My Old Kentucky Home (1926) watch online HD

Okay, I have gotta say it up front. I didn't like this cartoon at all. So why, then, would I give it a 5 Well, I am a history teacher and love cinema history--and this is a super-important cartoon to the history of the genre. Why? Well, because it's the first sound cartoon--well before Disney's "Steamboat Willie". However, quality-wise, it's not even close to the Disney film--as "Willie" is still a delight after all these years.

The film begins with some very simple animation involving a dog chewing on a bone--that then becomes a trombone. Considering it's from the accomplished Fleischer Brothers, I was surprised at the very poor quality of the film--much poorer than other Out of the Inkwell cartoons. What follows is simply a sing-a-long--with minimal animation. And considering the song is the very dated Stephen Foster song "My Old Kentucky Home", my brain totally shut down from this point on...

Dreary and crappy to watch now, this still should be seen by any student of the history of animation...but no one else!!

This short is arguably the first sound cartoon, though the argument is almost a courtesy, as there's barely enough animation for it to qualify as a cartoon. While there isn't much to give away here, I will describe the animation a bit, so there are spoilers below:

This qualifies as a cartoon because of an introductory bit of animation, which is relatively brief, and a small amount of animation during the sing-along portion (including a bit right at the end which will probably be rather offensive-I'm rather hard to offend and even I found it in poor taste). It qualifies as the first sound cartoon (barely) because there is a limited bit of somewhat synchronized dialog "spoken" by an animated dog.

The animated sequence is basically a dog who takes a piece of ham, carves away and discards the meat in order to get to the bone the meat surrounds, then sharpens his teeth so that he may better chew the bone! He then instructs the audience to follow the "bouncing ball" to sing the song, "My Old Kentucky Home", which makes up the bulk of the short. The ball is replaced by animated figures about halfway through.

Interesting short, at least to animation collectors.

The previous commenter mentioned some of the gags of this Max Fleischer Song Car-Tune. What he didn't mention was that while Bimbo took his dentures out, someone still drew some teeth in his mouth! And that the bone he took a bite out of then turned into a trombone which he played with appropriate music effects when he then took a ball out of the hole part and instructed the audience to follow as the song played and the words appeared on screen as the ball bounced over them. The end part with a caricatured woman of color is indeed a little politically incorrect and possibly a little offensive (you be the judge). Since this historically is the first sound cartoon ever produced on record-preceding Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie by two years-My Old Kentucky Home gets a recommendation on that fact alone.