On this day, August 22 1929, Walt Disney, with the help of Columbia Pictures, release the first cartoon of the Silly Symphonies series, The Skeleton Dance. The animation was headed by Walt's friend, Ub Iwerks, who partnered with Walt for many years to come and the music was composed/arranged by Carl Stalling. The premise of this simple cartoon starts out with two black cats crawl around a graveyard until they are scared by a skeleton. Then more skeletons join doing a dance around a graveyard to the music that was inspired by Saint-Saens and Grieg. This cartoon was widely shown throughout theaters, often before the main feature. Since then, the skeletons have made several cameos in other Disney cartoons and referenced to in many films and is even portrayed on Sleeping Beauty Castle during Mickey's Halloween Party. Most importantly, the Silly Symphonies was a big part of Walt's career while he and his staff experimented with animation and synchronized sound and music and eventually, with the use of Technicolor which revolutionized animation forever. Watch "The Skeleton Dance" here: http://tinyurl.com/yz625az