Mickey's Mellerdrammer is a 1933 American animated Pre-Codeshort film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The title is a corruption of "melodrama", thought to harken back to the earliest minstrel shows, as a film short based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and stars Mickey Mouse and his friends who stage their own production of the novel. It was the 54th Mickey Mouse short film, and the fourth of that year. The cartoon shows Mickey Mouse and some of the other characters dressed in blackface with exaggerated, orange lips; bushy, white sidewhiskers made out of cotton; and his usual white gloves.
Plot
In Mickey's Mellerdrammer, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy and others present their own low budget light-hearted rendition of the 19th century Tom Shows for a crowd in a barn converted into a theater for the occasion. Horace Horsecollar plays the white slave ownerSimon Legree. Minnie plays the young white girl, Eva. Mickey plays old Uncle Tom with cotton around his ears and chin, and the young slave girl Topsy. Clarabelle Cow plays the slave woman Eliza. Goofy plays the production stage hand. The cartoon opens with Mickey and Clarabelle Cow in their dressing rooms applying blackface makeup for their roles. The cartoon is much more focused on the Disney characters' efforts to put onthe play, than an animated version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The cartoon contains many images of Mickey and the other characters using makeshift props as sight gags. The cartoon closes with the characters coming out for a bow, and Horace Horsecollar's character is pelted with rotten tomatoes. When Goofy shows his face from behind the stage, he is hit with a chocolate pie, leaving him in what appears to be blackface, as Goofy laughs making the cartoon to end. This short was released in Pathescope 9.5mm print in the UK in 1954.
Racial stereotyping
Stereotyped characterizations of black people were then common. Mickey's Mellerdrammer was one of many films and cartoons of its era that referenced Uncle Tom's Cabin, and features Mickey in blackface. Henry Louis Gates Jr., wondered how the cartoon evaded censorship of miscegenation, given that Mickey and Minnie portray Tom and Eva, and are "as they say, an item, and unmistakably so." In the beginning of this short, Clarabelle Cow appears in her dressing room applying lantern soot to her face and leaving an exaggerated area around her lips white. Mickey Mouse then takes a more "comical" approach to applying the makeup: He puts a firecracker in his mouth and lights it, which explodes, causing the ashes to paint his face black while leaving a large area around his lips white. Mickey's bushy side whiskers and white gloves are also a representation of the use of blackface.
Reception
Motion Picture Herald reviewed the cartoon on July 1, 1933, saying, "This time Mickey, the inimitable, stages an "Uncle Tom meller", with assorted animated mishaps in the accepted, and approved, Mickey fashion, while the antics of the animated audience contribute not a few of the luahgs. It is good cartoon material, and the youngsters, old and young, should enjoy it."
