Aesop's Fables (previously titled Aesop's Film Fables and Aesop's Sound Fables) is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry.[1] Produced from 1921 to 1934, the series includes The Window Washers (1925), Scrambled Eggs (1926), Small Town Sheriff (1927), Dinner Time (1928), and Gypped in Egypt (1930). Dinner Time is the first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public.
Farmer Al Falfa in Amateur Night on the Ark (1923)
Terry was inspired to make the series by young actor-turned-writer Howard Estabrook, who suggested making a series of cartoons based on Aesop's Fables. Although Terry later claimed he had never heard of Aesop, he said that Estabrook's idea was worthwhile. Terry immediately began to set up a new studio called Fables Studios, Inc. and received backing from the Keith-Albee Theatre circuit.[2]
The series launched on June 19, 1921, with The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs. On that same day, Van Beuren announced that the pictures would be distributed exclusively by Pathe.[3] Only the earliest films are loose adaptations of the actual fables and later entries usually revolve around cats, mice, and the disgruntled Farmer Al Falfa. Terry had developed Farmer Al in the previous decade, and this series would be his most prolific appearance. Cartoonist Milt Gross worked briefly on the series as scriptwriter and animator. [4]
Each short concludes with a moral that usually has nothing to do with the actual cartoon itself. Terry staffer Mannie Davis once remarked that the morals were even "funnier than the whole picture itself"[citation needed] and Terry said "the fact that they're ambiguous is the thing that made 'em funny".[citation needed] Morals include "Go around with a chip on your shoulder and someone will knock your block off" or "Marriage is a good institution, but who wants to live in an institution?"
The series proved to be enormously popular with the public during the 1920s. Walt Disney admitted that his earliest ambition was to produce cartoons of comparable quality to Paul Terry. With the popularity of Al Jolson's part-talkie The Jazz Singer in 1927, as well as the huge success of the first all-talkie Lights of New York in 1928, producer Amadee J. Van Beuren realized the potential of sound films and bought Fables Studios to produce sound animation films.[5] Van Beuren, now owner of the newly-named Van Beuren Studios,[5] urged Terry to add the innovation to his films. Terry argued that adding sound would only complicate the production process, but ended up doing so anyway, and the series would now be renamed Aesop's Sound Fables.
In 1929 Terry quit, starting his own TerryToons Studios,[6] and John Foster took over the series under the Van Beuren Corporation, formerly Fables Studios, Inc. The series finally came to an end in 1933, when the studio's veteran animators, fed up with the hours of unpaid overtime imposed by Van Beuren, decided to attempt unionization.[7] These meetings were led by animator Harry Bailey, who had also become senior studio manager after John Foster's departure, and who had recently been introduced to socialist ideas by comic book artist Otto Soglow, for whom he had adapted several of his comics into animation.[8][9] However, one of the studio's leading animators, George Stallings, decides to denounce his colleagues to Van Beuren in exchange for taking over the studio from Bailey. In retaliation, Van Beuren decided to fire all the employees who had attended union meetings, with the exception of conductor Gene Rodemich, bringing Aesop's Fables and Tom and Jerry to an abrupt halt, as well as canceling new series in production, such as the animated adaptation of the Amos 'n Andy series and another unnamed animated series centered on the Lucky Leo and Lily Lion characters.[10] The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) lists 447 titles from 1920 to 1929 under the production company name of Aesop Fables Studio,[11] and 198 titles under Van Beuren Studios from 1928 to 1934.[12]
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