Steamboat Willie: Facts, Stories, & Trivia About Mickey Mouse's First Cartoon Ever

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Steamboat Willie is commonly known as one the first cartoon ever made (and distributed) with sound (even though the Fleischer brothers released a cartoon technically before it), and is famous for being the debut of arguably the most famous pop culture icon in the world: Mickey Mouse. But it wasn't exactly as we choose to remember it, and this exact cartoon actually kept pushing the U.S. to extend their copyright laws for years until fairly recently. Steamboat Willie's history and the first time people ever saw it made a huge impact on not only animation, but pop culture. It is currently sitting at 13th in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, which includes a list of the 50 best cartoons ever made. It is now part of the United States' National Film Registry and is considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." These are all the Steamboat Willie trivia, facts, and stories you may not quite know everything about yet.