This cartoon was the last thing to be broadcast on BBC television on 1 September 1939, two days before the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. It was thought that the VHF signal from the broadcast would serve as a homing beacon for the enemy planes closing in on London. This cartoon was also the first thing broadcast when BBC television resumed broadcasting on 7 June 1946. An urban legend developed that the continuity announcer, Jasmine Bligh, introduced the cartoon by saying, "Now then, as we were saying before we were so rudely interrupted." However, her actual words were "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?"
Celebrities caricatured are (in order): The Keystone Kops (Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, Harry Langdon, and Chester Conklin), Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Maurice Chevalier, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor, Harold Lloyd, Edward G. Robinson, Clark Gable, Adolphe Menjou, Sid Grauman, George Arliss, Joe E. Brown, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Mae West, Jack Oakie, Helen Hayes, William Powell, Chester Morris, Gloria Swanson, Will Hays, Greta Garbo, Will Rogers, Ed Wynn, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, Bela Lugosi, Fredric March, Boris Karloff, and Douglas Fairbanks.
Some of the celebrities in "Mickey's Gala Premier" would later go on to become Disney Legends.