Aesop's Film Fables
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonist Paul Terry
Paul Terry (cartoonist)
Paul Houlton Terry was an American cartoonist, screenwriter, film director and one of the most prolific film producers in history...
. Terry came upon the inspiration for the series by young actor-turned-writer Howard Estabrook
Howard Estabrook
Howard Estabrook was an American actor, film director and producer, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born Howard Bolles in Detroit, Michigan, Estabrook began his career in 1904 as a stage actor in New York. He made his film debut in 1914 during the silent era, and would go on to appear in several...
, who suggested making a series of cartoons based on Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
. Although Terry later claimed he had never heard of Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
, he felt that Estabrook's idea was something worthwhile. Terry immediately began to set up a new studio called Fables Studios, Inc. and received backing from the Keith-Albee Theatre
Keith-Albee Theatre
Keith-Albee is a theatre located along Fourth Avenue in downtown Huntington, West Virginia in the United States of America. The Keith-Albee was named after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation, one of the leading vaudeville performance chains at that time, to convince the directors of...
circuit.
The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
Killing The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs is among the best known of Aesop's Fables and use of the phrase has become idiomatic of an unprofitable action motivated by greed.-The story and its moral:...
. Only the earliest films were loose adaptations of the actual Fables while later entries usually revolved around cats, mice, and the disgruntled Farmer Al Falfa
Farmer Al Falfa
Farmer Al Falfa , the quintessential grizzly old farmer type, is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. He first appeared in 1916 in a series of shorts produced by the John R. Bray Studios...
. Each short concluded with a "moral" that usually had 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." "The fact that they're ambiguous is the thing that made 'em funny," Terry once said. Morals included "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
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
admitted that his earliest ambitions was to produce cartoons of comparable quality to Paul Terry. With the popularity of Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
's part-talkie The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer (1927 film)
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system,...
in 1927, as well as the huge success of the first all-talkie Lights of New York
Lights of New York (1928 film)
Lights of New York was the first all-talking feature film, released by Warner Brothers and directed by Bryan Foy. The film, which cost only $23,000 to produce, grossed over $1,000,000. It was also the first film to define the crime genre...
in 1928, producer Amadee J. Van Beuren
Van Beuren Studios
Van Beuren Studios was an American animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons from 1928 to 1936.Producer Amedee J. van Beuren first became involved in the animation industry in 1920, when he formed a partnership with Paul Terry and formed the "Aesop's Fables Studio" for the production of...
realized the potential of sound films and urged Terry to add the new innovation to his films. Terry argued that adding sound would only complicate the production process, but ended up doing so anyway (the series would now be renamed Aesop's Sound Fables).
Released in October 1928, Dinner Time
Dinner Time
Dinner Time is an animated short subject produced and directed by Paul Terry, co-directed by John Foster, and produced at Van Beuren Studios...
became the very first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public (from May 1924 to September 1926, Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
had released the series Song Car-Tunes
Sound Car-Tunes
Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes, Song Car-Tunes, or Sound Car-Tunes, is a series of short three minute animation films produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer between May 1924 and September 1927, pioneering the use of the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" device used to lead audiences in theater sing-alongs...
made in DeForest Phonofilm
Phonofilm
In 1919, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patent on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back...
but only the music, not dialogue, was synched to the Bouncing Ball
Bouncing ball
The bouncing ball is a device used in video recordings to visually indicate the rhythm of a song, helping audiences to sing along with live or prerecorded music...
gimmick.). However, the film was overshadowed by the release of Disney's Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...
on November 18, 1928. Fable Studios did not cease production of silent cartoons until the release of Presto-Chango on April 14, 1929.
In 1929, Terry quit and John Foster took over the series under the Van Beuren Corporation
Van Beuren Studios
Van Beuren Studios was an American animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons from 1928 to 1936.Producer Amedee J. van Beuren first became involved in the animation industry in 1920, when he formed a partnership with Paul Terry and formed the "Aesop's Fables Studio" for the production of...
, formally Fable Studios, Inc. The series finally came to a close in 1933.
See also
- Animation Before Hollywood: The Silent PeriodAnimation in the United States during the silent eraAnimated films in the United States date back to at least 1906 when Vitagraph released Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Although early animations were rudimentary they rapidly became more sophisticated with such classics as Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914, Felix the Cat, and Koko the Clown.Originally a...