“Skeleton Dance” – ancient Disney and VERY Corpse Bride

[gaba]

Hello, here’s a fun little thing recently linked to on BoingBoing.net – a 1929 Disney cartoon featuring (you guessed!) dancing skeletons, quite reminiscent of certain ideas in the “Remains of the Day” dance sequence.

(On the other hand, when you think of dancing skeletons as such… you’re bound to come up with similar ideas anyway – or at least one ‘xylophone’ sequence , so this is hardly a revelation.) But since it also features Carl Stalling’s music (whom Elfman mentioned many times) I thought you might like to check it out!

original link: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/09/skeleton_dance_carto.html

[degeneratelite]

Yes, this is a great short. If you like this one, another old cartoon featuring (or at least including) skeletons, is the 1932 Fleischer studios ‘ “Minnie the Moocher.” This is a wonderful piece set to the music of Cab Calloway (actually a tune that Elfman used to perform in his Mystic Nights days). I personally prefer the Fleischer cartoons to the disney ones They can be downloaded or watched at http://www.vintagetooncast.com or on youtube, since they’re public domain now. Great stuff.

[TenderLumpling]

[RCox]

I believe this was the very first of Disney’s “Silly Symphonies.”

[gaba]

Awesome, thanks! I remember Danny mentioning in an interview how utterly “random” the music numbers were in Betty Boop and all the weird but wonderful ‘apropos-nothing’ surreal ideas all crammed in there. Well… he was right, haha.

That was lovely. Big thanks. Now I’ll keep on singing the Sqeezit version all evening, gah!

[Monsterhead]

Though it was a Walt Disney cartoon, Ub Iwerks actually drew and animated “The Skeleton Dance”. I noticed it right away when I saw COPRSE BRIDE in the theater.

Fans of spooky old skeleton cartoons should catch another great “skeleton” short hat Iwerks made in the 1930’s called “Spooks”, starring the ill-fated Flip The Frog. Its on the DVD “Cartoons That Time Forgot Volume 2”.

[Author]

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