My Old Kentucky Home

1926 Animation 6 minutes Directed by Dave Fleischer

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About My Old Kentucky Home

Ko-Ko and a quartet, first seen as a band marching onto a theatre stage, lead a sing-along of Stephen Foster's My Old Kentucky Home. The verses are put up on the screen in the usual Song Car-Tune way. In the chorus a caricatured girl hops from word to word.

Cast & crew

More about My Old Kentucky Home

Dave Fleischer directed and Max Fleischer produced this Song Car-Tune for Red Seal Pictures. The track was recorded on Lee de Forest's Phonofilm. Song Car-Tunes lists the release as 13 March 1926.

Themes

Background

It is one of the Song Car-Tunes issued with a Phonofilm sound-on-film track rather than as a silent sing-along.

Making

Red Seal, the Fleischers' partner with de Forest and Hugo Riesenfeld, ran a small East Coast theatre chain until the Phonofilm company and Red Seal went into bankruptcy in September 1926.

Reviews

Motion Picture News of 23 March 1926 treated Foster's song as a ready-made subject and called the chorus business a likely audience favorite.

Technique

Phonofilm puts the song on the film itself so the theatre can lead the audience along the bouncing words.

Music

The picture is built on Stephen Foster's 1853 song My Old Kentucky Home, played from a Lee de Forest Phonofilm track.

Preservation

Prints survive, including a later Weiss Brothers reissue that replaced the Ko-Ko opening.

Notes

  • Motion Picture News, 23 March 1926, expected it to be one of the popular numbers of the series and described a girl leaping along the words of the chorus.
  • The Film Daily, 28 March 1926, noted a new opening in which the quartet marches on as a band and finishes on the theatre stage.
  • A dog called Pinkie, mouthing 'Follow the ball, and join in, everybody,' was long taken for the first animated dialogue. That piece was made later, about 1929, by the Weiss Brothers, who recut some Song Car-Tunes and dropped the Ko-Ko openings.
  • Wikidata also names Dick Huemer beside Dave Fleischer as director.
  • The Fleischers had used the bouncing ball since My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, released 15 September 1925.

Scenes

  • The quartet marches in as a band and lands on the stage.
  • A caricatured girl jumps along the words of the chorus.

Influenced by

  • Stephen Foster's My Old Kentucky Home (1853)
  • The Fleischer bouncing-ball Song Car-Tunes

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (My Old Kentucky Home (1926).ogv)

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