Steamboat Willie and included the songs "Steamboat Bill", a composition popularized by baritone Arthur Collins during the 1910s, and "Turkey in the Straw," a composition popularized within minstrelsy during the 19th century. The title of the film is a parody of the Buster Keaton film "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928), itself a reference to the song by Collins. Walt Disney performed all of the voices in the film, although there is little intelligible dialogue. While the film has received some criticism, it has also received wide critical acclaim, not only for introducing one of the world's most popular cartoon characters, but for its
Steamboat Willie not the first cartoon with synchronized sound. Starting in May 1924 and continuing through September 1926, Dave and Max Fleischer's Inkwell Studios produced 19 sound cartoons, part of the "Song Car-Tunes" series, using the Phonofilm sound-on-film process. However, the "Song Car-Tunes" failed to keep the sound fully synchronized, while "Steamboat Willie" was produced using a click track to keep his musicians on the beat. As little as one month before "Steamboat Willie" was released, Paul Terry released "Dinner Time" which also used a soundtrack, but "Dinner Time" was not a financial success. In June 1927, producer Pat Powers made an