Just so you know, the tune used in Steamboat Willie is called Turkey in the Straw.

In 1928, Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig, produced a talkie cartoon called "Blue Notes," starring his own character, Bolivar the Talking Ostrich. Colvig was a musician, a circus clown, a newspaper cartoonist, and also did special animated effects for famed comedy direct Mac Sennett. He produced it in tandem with Walter Lantz, who also did work for Sennett. Alas, the cartoon was never released and has been lost to time.

Steamboat Willie isn't even Mickey Mouse's first cartoon, Plane Crazy is.

Belated Happy New Years to you, Benedict! Well- Actually, the Fleischer brothers, in collaboration with Lee De Forest, made a handful sound cartoons between roughly 1925 and 1927. They were follow-the-bouncing-ball-and-sing Screen Songs, and they were designed for synchronized sound, not silent cartoons with sound tracks added on later. The problem was, at the time there were only about 34 East Coast theaters wired for De Forest's Phonofilm system, so these Fleischer cartoons never got the public exposure they should have had. In fact, it's only been recently that they were rediscovered and research done on them. Also, at the time they were released there was an active dislike for so-called “talking” pictures. Audiences were either indifferent or disapproving, and Hollywood was scornful of the whole idea. When De Forest, promoting his his Phonofilm short subjects, said “Talking pictures are perfected”, the editor of PHOTOPLAY magazine replied, “So is castor oil.” It took the incredible public success of THE JAZZ SINGER to make the concept of sound movies truly viable. Yep, DINNER TIME is lousy, and Disney saw it while he was in New York City recording the soundtrack for STEAMBOAT WILLIE. In a letter to his brother Roy, Disney dismissed DINNER TIME as “...a lot of racket and nothing else... It merely had an orchestra playing and added some noises.” He was right, but it now looks like DINNER TIME was not the product of ineptness, but deliberately made to be crappy, an act of sabotage, so to speak. If my information is correct, Paul Terry did not want to make a “talkie” cartoon for his producer Amedee Van Beuren , but was forced to do it. Terry and his partner animator Frank Moser didn’t like Van Beuren, and as Moser would later testify, “When Disney came out with sound, I said to Terry, ‘Paul,’ I said, ‘this fellow Disney is going into sound. What are we going to do to keep pace with him?’ And Terry told me that he wouldn’t do anything for Van Beuren, and immediately thereafter Van Beuren fired him.” It’s probable that DINNER TIME was the reason Terry was fired. “Oh, you want a sound cartoon, Boss? Okay, I’ll give you a -blankity-blank sound cartoon, you blankity-blank!” Terry and Moser would go on to form Terrytoons in 1929, and make decent enough sound cartoons with good music scores composed by Philip Scheib (In fact, these early Terrytoons would open with the live acton silhouette of Scheib conducting a small orchestra superimposed over an animated background). Van Beuren would go on to form his own animation studio, releasing cartoons through RKO Radio until 1936, when Disney signed with RKO, forcing Van Beuren to close down, it’s staff scattering to Fleischer, Terrytoons, and Hollywood. What most people don’t know is that STEAMBOAT WILLIE was a long shot gamble on Disney’s part. If it failed, he would’ve gone bankrupt and in all probability would’ve been forced to abandon animation as a career. In 1927, Disney lost the successful “Oswald The Lucky Rabbit” series, along with most of his staff, to his producer, Charles Mintz. Disney didn’t own the rabbit, Universal Pictures did, and Mintz was contracted to produce the cartoons, which he did through Walt, who was technically a producer, too, but in a way Mintz’s employee. After this, Walt swore that from now on he’d be his own boss, and that he’d own any characters he’d create. On the return train trip from New York to Hollywood, Walt came up with Mickey Mouse, and back at his studio, out of his own pocket, would produce the first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, both silents, both written and directed by him and mostly animated by Ub Iwerks, who stayed with Disney after his other animators jumped ship. These two cartoons were as good as any of the Oswald’s Walt produced, but no exhibitor was interested in them. Since sound was the coming thing, Walt took a big chance by making a “talkie” cartoon. Animated in Hollywood, with a score composed by Carl Stalling and recorded in New York City, Disney spend around $5000 of his own money to produce STEAMBOAT WILLIE, not cheap in 1920s dollars. (Note: A bone of contention between Mintz and Disney were costs- Disney was making the Oswald cartoons for about $1200 apiece. However, Mintz’s New York studio was producing Krazy Kat cartoons for $800-$900 per. But Disney was spending money to make the better cartoon. He was out for quality, and didn’t care how must he had to spend to get it.) Again, STEAMBOAT WILLIE was a gamble- He had no exhibitor lined up to release his cartoon, and if none of them wanted it, Disney was sunk. While trying to negotiate a release for his cartoon through the New York office of Universal Pictures, the studio that owned Oswald, Disney talked them into running STEAMBOAT WILLIE at Universal's flagship Broadway theatre, The Colony, for free. Disney and Stalling were at the first public screening of STEAMBOAT WILLIE, and as Stalling would later relate “We sat on almost the last row and heard the laughs and snickers all around us.” STEAMBOAT WILLIE was a sensation, and it was the start of Mickey Mouse becoming a world-wide icon, and Walt Disney a cultural phenomenon that still affects us 58 years after his death. There’s a story that in 1929 Disney, wanting to get out of the limited states-rights distribution system, tried to talk MGM, the most prestigious of the old Hollywood studios, into releasing his Mickey Mouse cartoons, only during a showing of one of them for studio head Louie B. Mayer in his private screening room, Mayer ordered the projectionist to stop the cartoon, turned to Disney, told him that the sight of a three foot high animated mouse up on the screen would make pregnant women miscarry, then turned and walked out on a befuddled Walt. Ironically, a few years later, MGM would commission Disney to produce a Mickey Mouse sequence for one of their big budget musicals. There are three of the Fleischer-De Forest Screen Song cartoons on YouTub- “Margie’, “My Old Kentucky Home”, and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” if you’re interested in predecessors to STEAMBOAT WILLIE. Also, CAVIAR and HOT TURKEY are two good examples of early sound Terrytoons you might want to watch. Well, that’s enough. Thank you for the heads up. I go now.

9:46 - 9:49 couldn't put it better myself!

For your 39 review pls review daffy duck in hollywood

Oh well. Steamboat Willie is now Public Domain? That’s all that counts. For now anyway😐