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
Pat Powers (businessman) time, De Forest was in too weak a financial position to mount a legal challenge against Powers for patent infringement. In 1929, Powers sold Walt Disney a Cinephone system so that he could make sound cartoons such as Mickey Mouse's "Steamboat Willie" (1928). Unable to find a distributor for the sound cartoons, Disney began releasing his cartoons through Powers' company Celebrity Pictures. After one year of successful "Mickey Mouse" and "Silly Symphonies" cartoons, Walt Disney confronted Powers in 1930 about money due to Disney from the distribution deal. Powers responded by signing Disney's head animator Ub Iwerks to an exclusive