Van Beuren Studios

The Van Beuren Corporation originated from the financial backing of Paul Terry's Aesop's Film Fables. Amadee J. Van Beuren, the businessman behind the project, took control of the studio in 1929 after Terry left due to a disagreement over the transition to sound and rebranded it under his own name. Based in New York City, the company was one of the few animation studios not located in the Los Angeles area.

Under directors such as John Foster and later Burt Gillett, a former Disney animator, the studio produced Aesop's Sound Fables, a human comedy duo named Tom and Jerry (unrelated to the later MGM series), the character Cubby Bear, an adaptation of the comic strip The Little King, and eventually the Technicolor Rainbow Parade series, which featured Molly Moo-Cow and a short-lived revival of sound-era Felix the Cat. All of these were distributed through RKO Radio Pictures.

Despite their quirky appeal, Van Beuren's cartoons lacked the refinement of Disney or Fleischer, and the studio faced significant challenges, including labor disputes in 1935 that Van Beuren strongly opposed. The final blow came in 1936 when RKO entered into a distribution deal with Walt Disney, making Van Beuren's services unnecessary. Without a distributor, the studio could not continue. The staff was laid off in the spring of 1936, and the remaining cartoons were released in theaters that autumn. Amadee Van Beuren died in 1938, and by then, his studio was already defunct.