The Skeleton Dance

Infobox Film
name = The Skeleton Dance


director = Walt Disney
producer = Walt Disney
writer =
starring =
movie_music = Edvard Grieg
released = August 22, 1929 (USA)
runtime = 6 minutes
language = English
imdb_id = 0020414
music = Carl W. Stalling
awards =
amg_id = 1:137437
country = USA
budget = $5,386

"The Skeleton Dance" is a 1929 "Silly Symphonies" animated short subject produced and directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks. In the film, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard. It is the first entry in the "Silly Symphonies" series. In 1994, it was voted #18 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.

Production

While many claim that the musical score was adapted from the Saint-Saëns composition "Danse Macabre", Carl Stalling explained, in a 1969 interview, that it was actually a foxtrot set in a minor key. Stalling suggested the idea for a series of musical one-shot cartoons to Disney at a gag meeting in 1929. Stalling also adapts Edvard Grieg's "The March of the Trolls" for part of the skeleton dance music.

The skeletons dance in various ways and play makeshift musical instruments. In one scene, all four skeletons hold hands and dance in a circle, akin to schoolchildren dancing "Ring a Ring O'Roses". In another scene, a skeleton pulls the thigh bones off another and plays the thighless skeleton like a xylophone. A skeleton also plays a cat like a double bass, using a bow and the cat's tail as the strings. One skeleton dances part of the Charleston.

It is notable for being the first animated cartoon to use non-post-sync sound. Animation from this short was later reused in the Mickey Mouse short "Haunted House", in which Mickey, having taken shelter in a haunted house, is forced to play music for the dancing skeletons.

The cartoon was created in black and white on standard 1.33:1 35mm film.

Contemporary references and usage

In 1982, "The Skeleton Dance" was featured in a colorized version as an intro to the Halloween special "Disney's Halloween Treat".

In "Corpse Bride" (2005), the skeletons in the underworld perform several of the routines from the cartoon.

It was used in the film "Ghost Rider" (2007), as a cartoon Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is watching not knowing he will become a skeleton-like supernatural being at night in the presence of evil. "The Skeleton Dance" was also referenced to in the episode "Hill Billy" of "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy", where Grim, having been turned into a silent era cartoon character, leads several other skeletons in dance, and even mimics the actions.