the handcar inspired a famous toy version from Lionel Trains that made so much money that Mickey was known as "the mouse that saved Lionel.”
Mickey’s Choo-Choo also contains more dialogue from Mickey, featuring more than a couple of words plus the singing of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
The Jazz Fool
Like many of the early Mickey Mouse shorts, The Jazz Fool drew on contemporary pop culture of the late 1920s. The film's title is a play on two popular movies of the era – The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool. In terms of both plot and substance, The Jazz Fool is very similar to another 1929 Mickey short, The Opry House, which also found Mickey duking it out on stage with a piano.
The short follows the arrival of Mickey's Big Road Show in town. A calliope carries the star of the show past farms, leading a parade of barnyard animals to attract an audience. Once parked, it's time for the big show. But when Mickey gets carried away at the piano, the piano fights back.
While not a lot is remembered specifically about the short, many fans are quick to point out the quality of the personality animation of Mickey. He is often showing his anger, frustration or happiness at what he’s playing on the piano. Well done, simple moves of the eyebrow and eyes, turns of his mouth, or the direction of his nose or shoulders expresses the entire emotion. It’s a very expressive Mickey, part of the evolution of his character over the last few shorts.
Springtime
The third Silly Symphonies cartoon (released only days before the stock market crash of 1929) features a cast of Flowers, ladybugs, centipedes, birds, and frogs that dance in time to the usual blend of themes from the light classics.
The music used in the film includes "Morning Mood" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, Franz von Blon's "Whispering Flowers", Amilcare Ponchielli's music for "Dance of the Hours" and Jacques Offenbach's "Gaîté Parisienne.”
This cartoon also makes an appearance in the 1961 animated film 101 Dalmatians, when the puppies are watching TV with Jasper and Horace.
And, further proving the evolution of music and animation stemming from the Silly Symphonies, one of the music pieces from the latter half of the short would later be reused for the full "Dance of the Hours" in Fantasia.
Jungle Rhythm
In Mickey’s 13th short, he wanders into a jungle and comes across several animals, including elephants, monkeys, and lions.
The short is more spectacle than plot, and also marks the first time that Mickey has left the barnyard or countryside and found himself in a far off jungle – with no explanation given.
A monkey and parrot begin playing a tune on Mickey's accordion, and it turns into a concert for the jungle animals. Mickey dances with a lion, a bear and a pair of monkeys to the tune of Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube. Then two ostriches dance as Mickey plays "Auld Lang Syne" on a makeshift saxophone. Mickey continues with "Aloha 'Oe", "Turkey in the Straw" and "Yankee Doodle.”
A hula dance performed by a lion did land the short in the land of censorship in some regions, though it is presented here complete.
Despite the lack of real plot, Jungle Rhythm has a bit of a legacy on its own, providing the inspiration for the first adventure storyline in the Mickey Mouse comic strip in 1930, and generations later as a playable level in the video game, Epic Mickey.
Hell's Bells
Hell’s Bells, perhaps unsurprisingly, follows Satan and the other devils' happenings in Hell. As part of the Silly Symphonies series, the short features a variety of classical compositions, including "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg, "Funeral March of a Marionette" by French composer Charles Gounod, which is familiar also as the theme tune to the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Even for 1929, the short received mix reviews, with The Film Daily saying "Few Laughs: Hell's Bells is evidently a follow-up on the success of The Skeleton Dance, but it does not approach that offering in laugh possibilities. It is pretentious as cartoons go. Full of fire and brimstone with a sort of a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk finish that is the best thing in it.”
That ending sees a little demon who has revolted against Satan being chased to the edge of a cliff. The little demon hides there as Satan attempts to look for him, but when he attempts this, Satan is kicked off the cliff by the little demon. Satan then tumbles down, grabbing on to a ledge that sees his body stretch out like an accordion. The fire below then tugs at his tail and spanks him (it was 1929!) The fire then drags Satan down, ultimately killing him. The film ends with the fire consuming the screen, and leaving behind a 'The End' card.
The short is definitely one of the rarer seen, especially when coupled that it was only ever released on home media as part of the Walt Disney Treasures DVD set, More Silly Symphonies Volume 2.
The Haunted House
The fourteenth Mickey Mouse cartoon was also the first to take on a horror theme, as we follow Mickey who is trapped in a haunted house and forced to make music.
Mickey is constantly startled by bats, spiders, ghosts, and skeletons. At one point, Mickey is cornered by a cloaked figure and several skeletons, prompting him to play the music. When the music stops, Mickey sneaks away and tries to escape but is spotted by the skeletons who try to stop him. As he runs into dead ends and tries to open a door, the door handle is a skeleton hand, who shakes Mickey frantically. A chase ensues, and Mickey eventually falls out of a window. He then encounters more skeletons, including one that pops out from the door of an outhouse who is busy using the toilet. As Mickey runs away terrified, the skeleton shuts the door when Mickey leaves.
This gag, along with another featuring a chamber pot, both landed the short in some hot water with state censors in some areas.
Plus, with the large amount of skeletons in the short, it comes as no surprise that a small amount of animation was recycled from The Skeleton Dance, although the majority was fresh.
The short also got an introduction from Leonard Maltin in its only home release, on the Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black & White Volume 2 DVD set, due to Mickey's "Mammy!" impression, which refers to Al Jolson's famous blackface performance, My Mammy. In his intro, Maltin explains the origins of racial stereotypes seen in Disney cartoons of the 30s and 40s.
The Haunted House paved the way for other, more notable, shorts from Mickey’s rich history, including The Mad Doctor, The Gorilla Mystery, and even decades later with Runaway Brain.
With the public domain entry above, you can see the full uncensored version.
The Merry Dwarfs
Another Silly Symphonies short, The Merry Dwarfs sees the residents of a dwarf village dance as they go about their business and chores while some of them play music. It is a Silly Symphony after all. Some of them played the (shoe-covered) feet of centipedes and grasshoppers with hammers, while others played instruments such as saxophones or drums.
Notably, the short features several groups of dwarves that dance with barrels and beer glasses, continuing their dancing after they have drunk their glasses of beer. A pair of dwarves, dancing on a flower, fall into a barrel of beer and then come out of the barrel drunk and continue dancing while inebriated.
All to music of the Anvil Chorus from Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 opera Il trovatore.
It was those scenes of drunken tomfoolery and inebriated shenanigans that landed it in the “In The Vault” section of its only home release, once again part of the Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies Volume 2.
Wild Waves
The last Mickey Mouse cartoon to be animated by Ub Iwerks, Wild Waves was also the last film that composer Carl Stalling worked in with the Walt Disney Studio.
In it, we follow Mickey who is now a lifeguard, sitting on his beach chair and playing the banjo to amuse an audience of ducks, pelicans, penguins, and sea lions. Minnie Mouse changes into swimwear of the era and walks to the edge of the beach where a huge wave crashes and drags her out to sea.
Mickey rushes to her rescue, swimming through the waves (and midair) to locate her before bringing her back to the beach where more musical fun is had.
Some of the lifeguard gags and the animation of Mickey saving Minnie on the waves in the film were allegedly recycled from an earlier Oswald short, All Wet. The footage of the singing walrus was later reused in the 1930 Silly Symphonies short Arctic Antics, and the dancing sea lions were reused in the 1931 Mickey Mouse short The Castaway.
While Wild Waves certainly marks the end of one era for Mickey, it launches another. Wild Waves was the first Mickey short to be directed by Burt Gillett, who would direct more than 30 Mickey shorts over the next several years. The short also marks the final use of the original Mickey Mouse title card until the debut of Get A Horse! In 2013. Don’t be fooled though, as newer releases of the short do use the new title card with Mickey’s face.