Some of you will know about some lost Mickey animation created for a 1930 short shown at the the Mickey Mouse Clubs (like Minnie's YooHoo). A lot of animation auctions have sold animation drawings featuring Mickey holding a megaphone which David Gerstein has speculated may be from this lost film.

I've found enough of the drawings across the web to put together a little gif which gives some idea of the scene as animated. Of course there are a lot more drawings missing than present, but we get some idea of the scene. It seems Mickey waves to his audience, talks to them through the megaphone and then uses it to listen to their response. Perhaps he even uses the megaphone as a trumpet at some point (It's the sort of thing he'd do!) and finally waves goodbye at the end of the scene.

I've posted link below, I hope it works (I couldn't work out how to post a gif directly in a forum post).


https://ibb.co/gDdTH1L 


If anyone can help me find more animation drawings from this scene, please share and I'll update it. I've found as many as I can, but maybe someone has a link to a site or catalogue I haven't seen. Since these are from an unknown film the. drawings are often identified as being from another Mickey short.

Seems like it was for a special trailer in which Mickey announced that a Mickey Mouse Club would soon be coming to the theater you were in. I think the megaphone was to obscure Mickey's mouth while the voice actor dubbed the name of the theater on the soundtrack (similar to 'toons announcing winners at the Oscars).

I'm unfortunately not sure of any other sources at this time, but Taschen's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History book does mention the trailer these drawings may have been made for:

Disney studio records also suggest that another trailer was produced for the Mickey Mouse Clubs, combining new Mickey and Minnie footage with live action of Lawrence "Noodles" Fagan, a period vaudeville comedian. While copies of the film have not surfaced at this writing, numerous animation drawings showing Mickey posing excitedly and waving a megaphone may possibly have been created for it.

One thing I find interesting is that this paragraph suggests that new animation of Minnie was created in addition to that of Mickey. Is it possible that there may be some Minnie drawings stemming from the trailer making the rounds online?

I haven't seen any of Minnie yet. It seems the scene I'm finding drawings from consists of just Mickey (of course that's not to say this is from a short with more scenes). The sequence has around 400 drawings (of which I've now found about 28 now) and likely begins with a wave hello before picking up the megaphone and ends with him putting it down again and waving goodbye.

If this is the short that included the live action "Noodles" Fagan, you can find a little bit more about him online. It seems he may have died a year after it was made.

I've found a few more drawings and added them to the animation, I'm hoping to find a few more and I'll add an updated version later this week.

The drawings seem to be scattered all over the place. They have turned up on various animation auctions sites and sometimes eBay over the past 10 years. I hope there may be many more online, but I'm struggling to find different ones now...

Here's the latest version – I found a few more frames (including some which show what happens after the wave goodbye) so some gaps are filling in.

https://ibb.co/wcqb1wX 


I'd love to find more and keep adding to this. If anyone ever stumbles on any more of these drawings please let me know.