The History of Lip Sync

The first commercial screening of sound-on-film took place in 1923, which showed a short motion picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film..The first animated dialogue had been established as ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ 1926. In this a dog in the film mouths “Follow the ball, and join in, everybody”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Old_Kentucky_Home_%28film%29. This was made by Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios.  

By 1929 following ‘Steamboat Willy’ Carl Stalling streamlined the production process at Disney and sound was recorded before, not after, the animation was done. This lead to a more music based cartoon series, the’ Silly Symphonies'. The first of these was the ‘Skeleton Dance’ (1929) and the beginnings of lip-sync can be seen in the cat. (Animation Art edited by Jerry Beck, 2004, Flame Tree Publishing) 

The Fleischer Brothers in conjunction with Paramount developed the Talkartoons in 1929. These were very successful and lead to the creation of Betty Boop with ‘Dizzy Dishes’ in 1930. She was well suited to talking pictures and her character worked well with music and dialogue.

 

Another character that was one of the first to use lip sync was 'Popeye', also from the Fleischer Studios (1934). Popeye was very successful because of the excellent voice actors that gave a human element to the animation. 

 

Disney Studios were also improving upon their animation with sound. New animators like Burt Gillett, Wilfred Jackson and David Hand were now working in colour and new characters like the Three Little Pigs, Donald Duck and Snow White were being developed. Snow White was released in 1937 as the first full length, colour, and animated sound film.

In these first animations the music was the most important aspect of the film. The animation was defined by the tempo of the music. As lip sync and dialogue improved, these aspects became more important and detailed storylines and characterisation could be developed. By the time Snow White was made in 1937, the animation was so good the quality so high that it has not aged, whereas films of that era would look very dated if viewed today.