Dinner Time
About Dinner Time
Farmer Al Falfa, working as a butcher, fights off a pack of dogs that want the meat. Paul Terry directed this Aesop's Fables short, with a synchronized score, for Amadee J. Van Beuren.
Cast & crew
More about Dinner Time
Paul Terry directed, John Foster co-directed, and Van Beuren produced. Josiah Zuro arranged and conducted the score. It was made at Fables Studio. The short premiered at the Strand Theater in New York in August 1928. Pathé Exchange released it on 14 October 1928, a month before Steamboat Willie.
Themes
Background
Sound-on-film cartoons were being tried through 1928. This one opened in New York in August and went out through Pathé in October.
Making
Terry and Van Beuren got a track on a cartoon before Disney's Steamboat Willie reached theaters. The Strand audience did not turn that fact into a reputation.
Audiences
The Strand showing did not make it a hit. The credit for the first synchronized-sound cartoon went, in later publicity, to Steamboat Willie.
Technique
Sound-on-film, not a live orchestra cue sheet. The track is printed with the picture.
Music
Josiah Zuro arranged and conducted the synchronized score.
Preservation
The short survives.
Notes
- One of the first sound-on-film cartoons shown to a public audience.
- Audiences did not take to it. Steamboat Willie, released the next month, is the cartoon later billed as the first with synchronized sound.
- Farmer Al Falfa is Terry's character. The series is Aesop's Fables.
- Wikidata lists a 1 September 1928 date. The Strand showing was in August, and the Pathé release was 14 October.
Scenes
- Al Falfa fends the dogs off the meat while the synchronized score plays.
