Aesop's Fables, Volume 1 is a compendium of the most delightfully bizarre, surrealistic, and strangest animated cartoons of the depression era; and of the small New York-based Van Beuren Studio that created them. The series features a cast of characters including skipping hippos, musical monks, dancing architecture, bony piano-playing spectres, drunken singing turtles and amorphous fowl dancing themselves into graves. Their antics are supported by dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish panoramas, and invigorating musical scores by Gene Rodemich, popular dance band leader of the 1920s. Thunderbean is proud to present this excellent quality collection of 16 Fables from the original series, all digitally transferred from original film prints, including original 35mm theatrical nitrate material, with restored original titles cards; and re-recorded soundtracks. In over 70 years, the images have never looked fresher or the soundtracks crispier and full-bodied.
Titles include: Happy Polo (a 1932 reissue of 'The Polo Match' 1929); Summertime; The Iron Man; Haunted Ship and Gypped In Egypt (both with Waffles & Don); A Romeo Robin; Noah Knew His Ark; Hot Tamale; Making 'Em Move; Fly Frolic; The Family Shoe; Farmerette; Chinese Jinks; The Cat's Canary; Toy Time; and Silvery Moon.
Bonus Features include: An Æsop Fables Primer (overview and notes on the cartoons); Meet The Maestros (profiles of Josiah Zuro, Carl Edouarde, and Gene Rodemich); About Fables Music (revealing titles of familiar melodies in Fables, Disney and Iwerks cartoons), Side by side comparison Animation Sequence (Toy time and Silvery Moon), an Æsop Fables sing-a-long, original cylinder and 78 rpm recordings of fables melodies and best-selling sides by Gene Rodemich and his orchestra. Picture Galleries Posters, packages ,advertisements, original and reissue title cards; and the Æsop Fables Movie Book (1931 children's publication by the Van Beuren staff).
