Featured Short of the Week

It's not really the time for ghosties and ghoulies, but it's one of the best Mickey shorts anyway. 1929's Haunted House.

Welcome to The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts.

New!!! Visit our new Message Board and let us know what you think.

Site updates for Week Ending March 16, 2008.

This site covers all of the short subjects Disney made between the years 1922 to the present. For each short, I'll be attempting to provide as wide a base of information as possible, categorized as follows:

Release date : the date of the initial release.

Running time : the length of the short, as close as we can get them from an uncut version, from the beginning of the titles to the ending titles.

Synopsis : a short synopsis of the plot.

Characters : list of all the Disney characters featured.

Credits : list of all the Disney artists involved. While compiling this site, I have tried to make the lists of credits as correct as possible, but a few caveats should be regarded. The first problem is that, especially in the early years, Disney never kept a whole lot of records. Hence, to nail down who did what on a specific short, it was usually necessary to go back to signatures on sketch sheets, cells or whatever. To make matters more confusing, artists were not as categorized as they currently are. Job titles and assignments were fairly fluid. So you might have a single artist working on backgrounds, characters, or performing any number of roles on any given short.

In the mid 40's, however, finally bowing to pressure from his artists, Disney began listing credits at the beginning of each short. These credits were not meant to be complete, though, and really only listed the main artists responsible for the short. While each list may have only shown three or four animators, in reality there may have been up to eight or ten artists working on it. Not to mention the leagues of in-betweeners, inkers, painters, and other artists who never got mentioned.

So, when looking through a list of credits, please realize that it is not necessarily complete or specific in a lot of cases; just the best listing that we could verify.

Milestones : historical importance (where relevant.)

Awards : awards won, or nominations for awards.

Inside Jokes : those little touches that the animators put in that they thought no one else outside of Disney would get.

Sources : as with the feature films, many of the Disney short subjects were adapted from popular fairy tales and children's stories. This will link you to the original sources for their story ideas.

Bloopers : it's always difficult, given the unreality of animation in general, to define what makes a blooper. For our purposes, we will consider them the little continuity errors that somehow the artists didn't pick up on. For example, Donald Duck getting blown up by an exploding cigar in one scene, and then miraculously being okay in the next would not be a blooper. However, Pegleg Pete's pegleg shifting from leg to leg would be.

Cut Scenes : Disney has of late gotten very antsy about offending anyone or being accused of contributing to bad behavior. So, the cartoon you see on The Disney Channel nowadays may not be shown the same way it was originally produced. Here will be a short description of scenes that were cut for current distribution.

Videos : information on videotapes that the short appeared on, both available and out-of-print.

Laserdiscs : information on laserdiscs that the short appeared on, both available and out-of-print.

DVD : titles of DVD only releases, both available and out-of-print, foreign and domestic.

Television : listings of the various Disney shows that the shorts have appeared on (where applicable.)

Comments : personal observations from anyone who cares to contribute and other notes.

You will also find separate listings for the videos indexed and (eventually) a complete index to the Disney characters featured, as well as (if I ever get the time to put it together) an index to the Disney animators and imagineers involved.

Navigating the site is fairly easy. You can start with the first page which starts all the way back at the beginning with the first Laugh-o-Grams in 1922 and motor around the complete site by clicking on the "back" or "next" buttons to the left of each page. If you're looking for a specific short, they are all listed in the Index. And of course, if you get lost along the way or want to see an overview of the complete site, there is a "Site Map" key at the left of each page to re-orient yourself.

Feel free to contribute ... tell us about your favorite short, why it's your favorite, any personal views you might have. Monograph length pieces are acceptable. (For an example see my own entry on "The Band Concert".) While I can't guarantee that all will get put up on the site, I'd like to use as many as possible. The more the merrier!

Have fun! Please feel free to e-mail us with any question, comments, contributions, corrections, or whatever.

Disclaimer

This site is in no way sponsored by, created by, or endorsed by the Disney Company. All opinions, views, and thoughts expressed herein are expressly the authors, and in no way reflect the opinions, views, or thoughts of the Disney Company. All character images on these pages are Copyright of Disney ©.

Patrick A. Malone
P. O. Box 1155
West Warwick, RI 02893

Page Created 25 November 1997
Last Updated 16 March 2008