Silly Symphony is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music. As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time. The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck making his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the 1960s and 1980s.
Fleischer Studios was an American animation studio founded in 1929 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, who ran the pioneering company from its inception until its acquisition by Paramount Pictures, the parent company and the distributor of its films. In its prime, Fleischer Studios was a premier producer of animated cartoons for theaters, with Walt Disney Productions being its chief competitor in the 1930s.
Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were an American animation team and company known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios. In 1929, the studio was founded under the name Harman-Ising Productions, producing Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Leon Schlesinger from 1930 to 1933. From 1934 to 1938, Harman-Ising produced the Happy Harmonies series, with William Hanna as their employee.
Rudolf Carl Ising was an American animator best known for collaborating with Hugh Harman to establish the Warner Bros. and MGM Cartoon studios during the early years of the golden age of American animation. In 1940, Ising produced William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's first cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot, a cartoon featuring characters later known as Tom and Jerry.
Orphan's Benefit is an American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions in black-and-white. It was first released in 1934 and was later remade in Technicolor in 1941 under the corrected title Orphans' Benefit. The cartoon features Mickey Mouse and his friends putting on a vaudeville-style benefit show for a group of unruly orphans. It contains a number of firsts for Disney, including the first time in which Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck appear together, and was the 68th Mickey Mouse short film to be released, and the sixth of that year. It was also the cartoon which had the first story to be written that featured Donald Duck, though it was the second Donald Duck short to be produced and released, after The Wise Little Hen.
Flowers and Trees is a Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process after several years of two-color Technicolor films. The film was a commercial and critical success, winning the first Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject.
The Van Beuren Corporation was a New York City-based animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons as well as live-action short-subjects from the 1920s to 1936.
Tom and Jerry are fictional characters that starred in a series of early sound cartoons produced by the Van Beuren Studios, and distributed by RKO Pictures. The series lasted from 1931 to 1933.
Burton F. Gillett was a director of animated films. He is noted for his Silly Symphonies work for Disney, particularly the 1932 short film Flowers and Trees and the 1933 short film Three Little Pigs, both of which were awarded the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and both of which were selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.
Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series was known for bringing the characters from Harvey Comics to life, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey. All shorts from Baby Huey and Little Audrey are included. It was the successor to the series Color Classics produced by Fleischer Studios. Several Noveltoons feature characters which originated in Color Classics. This series was also similar to the two series from Warner Bros., Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in that it features several recurring characters with one general title.
ComiColor Cartoons are a series of twenty-five animated short subjects produced by Ub Iwerks from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by Iwerks Studio; after losing distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, the Iwerks studio's senior company Celebrity Pictures had to distribute the films itself. The series was shot exclusively in Cinecolor.
Color Classics are a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 as a competitor to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. As the name implies, all of the shorts were made in color format, with the first entry of the series, Poor Cinderella (1934), being the first color cartoon produced by the Fleischer studio. There were 36 shorts produced in this series.
James H. "Shamus" Culhane was an American animator, film director, and film producer. He is best known for his work in the Golden age of American animation.
Aesop's Fables is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Produced from 1921 to 1933, 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. The series provided inspiration to Walt Disney to found the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, where he created Mickey Mouse.
Toby the Pup is an animated cartoon character created by animators Sid Marcus, Dick Huemer, and Art Davis. He starred in a series of early sound shorts produced by Charles B. Mintz for RKO Radio Pictures. The series lasted from 1930 to 1931. Twelve cartoons were produced, though some are still considered to be lost. The character was voiced by Dick Huemer.
Mickey Mouse is a series of American animated comedy short films produced by Walt Disney Productions. The series started in 1928 with Steamboat Willie and ended in 2013 with Get a Horse!, taking a hiatus from 1953 to 1983. The series is notable for its innovation with sound synchronization and character animation, and also introduced well-known characters such as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto and Goofy.
The Reluctant Dragon is a 1941 American live-action/animated anthology comedy film produced by Walt Disney, directed by Alfred Werker, and released by RKO Radio Pictures on June 27, 1941. Essentially a tour of the then-new Walt Disney Studios facility in Burbank, California, the film stars Algonquin Round Table member, film actor, writer and comedian Robert Benchley and many Disney staffers such as Ward Kimball, Fred Moore, Norman Ferguson, Clarence Nash, and Walt Disney, all as themselves.
Ted Eshbaugh was an American animation filmmaker, best known as one of the first filmmakers to experiment with color sound cartoons in the early 1930s, which included Goofy Goat and The Wizard of Oz.
The Sunshine Makers is a 1935 animated short film directed by Burt Gillett and Ted Eshbaugh, reissued and sponsored by the food and beverage producer Borden in 1940. It was originally released as a part of the Rainbow Parade series, produced by Van Beuren Studios.
