Chinatown My Chinatown | 1929 | Animation, Musical, Short

Title: Chinatown My Chinatown | 1929 | Animation, Musical, Short Director: Dave Fleischer Studio: Fleischer Studios Based on: The song “Chinatown, My Chinatown” by William Jerome and Jean Schwartz Release Date: August 29, 1929 Runtime: 6 Format: Black-and-white; sound; 1 reel; 1.33:1; mono Country: United States Language: English Genres: Animation, Musical, Short --- Chapters: 00:00:00 Title card and set-up 00:01:05 Dining-and-laundry gag 00:02:30 Bouncing-ball sing-along begins 00:04:00 Visual gags with lyrics 00:05:20 Finale and end title --- Summary: An entry in Fleischer Studios’ Screen Songs series, this short opens with a brief gag sequence featuring caricatured figures before inviting the audience to sing along to “Chinatown, My Chinatown.” The film then shifts into a participatory sequence using the famous “bouncing ball” to cue the lyrics on screen. The piece blends simple comic business with a music-hall style sing-along, reflecting both early sound-era exhibition practices and period-specific portrayals that today are recognized as stereotypical. --- Background: Screen Songs revived the Fleischer brothers’ earlier Song Car-Tunes formula for the sound era, pairing animated set-ups with on-screen lyrics and a bouncing ball to encourage audience participation. “Chinatown, My Chinatown” adapts the popular Tin Pan Alley song first published in 1910 and was distributed by Paramount during the first year of the Screen Songs line, as theaters rapidly transitioned to synchronized sound. --- Trivia: The runtime is approximately six minutes, a typical one-reel length for late-1920s animated shorts. The short employs Fleischer Studios’ “follow the bouncing ball,” a device introduced in the mid-1920s and refined for the sound era. The underlying song “Chinatown, My Chinatown” became a standard after its 1910 publication and frequent recordings in the 1910s and 1920s. The film is commonly listed under variant spellings such as “China Town My China Town” in some catalogs and databases. --- Public Domain / Rights: Original Release: August 29, 1929 Original Studio / Distributor: Fleischer Studios / Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation Copyright Status: Public Domain Renewal: Unknown --- Hashtags: PublicDomain FleischerStudios ScreenSongs Animation 1929 Paramount Cartoon EarlySound BouncingBall Source page: https: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinatown_My_Chinatown(1929).webm Direct media URL: https: //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Chinatown_My_Chinatown%281929%29.webm