Director: Burt Gillett
Release Date: November 12, 1932
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The Wayward Canary’ follows the same story line as ‘The Barnyard Broadcast‘ (1931) and ‘Mickey’s Revue‘ (1932). Like in these films, a song-and-dance routine is interrupted by numerous animals causing havoc.
This time, Mickey gives Minnie a canary for a present. It appears to have numerous offspring. These little birds escape and fly all over the house. Before they’re all caught, the complete house is wrecked.
Among the numerous gags there’s a surreal one when Pluto and a cat run through a wringer, which renders them flat. By 1932 such extreme body deformities had become extremely rare in Disney cartoons, and soon they would vanish altogether, as they were not in tune with Disney’s search for the ‘plausible impossible’. It was up to Tex Avery at Warner Brothers to revive gags like these in the late 1930s.
Among Minnie’s household there is a lighter with a swastika on it [update: see animation historian David Gerstein’s comment below for an explanation]. She also has signed portraits of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Together with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, these two actors were the co-founders of United Artists, the company Disney had joined in 1932.
These portraits are the first caricatures of real people in a Mickey Mouse film. Although Mickey and Minnie were only slowly shedding their barnyard background, these signed portraits are not too surprising accessories, considering Mickey’s enormous popularity in the early 1930s. Moreover, they suggest that Mickey and Minnie, although being cartoon characters, live in the real world, among other Hollywood stars. This concept would be developed further in the next year, in the superb ‘Mickey’s Gala Premier‘.
Watch ‘The Wayward Canary’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 48
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: Touchdown Mickey
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: The Klondike Kid
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
5 comments
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August 30, 2018 at 23:09
jsl25
Among the tunes heard there are “Meadow Lark” (composed by bandleader Ted Fio Rito/Fiorito & recorded among others by Duke Yellman’s Orchestra for Edison, Harry Reser’s Six Jumping Jacks as Phil Hughes’s High Hatters for Pathé & Night Club Orchestra for Columbia’s budget label Harmony (both with the wonderful vocal refrain of Reser’s drummer Tom Stacks (who joined Reser around late October of 1925), Jack Albin’s Orchestra for Edison (initially rejected, but luckily with a surviving test pressing avalaible on Youtube. That recording features Red Nichols’s bouncy cornet) & Adrian Schubert’s band for the Plaza group (later known as ARC), to mention a few) & “Fairy On The Clock” (well-known thanks to bandleader Debroy Somers (who recorded it for Columbia) & xylophone player Teddy Brown, among other artists).
September 6, 2018 at 18:02
Gijs Grob
Thanks for identifying the tune! You’re clearly quite knowledgable on music from this time period.
September 8, 2010 at 19:50
ramapith
Notice that it’s a backward swastika, or sauwastika—not facing the way it did when the Nazis used it as a symbol.
Before the swastika became an unfortunate, Nazi-exclusive symbol in the mid-1930s, it was often interpreted in American pop culture as a good luck charm, often with Native American associations (even though many cultures worldwide had used the image since antiquity).
Smoking was often associated with Native Americans, too; see also cigar store Indians. Thus a swastika image appearing on a lighter was a means of carrying on this association.
September 9, 2010 at 10:19
Gijs
Dear Ramapith,
thank you very much for the enlightment!
September 8, 2010 at 12:48
Alice Grob
I liked it, because of the hilarious disasters. The swastika is remarkable. What should it mean?