Mickey Mouse Gets His Voice at the Colony

Steamboat Willie premiered at the Colony Theater on Broadway on November 18, 1928, on a program with a live-action feature, not billed as the main event. It ran seven minutes and forty-seven seconds and starred Mickey Mouse piloting a paddle steamer, whistling, banging pots, and turning barnyard animals into makeshift instruments. What set it apart from every other cartoon playing New York that week was the soundtrack: music, sound effects, and dialogue timed frame by frame to the animation, rather than a live pit orchestra guessing along. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks had spent months building it on a shoestring budget, testing the synchronization with a live sound accompaniment in July before committing to a real recorded track. The film played the Colony five times a day for two weeks and sent both the mouse and his creator into national headlines almost overnight.