Launched by Walt Disney in 1929 as a 'musical novelty' series to complement his recent success with Mickey Mouse, the Silly Symphonies series soon became much more. This line of delightfully innovative, animated cartoons ran for ten years and produced such classics as Three Little Pigs, The Tortoise and the Hare, Music Land, and The Old Mill. This richly illustrated volume is a complete history of the Silly Symphonies series, including detailed entries for all the Symphonies along with a lengthy critical analysis and production history of the series.

Author Biography

J.B. Kaufman is an author and film historian who has published extensively on topics including Disney animation and American silent film. He is coauthor, with Russell Merritt, of two essential reference works on Disney animation history: Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992; winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Award and the Society for Animation Studies' Norman McLaren-Evelyn Lambart Award, and chosen by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year), and Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series (2006). Kaufman was also a regular contributor to the Griffith Project at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the distinguished annual silent-film festival in Pordenone, Italy.