August 19, 1938 – The Mickey Mouse Short Film The Whalers is Released to Theaters
“Very distressing. Not a whale in sight. Ho hum.”
On August 19, 1938, the Mickey Mouse short film The Whalers was released to theaters. This is one of the few shorts where Mickey doesn’t have any lines, with the majority of the dialogue performed by Donald and Goofy. It was directed by Dick Huemer.
It’s a fine day at sea, and Donald peeks out from his barrel at the top of the mast, upset that there are no whales around. He soon cheers up when he decides to eat his lunch: a baloney sandwich; unfortunately, a flock of hungry seagulls interrupt Donald’s good mood. He beats them away with a telescope, but fails to notice that a nearby pelican ate his sandwich. Meanwhile, Mickey is on the deck, trying to dump a bucket of water into the ocean, but the water keeps boomeranging back into his bucket. With one final try, he throws the water and the bucket overboard, but the water and bucket still manage to make their way back to Mickey. Finally, Donald calls out to Mickey and Goofy when he spots a whale, with Goofy startled awake and banging his head on the cannon. He quickly loads the harpoon in the cannon and tries to shoot, but the harpoon won’t be fired. As he reaches in to check the wick, he pushes the wick out accidentally, and ends up lighting his own finger.
Goofy unwittingly sits of the barrel of gunpowder, thinking that he was sitting on the bucket of water
As Goofy tries to light another match, he accidentally sets his own pants on fire; when he goes to the water bucket to put himself out, he ends up sitting on the bucket of gunpowder instead, and is shot into the cannon. As the cannon’s fuse is heading down, Goofy manages to get himself out, but ends up shooting the harpoon into Donald’s barrel. Trying to make up for his mistake, Goofy ends up using the anchor as the harpoon, and shoots it into a glacier, getting himself caught in the rope. Donald rushes to save him, but it’s too late, as Goofy falls inside the spout of the whale. Goofy lights a candle to see his surroundings, which causes the whale to cough. Goofy is soon caught in the spout of the whale, and has to ride the whale while it swims at a ferocious speed. Mickey tries to help capture the whale, but the whale destroys their entire ship. In the end, Goofy proclaims loudly that he caught the whale, holding up a rather irritated fish.
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