Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The original United Artists titles to the 1933 Disney cartoon Building a Building, scanned from a 16mm Kodak UK print dated 1955. This is the earliest example I’ve seen so far of the small Mickey headshot that replaced 1932’s “exploding Mickey.” It’s likely, however, that it was introduced in the preceding short, Mickey’s Good Deed, which was the first Mickey to feature an RCA Photophone soundtrack. The same is probably true for the zooming-in on the main title. Sound is missing for the first few seconds here, but you can hear the last note of an opening fanfare ringing out before the Mickey and Minnie logo card.
While writing this, I just realized that the titles to this short exist in no less than four different versions: this original one, the non-theatrical “burlap” version, the 1974 theatrical recreation, and the laserdisc/Treasures recreation.
The original United Artists titles to the 1933 Disney cartoon Building a Building, scanned from a 16mm Kodak UK print dated 1955. This is the earliest example I’ve seen so far of the small Mickey headshot that replaced 1932’s “exploding Mickey.” It’s likely, however, that it was introduced in the preceding short, Mickey’s Good Deed, which was the first Mickey to feature an RCA Photophone soundtrack. The same is probably true for the zooming-in on the main title. Sound is missing for the first few seconds here, but you can hear the last note of an opening fanfare ringing out before the Mickey and Minnie logo card.
While writing this, I just realized that the titles to this short exist in no less than four different versions: this original one, the non-theatrical “burlap” version, the 1974 theatrical recreation, and the laserdisc/Treasures recreation.
