Dinner Time (film)

Dinner Time (1928) is an American animated short subject produced by Amadee J. Van Beuren, directed by Paul Terry, co-directed by John Foster, and produced at Van Beuren Studios. Josiah Zuro arranged and conducted the "synchronized" music score. The film is part of a series entitled Aesop's Fables and features the Terry creation Farmer Al Falfa who works as a butcher, fending off a group of pesky dogs.^[1]

The full film

Dinner Time was one of the first publicly shown sound-on-film cartoons. It premiered at the Strand Theater New York City in August 1928 and was released by Pathé Exchange on October 14, a month before Walt Disney's sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie.^[2] Dinner Time was not successful with audiences and Disney's film would be widely touted as the first synchronized sound cartoon.

Commonwealth Reissue

In addition to the stock music cues from Thomas J. Valentino's music library, the 1950s Commonwealth reissue of this cartoon also has a narrator and voice actors. The voice actors spoke the characters' lines, as opposed to the nonsense vocalisations made in the original 1928 version. Some scenes were also reordered.

See also

• Phonofilm
• Sound film