Steamboat Willie!
The film has received wide critical acclaim, not only for introducing one of the world's most popular cartoon characters but also for its technical innovation. Animators voted Steamboat Willie as the 13th greatest cartoon of all time in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and in 1998, the film was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.[9] The cartoon entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2024.