The Castaway is a Mickey Mouse animated short feature released on March 27, 1931, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was the twenty-seventh Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the third of that year.The Castaway was the first cartoon directed by Wilfred Jackson, who would go on to direct many Disney feature films, including Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp. The circumstances were far from ideal: under pressure from distributors for another film and with little time to produce one, Disney tapped Jackson to produce a short made up of reused animation from other films. The short uses recycled footage of a dancing gorilla (from 1929's Jungle Rhythm), a lion getting eaten by a crocodile (cut from Jungle Rhythm) and dancing seal lions (from 1929's Wild Waves).The short is also the first to be scored by Frank Churchill, who went on to write the songs for Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, Bambi and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.