The Karnival Kid

A little odd cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, in the first outing where he speaks, trying to impress Minnie the Shimmy Dancer with a serenade at a carnival. Some catchy music here and there, but not much funny stuff to see here. Just a lot of wacky singing and dancing.

Grade C

This is one of the early Mickey shorts and Mickey has a bit more of an edge to his personality in these early shorts than does the mouse most people would readily recognize as Mickey. The backgrounds and other things in the scenes are different too, such as the hot dogs Mickey sells. Very good and entertaining short, this runs on Ink and Paint Club and may wind up on DVD in the not too distant future. Well worth seeking out. Recommended.

Up until "The Karnival Kat", the world had never heard Mickey Mouse speak. Well, when I heard him, I was in for a shock! Instead of the usual falsetto voice originally made by Walt Disney himself, Mickey has a gruff and unattractive voice--one that sounded very strange coming out of the world's most famous mouse! Well, apart from that, the sound itself was a big problem in this film--with a VERY scratchy and tinny soundtrack. Considering it came out in 1929, however, I will cut it some slack--but not when it comes to Mickey's lousy voice! Apparently, Walt and the rest must have agreed that this voice was all wrong, as it soon would become what we've all come to love.

As for the cartoon, although Mickey is in it selling hot dogs (much like he did in "All Wet") and you also see Minnie, they are only in the first portion of the cartoon. Much of it consists of showing carnival life as well as a large portion near the end devoted to a couple caterwauling cats. It's all rather cute but not up to the usual standards of a Mickey cartoon. Because of this, devoted fans will enjoy it but others might want to think about seeing some other cartoon instead.

UPDATE: I saw a copy of this posted on YouTube and the sound was a bit better.

Besides providing Disney with consistent musical soundtracks for the "Silly Symphony" cartoons, Stalling provided Mickey Mouse's-and film animation's-first words ever said on the screen. In July 1929's "The Karnival Kid," Mickey (Stalling) barks out "Hot dogs, hot dogs" during the first few minutes of the cartoon while selling his food from a cart. He later sees Minnie Mouse at the carnival, and gives a series of commands to his animated hot dogs to impress her. Minnie is heard giving the hot dogs' names, her voice spoken by Walt.

"The Karnival Kid" was Mickey's ninth installment. His appearances before his first speaking role consisted of whistles, laughing and cackling, but never was he heard using the English language. Disney's distribution company for the Mickey series, Celebrity Pictures, and its owner, Pat Powers, was initially against the mouse speaking, fearing that overseas sales would be dampened by those who didn't understand English. For the Disney animators, contorting their characters' mouths were of an enormous challenge. Drawing how a face looks, especially on animals, was a new style for them to translate onto paper. The artists eventually nailed down the expressions to make them realistic to their viewers.

"The Karnival Kid" later gave costume designer Roy Williams the idea to pattern Mickey Mouse Club members' hats with ears after a scene showing Mickey tipping the top of his head to introduce himself to Minnie Mouse.

From the very first shot of this animated short we know we're in Cartoon Dream World: the setting is a rowdy carnival in full swing, but our view of the festivities is blocked by swirling helium balloons. When the balloons drift away it's revealed that a cow is dangling from them, levitating over the crowd, grinning happily and blowing on a noise-maker that uncoils like a snake and emits a "Bronx cheer." Floating above a peanut vendor (who happens to be a pig), the cow razzes him with this device and scares him so badly that the pig leaps out of his clothes. Now clad in underwear, the angry porcine peanut vendor uses a sling-shot to burst the cow's balloons. The cow plummets to the ground but is cheerfully unaffected by the experience, which she demonstrates by turning to the camera and defiantly blowing a raspberry right in our faces. And that's just the first shot!

It looks very much like something produced by the Fleischer Studio, and we expect to see Koko the Clown and Betty Boop pop up any second, but in fact this is a Disney cartoon dating from the earliest days of Mickey Mouse. The atmosphere sure is different from what we might expect, based on familiarity with Mickey's later, buttoned-down adventures in suburbia; this cartoon has a low-down attitude quite unlike Disney's later output. Here, Minnie Mouse is a midway dancer who makes like Little Egypt, while a monkey beats out a tattoo rhythm on bongos and the barker promises "she'll put you in a trance/with her hoochy-coochy dance." Mickey is a hot dog vendor who sasses the barker and tries to make time with Minnie. The Karnival Kid marked the first occasion when the Disney animators gave the Mouse dialog to speak, but it was made before Walt himself began supplying the voice. It's not the familiar innocent squeak, either; as befits the setting, Mickey's voice is a bit raspy, as you'd expect from a carny worker.

There's a startling scene where Mickey sells Minnie a frankfurter, a scene that is far more suggestive what the Disney folks would tend to do later on. To pay for her purchase, Minnie reaches into her stocking for her money supply—which makes Mickey blush—but when she attempts to bite into the hot dog the thing suddenly comes to life, and attempts to escape. Mickey catches it, pulls down its "pants" and gives it a good spanking. (I'm not making this up!) The frankfurter pulls its pants back up, weeps with shame, then bites Mickey's finger and escapes again. And then, having no place else to go, our story culminates in a midnight serenade. Outside Minnie's trailer, under the moon, Mickey strums his guitar while two disreputable-looking cats yowl "Sweet Adeline" in weird, nasal tones. After this extended musical number the film wraps up with an anticlimactic gag, something quite unlike the neat resolutions we find in the Disney studio's mature work, and when the show is over you still feel like you've just watched a Fleischer cartoon.

This short is historically significant because it's Mickey Mouse's first real "talkie," but in a larger sense it signifies the road not taken for its production house. If you ever wondered what Disney cartoons might have looked like if the animators had been more loony and naughty, more like the gang at the Fleischer Studio or WB's Termite Terrace, then take a look at The Karnival Kid. I don't believe the guys at Disney ever again designed such a seamy setting for a Mickey cartoon, but perhaps that's just as well.