My Old Kentucky Home
My Old Kentucky Home, originally released on April 13, 1926, by Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell Films company, was one of the Song Car-Tunes series. This cartoon does contain the original lyrics of "My Old Kentucky Home," by Stephen Collins Foster (1853). This short used an early DeForest sound system for sound. My Old Kentucky Home appears to be the first attempt at animated dialogue, as a dog mouths, "Follow the ball, and join in, everybody" in remarkable sychronization. This comes two years before Disney's Steamboat Willie.
My Old Kentucky Home was named for Federal Hill, the Lytle-Rowan mansion in Bardstown near Louisville. Sen. Rowan's wife was given land by her father William Lytle, a prominent Ohio River valley landowner, and there Sen. Rowan built the most 'famous home' in the West.
See:
Senator Rowan
Lytle family of Cincinnati
