Silly Symphony

After the films changed to sound, Walt Disney began making Mickey Mouse and musical Silly Symphony shorts.[2] To keep costs down Disney produced his own music. Disney's first music director and composer was Carl Stalling. The Mickey Mouse shorts used pop music while the Silly Symphony cartoons used Classical music.[3] In 1932 the studio produced its first cartoon in Technicolor, Flowers and Trees.[4] The success of the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, from the Silly Symphony short Three Little Pigs (1933), convinced Disney to keep producing original music.[2] It was at this time Disney introduced the characters of Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Minnie Mouse. Over its ten year run, Silly Symphonies had won Walt Disney the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film seven times, eventually tied with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbara's Tom and Jerry's record for most awards for a cartoon series in the category. It spawned numerous imitators and competitors (like Warner Bros' Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes). [5] United StatesFebruary 29, 1929 BrazilDecember 25, 1929 United KingdomJuly 21, 1930 UruguaySeptember 11, 1930 MexicoDecember 25, 1931 PortugalMarch 16, 1932 IrelandApril 3, 1932 GreeceApril 10, 1933 SwedenOctober 7, 1933- Argentinian in Chilean SpanishDecember 11, 1934

(Silly Symphony) IcelandFebruary 28, 1934 SpainMarch 23, 1935 ItalyApril 12, 1935 CanadaAugust 1, 1936 CzechoslovakiaDecember 17, 1936 Hong KongOctober 16, 1937 NorwayOctober 31, 1937 BulgariaDecember 25, 1938  SwitzerlandDecember 25, 1938 (German speaking region) Soviet UnionDecember 25, 1938 YugoslaviaJuly 31, 1938 FinlandNovember 4, 1938 PolandAugust 7, 1939 AustriaJanuary 12, 1939 DenmarkApril 2, 1939 West GermanyOctober 10, 1939 ThailandJune 13, 1939 BelgiumAugust 14, 1939 IndiaDecember 25, 1939 TurkeyAugust 15, 1939 JapanSeptember 23, 1939 South KoreaOctober 3, 1939 MaltaJuly 31, 1939 New ZealandJune 29, 1941 South AfricaJune 29, 1941 LebanonDecember 25, 1947 IranMarch 16, 1954 MoroccoMarch 16, 1954 EgyptMarch 26, 1954 IndonesiaJune 17, 1954 QatarJune 17, 1954 SingaporeJune 17, 1954 Sri LankaApril 26, 1965 KuwaitJune 4, 1966 IsraelNovember 8, 1971

The series also spawned a Disney media franchise which included the newspaper comic strip Silly Symphony, the Dell comic book series Silly Symphonies, as well as several children's books, many of which were based on Silly Symphony cartoons.