Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Cubby Bear, Aesop's Sound Fables)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
Cubby Bear is a fiddler, and the cartoon is a musical turn built around his playing: he saws at the violin at a barn dance or a village gathering, the animals around him can't help dancing, and the tune takes over everything in sight, furniture, livestock and the fiddle itself, in the manner of the Van Beuren music cartoons, where a song is an excuse for a riot of movement. A rival or a spoiler interrupts, the music wins, and the bear takes his bow. Detailed descriptions of the gags are not in the sources used here; the outline follows the title and the series' standard shape, and the film survives in television prints. What is certain is its place in the record: Fiddlin' Fun was the last cartoon released under the Aesop's Fables banner, which had begun with Paul Terry in 1921.
Why It Matters
- The fiddle gives Gene Rodemich's hot score a lead instrument, and the Van Beuren habit of making everything dance is at its most unrestrained in a cartoon that has no other business; it is a good example of the New York musical cartoon in its last year before Burt Gillett tried to make the studio into a second Disney.
- As the final Aesop's Fable it closes the longest-running series of the silent and early-sound eras, 13 years and several hundred films, from Terry's weekly one-reelers through the Foster and Stallings sound cartoons to Cubby Bear. Nothing in the film marks the occasion; the studio simply moved on to the Rainbow Parades a month later.
Notes and Trivia
- A Harman-Ising Cubby Bear cartoon, Mischievous Mice, was finished in 1934 but not released until television in 1947.
- Van Beuren's veteran animators had tried to unionise in 1934 over unpaid overtime, which helped end the old series.
- See also: Cubby's Stratosphere Flight (1934), Pastry Town Wedding (1934), The Three Little Pigs (1921).