The first color
Mickey Mouse cartoon, and still one of his most popular of the
Classic Disney Shorts,
"The Band Concert" is a
1935 cartoon in which Mickey attempts to conduct Giacomo Rossini's
William Tell Overture at a outdoor picnic, but is frequently interrupted by
Donald Duck, who attempts to play "
Turkey in the Straw"
with his infinite arsenal of fifes. Hilarity Ensues.
The short currently holds #3 on Jerry Beck's "
The 50 Greatest Cartoons" list, the highest ranking Disney short on it.
Tropes
- Amusing Injuries: Horace Horsecollar hits a colleague instrumentalist with his cymbals and a hammer in an attempt to kill an annoying bee.
- Call Back: The Sega CD version of Mickey Mania has a level based on this cartoon included as a bonus. It is also a side-scrolling projector screen level in Epic Mickey 2.
- House of Mouse in one episode had Mickey briefly don his band concert uniform for a second when he was shifting through his many designs over the years to prove he was really Mickey in that episode.
- When Mickey meets Horace Horsecollar in Epic Mickey, Horace tries to entice Mickey's memory of him with this cartoon among others. (The provided photo had Horace almost out of frame.)
- Cartoon Conductor
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Near the end the entire orchestra hangs from a large tree, resembling a Christmas tree.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud
- Early Installment Weirdness: Mostly with Donald's long-billed appearance. Donald also seems to be almost a toned-down Screwy Squirrel here, and is much shorter than Mickey.
- Also Mickey himself. It can be a bit jarring for a viewer used to the mild mannered Only Sane Man character he later became to see him outright lose his temper and break Donald's fifes.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a band concert.
- Mickey Mousing Despite a lot of the music coming from on-screen instruments, there is still a lot of this going on.
- Nice Hat: Mickey and several of the band players wear them.
- Ice Cream In My Pants
- Running Gag:
- Mickey's sleeves are too long and keep falling over his hands and baton.
- Donald playing Turkey in the Straw on his fifes.
- The Unintelligible: Donald, as always.
- Visual Pun: Peter Pig, having lost layer after layer of clothing to tree branches, finally falls naked into a barrel (i.e., a pork barrel).
- Walking Out On The Show: Subverted. The audience leaves not because they hate the show, but because they're fleeing from an approaching tornado. When Mickey finishes, the only one left applauding is Donald.
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