When the Disney organization re-released Fantasia to theaters in the mid-1970s, they included on the bill a black & white Mickey Mouse cartoon from early talkie days called The Klondike Kid. This six-minute opus is one of those simple, straightforward affairs in which Mickey rescues Minnie from the clutches of the dastardly Peg Leg Pete (renamed "Terrible Pierre" for this Arctic saga). I suppose the rationale for including the short on the bill, aside from offering a touch of nostalgia, was to demonstrate how far and how quickly the Disney staff had advanced in their technical mastery of animation during the eight years that elapsed between this comparatively primitive item and the far more sophisticated Fantasia. If that was the intention, however, then my memory suggests it backfired on them, at least at the screening I attended. The cartoon short really rocked the house, getting big laughs throughout and a round of applause when it was over, but when the feature began it seemed to take people a while to adjust to the artsier tone and more solemn mood of Fantasia. To some degree I think the added attraction stole the show, and watching it again now I can see why.
There's a lot of great material packed into this brief cartoon, starting with the perfect mood-setting opening shot of the remote Klondike Bar. Snow is falling as jaunty piano music plays within, but poor Minnie struggles through the snow in thin clothes and a shawl. Inside the place Mickey is at the keyboard, pounding out a jazzy rendition of "Frankie and Johnny" and performing a cute sight gag involving a stein of beer. It's a pretty tough-looking crowd at the Klondike: the drinkers at the bar are mostly grizzled dogs and wolves while, amusingly, the dance hall girls are portrayed as actual pigs. Within a few years (thanks to Will Hays, Joe Breen and that prissy Production Code) the cartoons had to clean up their act just as much as the live-action productions did, and you wouldn't catch Mickey Mouse anywhere near booze, cigars, or wild wild wimmen, but when The Klondike Kid was made all that goody two-shoes stuff was still in the future. In this cartoon you'll see Pluto excitedly sniff a tree, Minnie dangle from a stuffed moose head by her panties, Terrible Pierre shooting a bar patron's pants off, and similarly earthy gags involving chamber pots, etc. Yet somehow smack in the middle of this sordid atmosphere Mickey and Minnie are as sweet as ever, like two incorruptible innocents in the Belly of the Beast; later on, unfortunately, the settings of their adventures would be just as sanitized and G-Rated as their relationship.
Meanwhile, however, this Pre-Code entry is fast-moving, funny, and just a little racy, building nicely in tempo right up to the closing gag, and it exists solely to entertain. This is one of Mickey's best cartoons, and it deserves to be ranked alongside the most satisfying gems produced by Tex Avery and the guys at Warner Brothers's Termite Terrace. (In fact, Avery's 1939 short Dangerous Dan McFoo owes a thing or two to The Klondike Kid.) It's great that Disney's animators went on to develop more sophisticated techniques and produce those unforgettable features, but when watching this freewheeling, fun-for-fun's sake cartoon it's hard to avoid the notion that they lost a little something of value along the way.
There's a lot of great material packed into this brief cartoon, starting with the perfect mood-setting opening shot of the remote Klondike Bar. Snow is falling as jaunty piano music plays within, but poor Minnie struggles through the snow in thin clothes and a shawl. Inside the place Mickey is at the keyboard, pounding out a jazzy rendition of "Frankie and Johnny" and performing a cute sight gag involving a stein of beer. It's a pretty tough-looking crowd at the Klondike: the drinkers at the bar are mostly grizzled dogs and wolves while, amusingly, the dance hall girls are portrayed as actual pigs. Within a few years (thanks to Will Hays, Joe Breen and that prissy Production Code) the cartoons had to clean up their act just as much as the live-action productions did, and you wouldn't catch Mickey Mouse anywhere near booze, cigars, or wild wild wimmen, but when The Klondike Kid was made all that goody two-shoes stuff was still in the future. In this cartoon you'll see Pluto excitedly sniff a tree, Minnie dangle from a stuffed moose head by her panties, Terrible Pierre shooting a bar patron's pants off, and similarly earthy gags involving chamber pots, etc. Yet somehow smack in the middle of this sordid atmosphere Mickey and Minnie are as sweet as ever, like two incorruptible innocents in the Belly of the Beast; later on, unfortunately, the settings of their adventures would be just as sanitized and G-Rated as their relationship.
Meanwhile, however, this Pre-Code entry is fast-moving, funny, and just a little racy, building nicely in tempo right up to the closing gag, and it exists solely to entertain. This is one of Mickey's best cartoons, and it deserves to be ranked alongside the most satisfying gems produced by Tex Avery and the guys at Warner Brothers's Termite Terrace. (In fact, Avery's 1939 short Dangerous Dan McFoo owes a thing or two to The Klondike Kid.) It's great that Disney's animators went on to develop more sophisticated techniques and produce those unforgettable features, but when watching this freewheeling, fun-for-fun's sake cartoon it's hard to avoid the notion that they lost a little something of value along the way.