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Nope. That is an AMAZINGLY COMMON misconception. Mickey actually first appeared in Plane Crazy, which was released in May 1928. Steamboat Willie was his second film.
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Heh, don't believe everything you read. :)
It comes down to a question of semantics.
Plane Crazy
was shown in an unfinished version ONCE in May-1928, in a small theatre in Hollywood, basically to get audience reaction. Disney made no money from that showing.
Similarly,
The Gallopin' Gaucho was shown in an unfinished version at the same small theatre in Aug-1928, and some would count that as the second Mickey Mouse film.
Steamboat Willie
was
released, that is, put into distribution & brought in money, in Nov-1928.
Plane Crazy was not released into distribution until early 1929.
It's not unusual for a work in progress to be shown to a test audience while it is still in production. Someone dug up the pre-release showing of
Plane Crazy just to be argumentative. It would be possible to throw off the dates of just about any film, if you counted every time that it was shown to a test audience. I prefer to use a film's
Release Date, that is, when the project finally gets sent off to make money.
-rcv-
Kid Bugs