The Rooster is a character from the 1929 Silly Symphony short The Skeleton Dance.
Background
Physical appearance
The rooster has black plumage all around his body with a large comb located on top of his head. He also has large eyes located on of his head and a beak located between both eyes as well a high-arched tail located on the back of his body as well as having two feet each with four toes (three in the front and the other in the back) as well as two spurs sticking out from both feet. When about to crow, his torso exaggerates to show he is about to do his morning routine in announcing the sunrise, which often drives away skeletons back to their graves.
Appearances
The Skeleton Dance
The rooster appears at the end of the short perched on a fence in the countryside as the last character introduced in the very first Silly Symphony short. As he flies onto the fence, he crows loudly to mark the arrival of sunrise, causing the other skeletons to react to his crowing. This causes them to retreat back to their graves as they react in fright, ending their macabre celebration.
The Cat's Out
The rooster makes an appearance during the end of the short. As indicated through source material, this animation of the rooster crowing was directly recycled from The Skeleton Dance.[1] After the cat wakes up from his sleep after being humiliated by birds in his nightmare, he hears the rooster crowing to announce the arrival of the day, just before the cat happily explores the countryside but this time not chasing birds like he used to do the past day.
Video game appearances
Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
The rooster appears as a being the player can interact with in the second Skeleton Dance projector screen level. He is encountered perched on top of a roof of a gazebo where a projector screen leads to Blot Alley. Interacting with the rooster as Mickey causes him to crow loudly and knock the four skeletons guarding a golden E-Ticket. Once done so, the skeletons become detached, allowing the player to collect the E-Ticket.
Trivia
- Strangely, the rooster does not have a lobed wattle below his beak, unlike real-life roosters.
- In 1937, Ub Iwerks worked on the cartoon Skeleton Frolic for Columbia Pictures' Color Rhapsody series, which is essentially a color remake of The Skeleton Dance, and features a scene with a rooster crowing to announce the sunrise, only in a different position as well as a different scene, unlike in the Disney short.
- There was no credit given to the animation of the rooster crowing in The Skeleton Dance, so it is unknown who animated the rooster in this short. However, this animation was later recycled for The Cat's Out, where the animation was credited to Wilfred Jackson.[1]