Steamboat Bill, Jr. Steamboat Bill, Jr. Steamboat Bill, Jr. is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. Released by United Artists, the film is the last product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers. It was not a box-office success and became the last picture Keaton made for United Artists. Keaton ended up moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he made one last film in his trademark style, "The Cameraman", before his creative control was taken away by the studio. Charles Reisner directed the film, and the credited story writer was Carl Harbaugh, although Keaton wrote the script and publicly called
Mickey Mousing it will stop carrying water to a pit. The visual action is synchronized exactly to crashing chords in the music. The first known use of Mickey Mousing was in "Steamboat Willie" (1928), the first Mickey Mouse cartoon by Walt Disney, scored by Carl Stalling. In the 1931 Van Beuren Studios animated short "Making 'Em Move" the "Mysterioso Pizzicato" theme is Mickey Moused to the action first to produce a "false sense of foreboding" as a curious visitor enters the animation factory, and then again to accompany the villain in a cartoon-within-a-cartoon. The entrance: "King Kong" (1933) uses Mickey Mousing throughout,