Disney Silly Symphonies - The Skeleton Dance

Until Disney released Flowers and Trees in 1932, the Silly Symphony cartoons were all produced in black and white. Fortunately, the B&W palette works perfectly in The Skeleton Dance, Disney's first Silly Symphony. The studio turned a limitation into a strength; vibrant colors simply wouldn't work in a haunted graveyard where skeletons dance at night.

A book called The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals named The Skeleton Dance as one of the greatest cartoons. It ranked as #18.

The antics of the skeletons have been mimicked in other films. One of the dance scenes in Corpse Bride, for example, has skeletons playing each other like instruments and performing other moves that are very reminiscent of The Skeleton Dance.

• Released August 22, 1929.


• First Silly Symphony cartoon.


• Animated by Ub Iwerks.

There's another short cartoon that is basically a remake of Disney's Skeleton Dance. Released in 1937 by Columbia Pictures, Skeleton Frolic is a Technicolor display of skeletons dancing and making music in a graveyard.

Skeleton Frolic was directed by Ub Iwerks, the same man who animated Skeleton Dance. He was Disney's chief animator until they had a falling out in 1930.

Ub Iwerks tried to run his own studio for a while, but then ended up closing it and joining Columbia Pictures in 1936. In 1937, he directed Skeleton Frolic. In 1940, he returned to Disney.