Mickey Mouse plays the piano in the Klondike Bar, with a bunch of characters dancing and drinking. He rescues Minnie from the freezing cold, only to see her kidnapped by Pegleg Pierre after he comes storming in for a comically staged gun battle. Mickey goes to the rescue to get Minnie back.Plenty of fun in this cartoon short as well, with a cameo by Goofy in one of his first cartoon appearances. Pluto is in this one as well, helping transport Mickey to Pierre's cabin. Overall, a good mixture of humor, music and action.Grade A-

The Klondike Kid (1932) is not only my favorite Mickey Mouse short cartoon, but also my favorite animated short period. There are funnier cartoons and there are more inventive and aesthetically pleasing ones, but few have the warmth and feel-good factor of The Klondike Kid. obviously inspired by Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), this short has the same feel of the best of the Little Tramp's adventures.Mickey and Minnie's relationship has never come across as sweetly as it does here. In the world of the short, they're both lonely souls who find comfort and companionship in each other. That their innocence is contrasted with the seedy atmosphere of the Klondike bar Mickey works in makes the relationship feel more poignant. It really reminds you of a time when Mickey and Minnie were more than merely brands on an overpriced Valentines Day T-shirt.Unlike his goofier modern incarnation, the Pegleg Pete in this cartoon serves an actual threat (don't get me wrong though, I do love today's sillier Pete as well). When he stalks into the bar with his pistols a-blazing, it makes for a striking effect. Pete shoots the lights out and as he fires at random in the darkness, the room is briefly illuminated by the flickering gunfire. It really stands out and still comes across as a cool effect even today.Of course, Pete takes a shining to Minnie and kidnaps her, leading to the obligatory climactic chase sequence. There are gags aplenty, all imaginative and funny. The ending shot manages to be emotional as well as amusing.Much attention is given to Steamboat Willie (1928) and The Brave Tailor (1938), but it is a shame that The Klondike Kid is not often ranked up there with those classics. It certainly deserves it.

When the Disney organization re-released Fantasia to theaters in the mid-1970s, they included on the bill a black & white Mickey Mouse cartoon from early talkie days called The Klondike Kid. This six-minute opus is one of those simple, straightforward affairs in which Mickey rescues Minnie from the clutches of the dastardly Peg Leg Pete (renamed "Terrible Pierre" for this Arctic saga). I suppose the rationale for including the short on the bill, aside from offering a touch of nostalgia, was to demonstrate how far and how quickly the Disney staff had advanced in their technical mastery of animation during the eight years that elapsed between this comparatively primitive item and the far more sophisticated Fantasia. If that was the intention, however, then my memory suggests it backfired on them, at least at the screening I attended. The cartoon short really rocked the house, getting big laughs throughout and a round of applause when it was over, but when the feature began it seemed to take people a while to adjust to the artsier tone and more solemn mood of Fantasia. To some degree I think the added attraction stole the show, and watching it again now I can see why.There's a lot of great material packed into this brief cartoon, starting with the perfect mood-setting opening shot of the remote Klondike Bar. Snow is falling as jaunty piano music plays within, but poor Minnie struggles through the snow in thin clothes and a shawl. Inside the place Mickey is at the keyboard, pounding out a jazzy rendition of "Frankie and Johnny" and performing a cute sight gag involving a stein of beer. It's a pretty tough-looking crowd at the Klondike: the drinkers at the bar are mostly grizzled dogs and wolves while, amusingly, the dance hall girls are portrayed as actual pigs. Within a few years (thanks to Will Hays, Joe Breen and that prissy Production Code) the cartoons had to clean up their act just as much as the live-action productions did, and you wouldn't catch Mickey Mouse anywhere near booze, cigars, or wild wild wimmen, but when The Klondike Kid was made all that goody two-shoes stuff was still in the future. In this cartoon you'll see Pluto excitedly sniff a tree, Minnie dangle from a stuffed moose head by her panties, Terrible Pierre shooting a bar patron's pants off, and similarly earthy gags involving chamber pots, etc. Yet somehow smack in the middle of this sordid atmosphere Mickey and Minnie are as sweet as ever, like two incorruptible innocents in the Belly of the Beast; later on, unfortunately, the settings of their adventures would be just as sanitized and G-Rated as their relationship.Meanwhile, however, this Pre-Code entry is fast-moving, funny, and just a little racy, building nicely in tempo right up to the closing gag, and it exists solely to entertain. This is one of Mickey's best cartoons, and it deserves to be ranked alongside the most satisfying gems produced by Tex Avery and the guys at Warner Brothers's Termite Terrace. (In fact, Avery's 1939 short Dangerous Dan McFoo owes a thing or two to The Klondike Kid.) It's great that Disney's animators went on to develop more sophisticated techniques and produce those unforgettable features, but when watching this freewheeling, fun-for-fun's sake cartoon it's hard to avoid the notion that they lost a little something of value along the way.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Klondike Bar's saloon, when Peg-leg Pete arrived out of the Arctic blast to kidnap poor waif Minnie from the arms of THE KLONDIKE KID.Inspired by Robert W. Service's famous poem - `The Shooting of Dan McGrew' - this is a splendid little black & white film full of humor and action. Mickey gets to show-off his talents as a ragtime pianist, while an early version of Goofy makes a brief appearance dancing with a piggy hostess & Pluto acts as Mickey's single sled dog. Typically, the animators subject helpless Minnie to a rather cruel panties gag. Walt Disney provides Mickey's squeaky voice.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.