Mickey's Mellerdrammer

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Mickey's Mellerdrammer

Directed by	Wilfred Jackson
Produced by	Walt Disney
Starring	Pinto Colvig Walt Disney Marcellite Garner
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	18 March 1933 USA
Running time	8 Minutes
Country	USA
Language	English

Mickey's Mellerdrammer is a 1933 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The title is a corruption of "melodrama", thought to harken back to the earliest minstrel shows, as a film short based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and stars Mickey Mouse and his friends who stage their own production of the novel.

The cartoon shows Mickey Mouse and some of the other characters dressed in blackface with exaggerated, orange lips; bushy, white sidewhiskers made out of cotton; and his now trademark white gloves.

Plot

In Mickey's Mellerdrammer, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy (known then as Dippy Dawg) and others present their own low budget light-hearted rendition of the 19th century Tom Shows for a crowd in a barn converted into a theater for the occasion.

Horace Horsecollar plays the white slave owner Simon Legree. Minnie plays the young white girl Eva. Mickey plays old Uncle Tom with cotton around his ears and chin, and the young slave girl Topsy. Clarabelle Cow plays the slave woman Eliza. Goofy plays the production stage hand.

The cartoon opens with Mickey and Clarabelle Cow in their dressing rooms applying blackface makeup for their roles. The cartoon is much more focused on the Disney characters' efforts to put on the play, than an animated version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The cartoon contains many images of Mickey and the other characters using makeshift props as sight gags.

The cartoon closes with the characters coming out for a bow, and Horace Horsecollar's character is pelted with rotten tomatoes. When Goofy shows his face from behind the stage, he is hit with a chocolate pie, leaving him in what appears to be blackface.

Ethnic stereotyping

Stereotyped characterizations of black people were then common, and 'revealed a hostility to emancipation.'^[1] Mickey's Mellerdrammer was one of many films and cartoons of its era that referenced Uncle Tom's Cabin, and has been cited as 'particularly notable.'^[2] Henry Louis Gates Jr., wondered how the cartoon evaded censorship, given that Mickey and Minnie portray Tom and Eva, and are "as they say, an item, and unmistakably so." Additionally, Mickey is seen cross-dressing in the role of Topsy.^[3]

References

External links

Mickey's Mellerdrammer at the Internet Movie Database

v t e Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

Characters	Uncle Tom Eliza Evangeline "Eva" St. Clare Simon Legree

Film adaptations	Uncle Tom's Cabin (1918 silent) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927 silent) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1965 German)

Related works	A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin Tom Shows

Animation	Mickey's Mellerdrammer (1933) Southern Fried Rabbit (1953) Uncle Tom's Bungalow (1937)

Anti-Tom literature	Aunt Phillis's Cabin The Planter's Northern Bride Little Eva: The Flower of the South Uncle Tom's Cabin As It Is Uncle Robin's Cabin "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Contrasted with Buckingham Hall, the Planter's Home Ellen; or, The Fanatic's Daughter The Ebony Idol Frank Freeman's Barber Shop The North and the South; or, Slavery and Its Contrasts The Cabin and Parlor; or, Slaves and Masters The Black Gauntlet White Acre vs. Black Acre Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South The Lofty and the Lowly, or Good in All and None All Good

Other	The Birth of a Nation Dimples Tit for Tat Uncle Tom syndrome

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