"The Chain Gang" is a black & white cartoon from Disney. While you might see it floating about in color, it's been colorized...and isn't as pristine looking as some of the colorized early Mickey cartoons.The first thing I thought when I watched this one was "How in the heck would Mickey end up in prison?!"! After all, although Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy did some comedies set on a chain gang, this is Mickey Mouse....the internationally beloved cartoon character here!! Well, you never actually learn why he's in prison and he spends much of the film trying to escape....and Pegleg Pete is bent on keeping him there. Compared to other cartoons of the day, this one is superior. But it's also a bit grim and not quite right....mostly because you just cannot picture good old Mickey committing crimes! Weird...but watchable.

THE MOUSE WAS approximately two years old then; being in human years, that is. In this early strictly Black & White cinematic world, Mickey was most often portrayed as being quite mischievous and wasn't above doing some shenanigans on his own. Settings varied widely in these days and whatever bits of mischief that he had been up to prior to this picture, it did manage to land him in the hoosegow.WE OPEN WITH a highly varied assembly of prisoners all hooked up together. Present are a huge hog, some canine types, Clarabelle Cow (a Female!) and Mickey Mouse. They are under the direct supervision of Peg-Leg Pete and some other equally nasty tempered Goons.AFTER SOME MUSICALLY choreographed rock-breaking in the prison yard, all hell breaks loose as a huge and seemingly spontaneous jail break erupts. Mickey, being the shameless little rascal that he was in those days, joins in and manages to spring himself with the aid of a teeter board and the weight of his ball and chain.NOW, THIS WOULD perhaps have been a highly uneventful foray into cartoondom, save for what happens next. A pair of bloodhound doggies were sent in tandem with a prison guard holding their leashes in pursuit of the now escaped Mickey. After a short while, the young rodent was relocated back in his cell, singing as joyfully as ever.WELL, BOYS & GIRLS, the Bloodhounds were both drawn as the same character. It was the very lovable, irrepressible pup; who we all now know as Pluto! This was his first appearance.AND NOW YOU, my dear Schultz, you have "the rest of the story!"* NOTE * With a very respectable tip of the hat to the late Mr. :Paul Harvey (1918-2009).

'The Chain Gang' is a delightful Mickey Mouse short from his early sound period. I was surprised that this one features Mickey in prison (on a chain gang, no less), and we're never told how he came to be there in the first place. The cartoon manages to imply that he's guilty of something, rather than stitched up.I'll just address a couple of points that modern viewers might miss. IMDb viewer Ron Oliver says that Mickey performs something called 'the classic "Prisoner's Song"' (I must have missed that one) in this cartoon. That's not correct. Mickey and the other inmates perform a maudlin waltz-time ballad that was very well-known in 1930, when this cartoon was made: so well-known that Disney didn't even bother to have his voice artists sing the words, apparently figuring that cinema audiences would recognise the song from its melody alone.The song which Mickey and the others are performing has a lyric which begins like this: "If I had the wings of an angel, / Over these prison walls I would fly...". Since I recognised the melody, I thought it quite funny that these cartoon inmates were performing this particular song.Many of the early Disney toons were quite vulgar, with gags featuring racial stereotypes or crudities such as Mickey playing a melody on a female dog's nipples. The nearest we get to such things in 'The Chain Gang' is one visual gag quite early in the toon. When the warder (played by Big Pete) threatens Mickey, the mouse raises one hand in a placating gesture with fingers splayed. Then he turns his head into profile to look at his own hand. At this point, Mickey grins mysteriously and then drops his hand. If you look closely, for one brief instant Mickey's head and hand are in just the proper position so that he's thumbing his nose. In the 1930s (and earlier) the gesture of thumb to nose was considered extremely vulgar in the United States; if Disney had tried this gag a few years later, with the Hays Office in place, he likely wouldn't have got away with it.I shan't spoil the end of the cartoon for you. It was a big surprise for me, since Mickey ended up someplace unexpected. I'll rate 'The Chain Gang' 7 out of 10. Now that nobody recognises (nor stigmatises) the nose-thumbing gesture anymore, parents can put this cartoon on their family viewing list.

In this black and white short, Mickey Mouse is in prison. God only knows what on earth Mickey Mouse could've done to deserve this. The first half is a musical sequence with the prisoners dancing around the prison yard. The rest of the short deals with an escape attempt by Mickey. All around, it's only mildly amusing.