How Walt Disney’s ‘The Skeleton Dance’ Became an Animation Milestone

In 1929, Walt Disney released a cartoon about four skeletons who rose from their graves to dance. They pulled off their own bones, played music, and hurried back underground when morning arrived. The Skeleton Dance was the first entry in Disney’s Silly Symphonies series, which would later produce some of the studio’s most memorable early animated shorts. Released in August 1929, the black-and-white cartoon was unlike anything else at the time. 

It became an experiment that helped Disney explore what animation could do beyond its usual cartoon stars.