Mickey Mouse in Living Color

Bonus short created for the 1932 Academy Awards banquet. Notable as the first time Mickey Mouse was ever shown on screen in color.

In his first Technicolor short, Mickey conducts an orchestra full of familiar faces who each have their own unique methods of playing their instruments. Hot dog seller Donald Duck arrives on the scene and wastes no time in frustrating Mickey, by trying to join in with a seemingly endless supply of flutes. Things don’t improve when the band finds itself swept up by a tornado.

With his garden full of insects devouring everything in sight, Mickey resorts to bug poison to rid himself of the pests. When he accidentally sprays himself with the poison, he finds everything around him suddenly growing, and soon both he and Pluto are smaller than the mushrooms. With the bugs now towering above them, they decide to take revenge.

A frozen lake is the setting for this ensemble short. While Mickey is set upon dazzling Minnie with his skating ability, Goofy tries his hand at ice fishing, naturally with his own unorthodox method. Elsewhere, Donald finds fun in putting ice skates on Pluto’s feet and watching the dog struggle across the ice, but he soon gets his comeuppance when a gust of wind blows him up into the air like a kite, over an icy waterfall.

Mickey gives Pluto a stern warning that if he continues to chase cats, he’ll have plenty to answer for on his judgment day. As Mickey bathes a kitten that he has rescued from Pluto, Pluto is lured from the house by the spirit of a cat and into a cave shaped like a cat’s head which bears a certain resemblance to the Cave of Wonders from 1992’s Aladdin. Once inside, the cave snaps its mouth shut and trapped inside Pluto is clapped in irons and put on trial by the felines for crimes he has committed against cats. This is one of the more stunning shorts of the disc, in terms of both story and animation.

Firefighters Mickey, Donald, and Goofy come to the rescue of a burning building. As expected, things don’t go smoothly; Mickey has troubles with the fire hose and the ladder, while Donald struggles to put out flames that are more keen on playing "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" on the piano. Meanwhile, Goofy tries to rescue the furniture but only succeeds in ensuring it is all destroyed. When they discover Clarabelle Cow taking a bath blissfully unaware that the building is on fire, they try to rescue her, only she mistakenly believes she is being kidnapped and does her best to hinder the rescue.

This is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s follow-up Alice novel Through the Looking Glass with Mickey in the lead role. After falling asleep reading, Mickey arises from his own body and steps through his bedroom mirror to an alternate land where usually inanimate objects are alive. Eating a walmut causes Mickey to shrink to a size which enables him to dance with two gloves and a pack of cards. When he begins to dance with the Queen of Hearts, however, the jealous King of Hearts takes action.

Ringmaster Mickey begins by introducing Donald and his performing seals to an audience of orphans. Whilst Donald struggles to gets a seal to play the horns, a baby seal provides further annoyance by trying to eat all of Donald’s fish. When the seals trap both Mickey and Donald in the cannon, both are fired into the air and land on a high wire.

The Rajah of Ghaboon sends Bobo the elephant to Mickey as a playmate for Pluto. While Mickey tries to build an elephant house, Bobo's ball-playing leads him to Pluto. Though the dog is less than impressed, Bobo takes a liking to Pluto. When a green devil pops out of his head, Pluto convinces himself he is being replaced and sets about trying to make Bobo sneeze with some pepper.

As the audience fills the Opera House, Pluto knocks open a magician’s trunk backstage. Needless to say, trouble ensues as Pluto struggles with the tricks which have escaped. Meanwhile, conductor Mickey gets the show going, Clara Cluck takes to the balcony with her own unique style of opera singing and soon Donald appears to serenade her. As Pluto makes his way onto the stage, the tricks are unleashed and Mickey’s Grand Opera quite literally brings the house down.

In this, the most star-studded polo match you’re ever likely to see, Mickey, Donald, Goofy (still credited here as "The Goof") and The Big Bad Wolf take on Laurel and Hardy, Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin. Before the game begins the two teams parade before the celebrity audience (which features such faces as The Three Little Pigs, Shirley Temple and Max Hare, to name but a few). As referee Jack Holt starts the match, the players all struggle to play the game due to the many slapstick hindrances, while in the audience, Clarabelle Cow makes goo-goo eyes at Clark Gable. One may note that both Donald and Goofy appear to have taken a step back the evolution of their design, the reason being that the cartoon was originally produced in early 1935, but was delayed after intended star Will Rogers died in a plane crash and had to be replaced with Charlie Chaplin.

Mickey, Donald and Pluto are climbing in the Alps. Donald contentedly picks Edelweiss until he runs into a baby goat that succeeds in eating the flowers Donald has gathered. Spying an eagle's nest, Mickey tries to poach the eggs, until the mother eagle spots him. When the eggs begin to hatch, he has more trouble than he can handle. Pluto becomes frozen in the snow, but a St. Bernard turns up to save the day.

With the rent six months overdue, Mickey and Donald anxiously pace the living room when Sheriff Pete arrives with a notice to dispossess. As Goofy arrives at the back door with his ice truck, the three friends set about trying to pack their belongings and vamoose before Pete returns to sell them. As Mickey and Donald struggle to pack, Goofy has trouble loading a piano onto his truck.

A picnic in the country for sweethearts Mickey and Minnie goes awry when Minnie’s old sweetheart Mortimer Mouse arrives on the scene. With a fast car and a fast mouth, he wastes no time in charming Minnie and making a fool out of Mickey. As Mickey’s temper builds, Mortimer shows off to Minnie by infuriating a bull in a nearby field. But when Mortimer discovers the gate is open, he disappears in a flash, leaving Mickey and Minnie to deal with charging bull. An interesting note to this cartoon is that Mortimer is the name Walt originally wanted to call Mickey. It's also no coincidence that Mortimer bears a striking resemblance to Walt.

Loaded into the back of a truck, a group of orphans is taken for a picnic by Mickey and Donald. Naturally, the orphans’ angelic faces conceal their mischievous intentions and as Donald sets out the picnic, they try to steal the food when he’s not looking. They also blindfold Mickey for a game of hide and seek, during which it becomes clear that the concept of fair play is foreign to the orphans. Matters are only made worse when Donald upsets a hive of bees.

Mickey has a Through the Looking-Glass-type dream that he travels through his mirror and enter a topsy-turvy world where everything is alive

The Fab Five take a trip to Hawaii. Down on the beach, Mickey strums his guitar while Minnie and Donald dance, only Donald dances a bit too close to the fire. Meanwhile Goofy tries surfing, naturally without much success, and Pluto has his own troubles with a couple of the beach’s inhabitants.

With Donald and Goofy disguised as a female moose (complete with golden curls), Mickey conceals himself as a bush on stilts. While one moose becomes attracted by the perfume arising from the mock moose, Mickey finds another who appears content on eating his foliage. Trouble brews when the two male moose spot each other.

Mickey is working hard in his lab on a potion to build courage. He tries his creation out on a fly trapped in a spider’s web, and in no time the fly ends up showing the spider who is boss. Next, he tries his potion out on a mouse who is being chased by a cat (Ponder the implications of Mickey having mice in his kitchen.), and again the mouse fights back and sends the cat running. The cat then has the misfortune of running into Pluto and again Mickey uses his concoction to allow the cat to fight back, however the scared Pluto goes running right into the hands of dogcatcher Pete. This is another of the more stunning shorts on the set.

Mickey takes to the stage with his tricks, only a certain loud-mouthed Duck in the audience is insistent on voicing his opinion. However he tries to cause trouble, Mickey takes it all in his stride and he has more than enough tricks up his sleeve to make the duck pay.

On Mickey’s radio show, contestants have to keep the audience entertained, or they get yanked from the stage. Unfortunately Donald’s recital of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star doesn’t go down too well, despite the number of time he attempts it. Other (more successful) acts on the bill are the two Claras (Cluck and Belle) who make up a singing / piano playing duo, and Goofy with his 50-piece one-man band.

In this, perhaps the best-known Mickey, Donald, and Goofy cartoon of all, cleaning the clock tower proves to be a problematic chore for our three heroes. Donald struggles to clean the main spring, while Mickey can’t get rid of a stork that has taken roost on part of the clock’s internal workings. As Goofy tries to clean the bell, he is struck on the head by the mechanical figure that rings the bell, and he dizzily stumbles along the ledges of the tower, high above the city streets below.

Four bored ghosts inhabiting a deserted house call the Ajax ghost exterminators for a bit of fun. The mischief begins as soon as Mickey, Donald, and Goofy arrive to tackle the spooky specters. As the three ghost hunters separate, the ghouls tackle them one by one, spooking, confusing and annoying them. Another of the more famous shorts on this set, this one became the blueprint for many of the shorts in the late-'90s character/format revival "Mickey Mouse Works."

On a stormy night, a parrot topples from the back of a truck right in front of Mickey’s yard. Inside, Mickey is in bed listening to the radio, when a newsflash informs them that Machine-Gun Butch is on the loose. When noises are heard coming from the basement, Mickey plucks up all his courage and ventures down there to tackle the villain.

Mickey, Donald, and Goofy try their hand at assembling their own boat from a folding boat company, which they affectionately name Queen Minnie. As Mickey struggles with the steering wheel, he causes problems for Donald who is trying to paint the rudder. Goofy has problems of his own after he takes a liking to the beautiful mermaid figurehead. With the boat complete, Minnie arrives to christen the vessel, but will it remain in one piece?

As Donald sits in the crows’ nest watching out for whales, he tries to have a snack, only the seagulls are intent on stealing his sandwich and below Mickey can’t seem to get a bucket of water to throw itself overboard. When Donald finally catches a glimpse of a whale, who else is left in charge of firing the harpoon but Goofy? The last few scenes of the short feature a whale that bears a resemblance to Monstro, and a chase that is similar to that found in the climax of Pinocchio.

Hitched to a Goofy-driven car, Mickey’s Trailer hits the road. As Mickey tries to cook breakfast using ingredients he snatches through the window, Donald wakes up and at the push of a button, Mickey changes the bedroom into a bathroom where Donald cleans himself up before all disappears again and a table emerges. Goofy abandons the wheel to fill his belly and upon scrambling back to regain control of the car, he accidentally unhooks the trailer, which goes on a journey all of its own.

In a town that lives in fear of a giant, Mickey the humble tailor is plagued by flies. When he kills seven "giants" in his workshop, it leads to a misunderstanding and soon Mickey is before the king being asked to tell his tale. When it becomes clear to Mickey that they want him to kill a real giant, he is less than enthusiastic, but the promise of Princess Minnie’s hand soon changes his mind. Mickey sets off to bring down the countryside-rampaging giant, equipped with wit in place of size. One of the few short subjects that went beyond the notion of simply making a few laughs out of various gags strung together, Brave Little Tailor has the characters "acting." This short could possibly have been a "testing ground" for Mickey and the Beanstalk which was due to go into production a few years later, but was put on hold due to World War II.

Bonus short that was first shown at the 1939 World's Fair

Introduction by Leonard Maltin