Fiddlesticks
About Fiddlesticks
Flip the Frog dances across lily pads, reaches shore, and dries off. He sings and plays, then shares a number with a mouse whose ears and face follow the Mortimer model Ub Iwerks had drawn at Disney. There is no spoken dialogue. Flip croaks and the music carries the gags.
Cast & crew
More about Fiddlesticks
Ub Iwerks's first short after he left Walt Disney. He produced and directed and animated with Fred Kopietz and Jim Pabian. Celebrity Pictures released it on August 16, 1930. It is the first Flip the Frog cartoon.
Themes
Making
Iwerks set up his own plant and put Flip on screen within months of leaving Disney. The mouse in the duet is drawn on the same model as Mortimer, the early Mickey.
Technique
It is the first complete, self-contained sound cartoon photographed in color. King of Jazz, released around the same time, had included a two-strip Technicolor cartoon segment by Walter Lantz, not a whole short issued on its own.
Music
Carl Stalling wrote the score. The track uses Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, Delibes's Pizzicati, The Sailor's Hornpipe, and O du lieber Augustin.
Preservation
Copyright was renewed in 1959. It is now in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- Photographed in the Harriscolor process. Some American release prints circulated in black and white; the color version was the one prepared for England.
- Sound is Powers Cinephone, the system Disney had used from Steamboat Willie through the period Iwerks worked there.
- The copyright was renewed in 1959. The film entered the public domain on January 1, 2026.
Scenes
- Flip hops the pads, lands, and shakes himself dry.
- He and the Mortimer-like mouse play a duet.
Also available
- The Cartoons That Time Forgot: The Ub Iwerks Collection, Volume 1
