Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Aesop's Sound Fables)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
A toyshop after closing, and the toys come to life: dolls, soldiers, animals and clockwork figures climb down from the shelves and put on a show, dancing, playing instruments and chasing one another to Gene Rodemich's jazzy score, until the inevitable villain among them, a toy with bad intentions, spoils the party and has to be put down by the rest. The toys-come-to-life cartoon was a standard of the first sound years, made by every studio in some form, and Van Beuren's version is distinguished mainly by its oddness: the figures are drawn in the studio's rough, lumpy style, the gags are stranger than Disney's, and the music carries more of the film than the story. A detailed account of its gags has not been found in the sources used here; the outline follows the standard premise and the surviving catalogue descriptions.
Why It Matters
- Van Beuren's Aesop's Sound Fables are the id of early sound animation: cheap, fast, frequently bizarre, and full of gags that no other studio would have passed, and the toyshop setting lets Foster and Stallings indulge their taste for grotesque figures and off-kilter rhythm. The films are more interesting than they are good, which is their charm.
- The series descended directly from Paul Terry's silent Fables, taken over by John Foster when Terry left in 1929, and it ran until 1933; Toy Time is a typical late entry. The Van Beuren studio is also where Gene Rodemich, a St. Louis bandleader, wrote some of the hottest scores of the period, and the music is the main reason to seek these films out.
Notes and Trivia
- Van Beuren's Dinner Time (1928) had been the first sound cartoon released, a month before Steamboat Willie, and the studio never quite recovered from being beaten by Disney anyway.
- No renewal appears for it in the Catalog of Copyright Entries for 1958-60, so it is in the US public domain, like most Van Beuren cartoons, and survives in poor television prints.
- See also: Making Good (1932), Magic Art (1932), Cubby's Picnic (1933).