Moving Day (1936 film)


Moving Day is a 1936 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The cartoon, set during the contemporary Great Depression, follows the antics of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as they frantically pack their belongings after being dispossessed from their home. The film was directed by Ben Sharpsteen and includes the voices of Walt Disney as Mickey, Clarence Nash as Donald, Pinto Colvig as Goofy, and Billy Bletcher as Sheriff Pete. It was the 85th Mickey Mouse short to be released, and the eighth of that year.

Plot

Mickey and Donald are six months overdue on their rent payments for their home. Sheriff Pete bangs on the front door and punches Mickey in the face when he goes to answer. Pete gives them a "Notice to Dispossess" authorizing him not only to evict and arrest them, but to sell off their belongings as collateral. He furiously strikes a match on Donald's beak to light his cigar, throws it into his mouth, Donald coughs and Pete leaves to put out signs advertising cheap furniture.
As Donald and Mickey decide to move before Pete can sell all their belongings, Goofy, employed as an iceman, arrives with a delivery. Mickey and Donald decide to have him help with the relocation.
While Mickey struggles with an overloaded suitcase, Goofy attempts to load an upright piano onto the truck, but the piano keeps rolling out of the truck when he leaves it unattended or when he does not notice it. Goofy eventually discovers the piano to have a mind of its own after it runs over him like a car and battles it around the house. Meanwhile, Donald, in his haste to pack everything he sees, grabs a gas heater which is attached to a gas line in the wall. Seeing the leaking gas, he casually plugs it with a plunger, but the pressure in the line shoots the plunger out and it sticks to Donald's buttocks. He struggles to remove the plunger but squeezes it so hard it flies upward like an aeroplane propeller and cuts through a lamp, making Donald hang from the wall and then once again get stuck in a fish tank.
As Donald struggles with the tank, Goofy learns that he can control it if just his hat is visible to the piano. However, after Goofy taunts the piano, it rolls out of the truck off-screen, smashes through the door, and strikes him in the back again, which catapults him into the icebox and makes him end up eating a watermelon. Donald finally frees himself from the fish tank, only to get catapulted across the room and gets his head stuck on the gas valve, which makes his body fill up with air like a balloon, and get launched and flies around the room, knocking over dishes and throwing Mickey and Goofy's clothes everywhere. Outside, Pete hears the commotion and storms into the room to scold the trio for making a mess and orders them to sit down and listen immediately. Unaware of the gas leak, he strikes another match on Donald's beak, but the heat caused by the leaking gas causes his match to destroy the house and somehow catapulting the furniture and items, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy into the truck and they quickly drive away. Pete ends up in a bathtub with the “For Salesign on his neck, and as he tries to get the trio to come back and arrest them for their vandalism, he accidentally turns the hot water on, leading to another humiliating defeat for him. Donald is satisfied with his victory and laughed, but the toilet plunger once again lands on his tail, causing him to lose his temper again while trying to remove it from his feathers.

Voice cast