The Fire Fighters
About The Fire Fighters
Mickey Mouse, Horace Horsecollar, and a crew of animal firemen are asleep in the firehouse when the bell rings. They dress and race to a burning apartment house. Minnie is trapped upstairs. Mickey reaches her on the clothesline after she faints, and they get to the ground. She comes to, sees who has her, and the two call each other's names as the picture irises out.
Cast & crew
More about The Fire Fighters
Burt Gillett directed. Walt Disney produced and speaks Mickey. Marcellite Garner speaks Minnie. Bert Lewis wrote the music. Columbia Pictures released it on June 20, 1930. It is the nineteenth Mickey Mouse short. An earlier outline had Mickey playing music in the firehouse before the alarm. The finished cartoon starts with the crew asleep.
Themes
Making
Gillett drops the musical prologue that was in the outline and starts on the sleeping crew, so the bell is the first event.
Reviews
Gijs Grob writes that the animation is crude and some of the movement slow, but that the gags lead to a finish built on Mickey pulling Minnie out of the building.
Music
Bert Lewis wrote the music. Walt Disney and Marcellite Garner supply Mickey and Minnie.
Preservation
A print survives. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.
Notes
- Because it was published in 1930, the cartoon entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.
- Mickey fights another fire in Mickey's Fire Brigade (1935).
- Walt Disney Treasures put the short on Mickey Mouse in Black and White, released December 2, 2002.
- Gijs Grob, in Mickey's Movies, calls it the first Mickey cartoon since The Gallopin' Gaucho to tell a straight story, and Mickey's best short of 1930.
Scenes
- The bell wakes the animal crew and they slide out of the firehouse.
- Mickey brings the unconscious Minnie down the clothesline, and she wakes in his arms.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Fire Fighters (1930).webm)
- Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White (December 2, 2002)
