Uncle Walt (film)

Uncle Walt is a 1964 animated short by Robert Swarthe.^[1][2]

Scenes from this satirical student short include:^[3]

• A graveyard for numerous "Perris" (a reference to the 1957 live-action feature Perri; with music from Bambi playing)
• Several pictures of Walt Disney in various ages as the title card is shown (with music from Sleeping Beauty, Mickey's Gala Premiere, Steamboat Willie and Alice in Wonderland playing)
• Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse playing music alongside racial Arabian and cannibal caricatures and outhouse gags, which leads them to their demise
• Both the female centaurettes from Fantasia and the Mermaids from Peter Pan working as sex workers in the red district (with Goofy as their pimp)
• Mickey-esque mice and bunny viewers in a movie theater watching The Wicked Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs transitioning into an old hag (alongside clips from Mickey's Gala Premiere, The Whoopee Party, The Skeleton Dance and Gulliver Mickey)
• A scene reminiscent of the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia where a massive fissure forms at the top of the Matterhorn Bobsleds mountain, with a camera pan within the mountain's terrain showing some cameos of The Seven Dwarfs, The Lady Tree and the Flowers from Flowers and Trees, and Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Bear from Song of the South, along with an endless array of what look to be Mickey Mouse-shaped tombstones
• And the Seven Dwarfs themselves mourning for Mickey laid to rest in a glass coffin in a "Mouse-ka-mausoleum", according to a sign (In a scene very similar to the one featured in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).

The short also features snippets of "Les Patineurs", Prince Igor's "Polovtsian Dances", "The William Tell Overture", "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", "Night on Bald Mountain", and "The Rite of Spring".^[4][5][6]

Made by Swarthe at UCLA, the film's only showing was at the 1972 American Film Institute program "50 Years of American Animation".^[6] It is preserved by the Academy Film Archive as part of its output.^[7] In 2024, Thunderbean Animation was planning to put the film onto a Blu-ray set titled "Public Domain Mouse Adventures;" this also included the first three Mickey Mouse cartoons that entered into the public domain. Swarthe prevented the release by threatening to sue, which resulted in the film being withdrawn. Two 16mm prints of the film surfaced on eBay with YouTube user Unckie NPC obtaining and uploading one of them online.^[6]

• Counterculture of the 1960s
• Lost media
• Mickey Mouse in Vietnam

• Uncle Walt at IMDb
• The Lost "Uncle Walt" Short Was Almost Found
• Swarthe's 1964 short Uncle Walt on Internet Archive