Spooky Season has begun and one of my all time favorite things to watch is The Skeleton Dance! It is almost 100 years old and still a fan favorite to watch this time of year. Not a lot of people know that The Skeleton Dance was the first ever Silly Symphony cartoon that really started the successful run of shorts and features for Walt Disney. When you are looking at all the Disney Halloween merch and you see those iconic skeletons, hopefully you know they are from this cartoon short. If you’re like me, you like to know the little back stories and history behind your favorite Disney things so I thought this week would be a good time to share some those tid bits about The Skeleton Dance!
How It Came To Be!
We all know the story about Walt Disney on the train to go to New York to talk to investors after losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and creating Mickey Mouse on the way. Well this story starts on a train as well! Walt was headed, once again to New York to arrange distribution of Mickey Mouse shorts and record the soundtrack for Steamboat Willie in 1928 and had a stop in Kansas City. There he met with an old friend named Carl Stalling to see about having him compose scores for the first two Mickey shorts, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho. Stalling would end up on the Disney studios staff as a composer and he pitched the idea of a series of cartoons combining music and animation that would end up being the Silly Symphony series. One of his ideas was about dancing skeletons in a graveyard that would end up as The Skeleton Dance!
It didn’t take long for Walt Disney to fall in love with the idea and animation was started on The Skeleton Dance in January of 1929. Ub Iwerks animated most of the film in just six weeks! When something is a good idea it never takes that long to get it right, thats how I always feel choreographing a dance, when it’s right it just flows. The soundtrack was recorded in February of 1929 and the final negative of the film only cost $5,485.40!
Release & Reactions
Walt and Roy always had a plan on how to get their films noticed and distributed the way they should be and The Skeleton Dance was no different. They wanted to make sure it got national distribution so they arranged for The Skeleton Dance to play at the Carthay Circle Theater in LA and the Fox Theater in San Franciso. The run was in June of 1929, funny to think it was just a short film then and not marketed as a Halloween special. The Skeleton Dance would also run in New York’s Roxy Theater in July and in August Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute The Skeleton Dance and had its official release at the Roxy in NY that September. This release at the Roxy made it the first picture in the theater’s history to have a return engagement!
The movie was actually banned in Denmark for being “too macabre” but otherwise it was met with rave reviews! The audience loved all the funny ways the skeletons played music on each other and danced through the graveyard. One magazine review said the best thing about it was how the skeletons who were meant to be scary were scared themselves! Some reviews warned not to bring your kids because it may be too scary, I wonder if thats the case now too? My kids have watched it and loved it since they were toddlers so not sure they are a good measure! Hahaha!
The Skeleton Dance was released on home media in 2001 as part of a Walt Disney Treasures/Silly Symphonies, again in 2002 with Mickey Mouse in Black and White and it was included on the diamond edition blu-ray of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 2009. You could also enjoy The Skeleton Dance on Disney+ as of July 2023 which I appreciated since I always had to try and hind a decent copy on YouTube every year before that!
So What Is The Skeleton Dance?
Well if you have never watched this piece of art, I highly recommend you hop on Disney+ and pull it up immediately! The story is that midnight has come in the graveyard, there is an owl hooting and a black cat hissing and meowing in the night. But the skeletons have decided to come out and play! They sneak out of their graves and begin a musical dance routine that is so creative and hilarious. They play the xylophone on each others bones, use the black cats tail as an instrument and so much more. It’s all choreographed and timed perfectly to the score that is equally as wonderful as the animation. In the end, the sun must come up which means the skeletons have to return to their graves and chaos ensues as they rush to beat the sun! Simply put, it’s a spooky, funny, well made classic that you should add to your Halloween collection. It has certainly stood the test of time!
Conclusion
Every once in a while I like to throw in a little Disney history and write a little love letter to my favorite Disney things, like The Skeleton Dance! It’s fun to know little fun details about the things I enjoy and I so love sharing them with you. If you love The Skeleton Dance like I do, I hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about how it came to be and if you have never watched it I hope this inspired you to go look it up! It is definitely worth the watch and despite it having a little spooky vibe, I don’t think it’s too scary for the kiddos but you know your kids! Thank you all for giving me a space to get my Disney nerd out and for reading along! Have a magical day!