Building a Building

Mickey Mouse operates a steam shovel; Pegleg Pete is his foreman; Minnie Mouse sells box lunches. Mickey must save the day when Pete makes advances to Minnie.

"Building a Building" is a marvelously inventive film that takes full advantage of its construction-site setting for gags and thrills. Heroic little Mickey is utterly sympathetic as the adversary of the brutish Pete, even though the mouse's careless work habits (he's so focused on Minnie that he accidentally throws dirt and bricks on Pete) give his boss good reason to be angry with him.

Pete's attempts to kiss an unwilling Minnie remind us of how Mickey has changed in a few short years. In "Plane Crazy" (1928), it was Mickey trying to force himself on her. She even had to jump out of his plane to escape him.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Mickey is busy BUILDING A BUILDING...until he's distracted by Miss Minnie, who has arrived to sell her box lunches.

With a definite nod to Harold Lloyd, this very funny little black & white film had enough laughs and thrills to earn it an Academy Award nomination. Pegleg Pete is suitably black-hearted as Mickey's boss; Pluto has a cameo as the means of locomotion for Minnie's lunch cart. For the record, Minnie's box lunches contain baloney, macaroni and a huckleberry pie, plus corn on the cob, all for only 15¢. Walt Disney provided Mickey with his squeaky voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a storm of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Back through the shorts on Disney Plus, in alphabetical order, and I land on "Building a Building" a 1933 Mickey Mouse short, that was nominated for an Oscar.

Mickey Mouse (Walt Disney) is working on a construction site, when Minnie (Marcellite Garner) arrives to sell lunches. Site foreman Pete (Pinto Colvig) sees Minnie and tries to flirt with her, but she only has eyes for Mickey. The pair fight until the lunch bell chimes when Pete kidnaps Minnie using the crane.

I liked this one a lot, the building site is a bit of a trope in cartoons and all the classic moments are here, such as blinding walking on planks of wood that fill in gaps in the building. It's set to a score, which I prefer in my Disney shorts and it's really strong animaton. I like this style a lot.

Some of these shorts have really been hit and miss, but this was a good one.

This cartoon has the feel of an old-time melodrama in some respects and has one of the least-interesting Disney villains in Pete. The Mickey in the early cartoons is more prone to mischief and is more frenetic, bearing more resemblance to Krazy Kat than to the mouse that most know and love today. The cartoons were more slapstick early on and Mickey evolved over time. Well worth seeing, it runs on the Disney Channel when the spirit moves them. I wish the shorts would come into print in a substantial way.

BUILDING A BUILDING is a Mickey and Minnie Mouse cartoon and is one of the few Mickey cartoons to have been Oscar nominated. The earliest cartoons in the series were not eligible for the award, as it wasn't created until the 1932 Oscars--several years after the first Mickey cartoon, PLANE CRAZY (1928). And, oddly, the wonderful full-color Mickey cartoons of the mid to late 30s were ignored by the committee in favor of Silly Symponies cartoons by Disney. It's a shame as he was a great character, as were Goofy and Donald. I guess this sort of cartoon for the masses wasn't deemed artsy enough to merit nomination.

BUILDING A BUILDING finds Mickey working at a construction site. When Minnie comes to the place selling box lunches, Mickey goes ga-ga and pays little attention to what he's doing, but being a cartoon he naturally isn't killed. A bit later, the boss, Pegleg Pete, sees Minnie and kidnaps her. So it's up to Mickey to rescue his sweetie. I liked how as Mickey fought this huge bully, Minnie didn't just stand there passively (like you see in so many films)--no wonder Mickey was in love! The cartoon has a bit more singing than usual and because of this, the humor is a bit less pronounced than a typical Mickey Mouse cartoon. Overall, it's pretty ordinary for the franchise--with the typical finely drawn animation and backgrounds as well as very charming characters.