Orphan's Benefit is a 1934 Mickey Mouse cartoon that debuted on August 11, 1934.
An ensemble performance for a crowd of orphans emceed by Mickey includes piano playing, an adagio dance, an operatic number, and numerous attempts by Donald Duck to recite "Little Boy Blue."
Tropes:
- Accidental Pervert: Goofy catches Clarabelle's dress and it leaves her naked, and she hits him on the head with a mallet in retaliation.
- Amusing Injuries: Donald suffers a lot of physical abuse in this cartoon.
- Berserk Button: Donald being tormented by the orphans is enough to set him off.
- Blowing a Raspberry: The first thing the orphans do to heckle Donald is to blow their noses loudly as a disguised Bronx Cheer when he recites "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn."
- Brats with Slingshots: One of the orphans fire a slingshot to help Clara Cluck finish "Chi mi frena in tal momento" from Act II of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.
- Bratty Half-Pint: The orphans are very rude and inconsiderate towards Donald throughout this short.
- Butt-Monkey: Donald, for the first time is the subject of a lot of abuse by the orphans.
- Characterisation Click Moment: In his first appearance in the Silly Symphony short "The Wise Little Hen", Donald Duck was a supporting character and was depicted as a lazy trickster; here, he is in his first cartoon co-starring Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and the orphans and the first time he's ever been a hot-tempered, stubborn Butt-Monkey.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the first time Donald would throw a tantrum, and he doesn't do it as intensely as he would not long afterward, with a slower delivery in his squawking.
- Extendo Boxing Glove: The orphans use this on Donald.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: First short in which Donald shows this. Animator Dick Lundy even came up with what he called his "fighting pose" of having one arm outstretched and the other swing back and forth while quacking angrily and hopping on one foot.
- The Heckler: The orphans constantly interrupt and mock Donald for his performance.
- Humiliation Conga: Donald gets an ice cream blown at him, attacked with boxing gloves, repeatedly pulled back-stage, hit with tie bricks, a plant, a fire extinguisher and drowned by eggs when they all land on him.
- It Amused Me: The orphans repeatedly torment Donald for their own amusement.
- Karma Houdini: The orphans receive no punishment for said repeated humiliation of Donald, and they show no remorse for it.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Donald briefly turns into Jimmy Durante while ranting "Am I mortified!"
- Rage Breaking Point:
- When Donald recites "Little Boy Blue" the second time, the orphans blow their noses at him and he throws a tantrum.
- The second time where the orphans seem to be behaving when he was back on stage, he asks "Where is that boy who looks after the sheep?" and the orphans answer "Under the haystack fast asleep, you dope!" and Donald loses it again.
- Right Out of My Clothes: During their dance routine, Horace tosses Clarabelle to Goofy, but when he catches her, she flies right out of her dress, which is left in the Goof's hands.
- Rule of Three: Donald tries reciting "Little Boy Blue" at least three times throughout the short, but each attempt backfires on him.
- Running Gag: Donald getting pranked by the orphans and getting pulled back-stage whenever he's on stage.
- Shot-for-Shot Remake: The cartoon was remade in color in 1941, using the same soundtrack but redrawing the animation to modernize the designs. Disney planned to do the same with other black-and-white cartoons, but the 1941 animators strike and the outbreak of WWII put an end to that plan. The one change that was made was Donald's final line "Aw, nuts!" became "Aw, phooey!", which by this time, became his Catchphrase.
- Vaudeville Hook: Donald repeatedly gets the hook whenever he loses his temper.
