October 14, 1938 – The Silly Symphony Farmyard Symphony is Released to Theaters
“How are ya, toots?”
On October 14, 1938, the Silly Symphony Farmyard Symphony was released to theaters. It was based on the story of Chanticleer the rooster, a staple in Middle Ages folklore. Interstingly enough, stories of Chanticleer are usually told with Reynard the Fox, a character that the Disney Studios were looking to make a movie about, which eventually led the way to the 1973 film Robin Hood. The songs featured in this film is “La Donna E’mobile” from the opera Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi, “The William Tell Overture” by Gioachino Rossini, and Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. The film was directed by Jack Cutting.
The morning breaks over a pleasant farm, and a rooster is heard crowing with the dawn. Doves exit their nest, a bull scratches his back on a fencepost, and other animals wake up to greet the day. As a calf drinks from his mother’s udder, a baby pig, unable to get milk from his own mother, runs to hopefully get some milk. The claf scares the poor pig away, sending him running into the horse pen. The calf and the foal start running around together, until they spy some geese marching to the barn. The rooster crows again, although he has some trouble crowing to begin with. He marches around his domain as the literal cock of the walk, until he hears the hens snoring. He sneaks into the hen house and lets out a loud crow, waking them with a startle.
The rooster woos the hen with some serenading
The rooster is attracted to one of the hens, who flirts with him not-so-subtly, but she also flees from his rather pushy nature of running after her. He then serenades her, and the two end up serenading the farm with a duet, with the whole farm eventually joining in. The opera is interrupted by the farmer and his wife calling the animals for feeding time. The baby pig from the beginning is once again unable to get food, and runs around the farm, trying to find a way to get something to eat, but is chased off by all the animals he encounters. He runs into a building, and knocks out all the corn inside, which is soon eaten the baby pig and all of the chicks.
disneydetail 