The patrons at New York’s Colony Theatre 86 years ago on November 18, 1928, weren’t actually there to see a cartoon. The main feature was the gangster film “Gang War.” But the movie has been all but forgotten today. All anyone remembers is “Steamboat Willie.”

Despite what you might have heard, this wasn’t the first time a cartoon had been produced with a synchronized soundtrack…although most of the previous attempts weren’t very good at keeping the sound lined up with the picture. It wasn’t even the first time a theater audience had seen Mickey Mouse. (A single test screening of the Lindbergh-themed “Plane Crazy” had failed to pick up a distributer earlier.)

But it was the marriage of the two that made it all come together somehow. Mickey needed sound to be compelling, it seems. (Walt Disney had actually sold his beloved roadster to finance the soundtrack, which was kept on time with a track of audio cues placed on the actual film. The sale convinced Roy Disney that his little brother was serious about this talking mouse picture, and he stopped complaining about the cost.)

And as far as cartoons go, at least, it seems that sound needed an interesting vehicle like Mickey for people to care. The 27-year-old Disney, along with his partner Ub Iwerks, was pretty much literally betting his life on the mouse character taking off, having lost his earlier star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit through what was more or less legalized creative theft to an old business associate.

We all know how that story worked out today. But it had to start somewhere, and while Disney (and the corporation he left behind) are fond of saying “It all started with a mouse,” it’s probably more accurate to say it all started when the mouse began talking, whistling, and playing barnyard animals like musical instruments. (Yeah, Mickey was kind of a jerk for a while.) The audience at the Colony ate it up, and Disney knew he had something. “Steamboat Willie” wasn’t the true genesis of sound cartoons, or Mickey, but it combined them in a way that audiences finally saw the potential of both. It was the first time either of them mattered.

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