When Mickey Met Mussolini, Goofy Chewed Nicotine Gum, and Uncle Walt Owned a Plantation: Three Cartoons Disney Wishes It Had Never Made

No Smoking

This cartoon, which follows Goofy as he tries to give up smoking, is unlike any other short discussed so far. While Song of the South and Der Feuhrer’s Face dealt with content that is offensive and shocking, they did so in a way that remains, for the most part, kid-friendly. No Smoking, on the other hand, not only revolves around a subject that does not concern children, but deals with it in a way they cannot possibly understand.  

Back in the 50s, which is when this particular cartoon was produced, the character of Goofy starred in a number of every-man stories where, under the name “George Geef,” he faced the trials and tribulations of the typical American citizen.  One explains how you catch (and recover from) the flu while another dives into the daunting task of finding some well-earned rest and relaxation during father’s weekend.  

But of every tale in which this character stars, No Smoking is perhaps the most relatable. When Goofy—or, should we say, “Geef”—tries to quit, his craving for nicotine grows to such fearsome proportions that he can think of nothing else. At one point, he looks around his smoke-filled office, and sees his coworkers gradually fade away until nothing remains except the cigarettes glued to their lips. 

For most of the previous century, tobacco was a valued member of not just real households, but fictional ones, too. In old Tom and Jerry shorts, cigars and ash trays were often used as painful props, and while you will not find any tobacco in the frames that make up Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s second feature film, Pinocchio sees its titular wooden boy playing pool, drinking beer and puffing smoke during his stay on the aptly-named Pleasure Island. 

In late 1966, Walt Disney died of lung cancer. Neither the time of his death nor its cause came as much of a surprise friends and family, who knew that well the cartoonist had spent the better part of his adult life smoking as many as three packs of cigarettes a day, all of them unfiltered. Walt’s early death, as well as those of many others like him, eventually caused a change in Zeitgeist. Smoking was no longer being referred to as a “habit” but an “addiction,” and public opinion gradually removed its traces from not just the drawing room, but the drawings themselves as well.