Editing Terrytoons (section)

=== Peak era ===
[[File:"Toyland" produced by Frank Moser and Paul Terry-Toons - The Film Daily, Jul-Dec 1932 (page 858 crop).jpg|thumb|left|"Toyland" produced by Frank Moser and Paul Terry-Toons ad from ''The Film Daily'', 1932]]
Through much of its history, the studio was considered one of the lowest-quality houses in the field, to the point where Paul Terry noted, "Let Walt Disney be the [[Tiffany & Co.|Tiffany's]] of the business. I want to be the [[F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth's]]!"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hamonic |first1=W. Gerald |title=Terrytoons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory |date=2018 |publisher=John Libbey Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-0861967292 |pages=168}}</ref>  Terry's studio had the lowest budgets and was among the slowest to adapt to new technologies such as [[Sound film|sound]] (in about 1930) and [[Technicolor]] (in 1938). While its graphic style remained remarkably static for decades, it actually followed the sound cartoon trend of the late 1920s and early 1930s very quickly. Background music was entrusted to one man, Philip Scheib, and Terry's refusal to pay royalties for popular songs forced Scheib to compose his own scores.

Paul Terry took pride in producing a new cartoon every other week, regardless of the quality of the films. <!--This is all caused by the move to [[Manhattan, New York|Manhattan]], when a decline and viewers started to notice Paul Terry's quality on the Terrytoons drop.--> Until 1957, screen credits were very sparse, listing only the writer (until 1950, solely John Foster; then Tom Morrison thereafter), director (Terry's three main directors were [[Connie Rasinski]], Eddie Donnelly, and Mannie Davis), and musician (musical director Philip A. Scheib).
[[File:"AHOY, MATES!" Paul Terrytoons ad - The Film Daily, Jan-Jun 1932 (page 352 crop).jpg|thumb|Paul Terry-toons ad in ''[[The Film Daily]]'', 1932]]
Terrytoons' first distributor was [[Educational Pictures]], specialists in short-subject comedies and novelties. Audio-Cinema in the early 1930s backed the production of Terrytoons, and distributed the Educational library internationally, except in the United Kingdom and Ireland where the library was distributed by Educational and [[Gaumont-British]] in partnership with the [[Ideal Film Company]].

The [[Fox Film]] company then released Educational shorts to theaters in the 1930s, giving the Terry cartoons wide exposure. Following the merger between Fox Film and [[Twentieth Century Pictures|20th Century]], the newly formed [[20th Century Studios|20th Century Fox]] withdrew its support from Educational Pictures, and the company both backed and distributed Terrytoons. Farmer Al Falfa was Terry's most familiar character in the 1930s; Kiko the Kangaroo was spun off the Farmer Al Falfa series. Most of the other cartoons featured stock generic animal characters and designs, one of which was a scruffy dog with a black patch around one eye; Terry ultimately built a series around this character, now known as Puddy the Pup.

Paul Terry may have realized that Educational was in financial trouble because he found another lucrative outlet for his product. In 1938, he arranged to release his older cartoons through home-movie distributor [[Castle Films]]. Educational went out of business within the year, but 20th Century Fox continued to release Terrytoons to theaters for the next two decades. With a new emphasis on "star" characters, Terrytoons featured the adventures of Super Mouse (later renamed [[Mighty Mouse]]), the talking magpies [[Heckle and Jeckle]], silly [[Gandy Goose]], [[Dinky Duck]], mischievous mouse Little Roquefort, and The Terry Bears.

Despite the artistic drawbacks imposed by Terry's inflexible business policies, Terrytoons was nominated four times for the [[Academy Award for Animated Short Film]]: ''All Out for V'' in 1942, ''My Boy, Johnny'' in 1944, ''[[Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life]]'' in 1945, and ''Sidney's Family Tree'' in 1958.