The Golden Age of American animation
Encyclopedia
The Golden Age of U.S. animation is a period in the United States
animation
history that began with the advent of sound cartoons
in 1928 and continued into the early 1960s when theatrical animated shorts slowly began losing to the new medium of television animation.
Many memorable characters emerged from this period including Mickey Mouse
, Bugs Bunny
, Donald Duck
, Daffy Duck
, Goofy
, Popeye
, Tom and Jerry
, Betty Boop
, Mr. Magoo
, Woody Woodpecker
, Mighty Mouse
and a popular adaptation of Superman
. Feature length animation also began during this period, most notably with Walt Disney
's first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, Pinocchio
, Fantasia
, Dumbo
and Bambi
.
, and within two years this innovation spread to animation. Although the first cartoon to use synchronized sound was Max Fleischer
's My Old Kentucky Home
in 1926, Walt Disney
's Steamboat Willie
(1928), the third theatrical appearance of Mickey Mouse
, was more successful and popular. Considered an enormous financial gamble, Steamboat Willie was a box-office success, drawing in crowds and sparking Disney's rise to fame.
Disney's greatest competitor during the silent era, the Pat Sullivan
studios, came into trouble after the failure of the Felix the Cat
sound cartoons. This led to a rise in Mickey Mouse's popularity throughout the early 1930s.
which was based around music with no reoccurring characters. However they did not become as popular as the Mickey Mouse series until 1932 when Walt Disney worked with the Technicolor
company to create the first full three-strip color cartoon, Flowers and Trees
. After the success of this cartoon, Disney negotiated an exclusive, but temporary deal with Technicolor so only he could use the three-strip process in animated films. However he withheld making Mickey Mouse in color and because he thought that Technicolor may boost the Silly Symphony’s popularity.
In 1933 Disney was continuing to emphasis on story development and characterization which resulted in yet another hit for Disney: Three Little Pigs
, which is seen as the first cartoon in which multiple characters displayed unique, individual personalities; the cartoon is still considered to be the most successful animated short of all time, and also featured the hit song that became the anthem in fighting the Great Depression
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
In the Mickey Mouse series he continued to add personalities to his characters, this resulted in the creation of new characters such as Pluto
in 1930 with The Chain Gang
, Goofy
in 1932 with Mickey's Revue
and Donald Duck
in 1934 with The Wise Little Hen
(under the Silly Symphony series). In 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired the Mickey Mouse series was moved into Technicolor stating with The Band Concert
. In addition, Mickey was partially redesigning for Technicolor later that year.
In 1937, Disney was the first to use the advanced multiplane camera
shots in his Silly Symphony cartoon The Old Mill
. Much of Disney's work was heavily influenced by European stories and myths, and the work of illustrators such as Doré
and Busch
.
Due to its distribution contract with RKO, Disney would continue to produce shorts into the early '50s, even if they had to cut some corners to keep the costs down. When the contract expired at the end of 1953, Disney, concerned about the instability of RKO (due to owner Howard Hughes
' increasingly erratic control of the studio), started distributing its own films through its newly created Buena Vista Distribution
subsidiary. This allowed a higher budget for shorts than the last few years of cartoons made for RKO dictated, which made it possible to make some of the cartoons in the new CinemaScope
format, but the budget per short was nowhere near as high as it had been in the 1940s as Disney had been focusing more on live action, television, and feature animation and less on short animation. In 1953, shortly after the switch from RKO to Buena Vista, Disney released its final Mickey Mouse short, The Simple Things
. From there the studio produced fewer animated shorts by the year until the animated shorts division was eventually closed in 1957. Any future short cartoon work was done through the feature animation division.
, the first American feature-length animated film. This was the culmination of four years of effort by Disney studios. Walt Disney was convinced that short cartoons would not keep his studio profitable in the long run, so he took what was—yet again—seen as an enormous gamble. The critics predicted that Snow White would result in financial ruin for the studio. They said that the the colors would be to bright for the audience and they would get sick of the gags and leave. However the critics were proven wrong. Snow White was a worldwide box office success, and was universally acclaimed as a landmark in the development of animation as a serious art form.
After the success of Snow White, Disney went on to produce Pinocchio
which was released in 1940. It was considered a stunning achievement in both technically and artistically costing twice as much as Snow White. However Pinocchio was not a financial success since World War II
(which began in 1939) had cut off 40% of Disney's foreign release market and although it was a moderate success in the United States the domestic gross alone was not enough to make back it's revenue. However the film did receive very positive reviews and has made millions from subsequent re-releases. Later that year Disney produced Fantasia
. It originally started with the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Sorcerer's Apprentice in an attempted to recapture Mickey's popularity which had sharply declined sharply to Max Fleischer's Popeye and Disney's Donald Duck. In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse was redesigned by Fred Moore. This redesign of Mickey is still in use today. The short featured no dialogue only music which was conducted by Leopold Stokowski
. When the budget for the short grew very expensive Stokowski suggested to Disney that it would be part of feature film with other pieces of classical music matched to animation. Disney agreed and production started. Fantasia would also become the first commercial film to be released in stereophonic sound
. However like Pinocchio, Fantasia was not a financial success. Fantasia was also the first Disney film not to be received well acclaiming mixed reviews from the critics. It was looked down upon by music critics and audiences, who felt that Walt was striving for something beyond his reach by trying to introduce mainstream animation to abstract art, classical music, and "elite" subjects. However, the film would be reevaluated in later years and considered a significant achievement in the art of animation.
In 1941 in order to compensate for the relative failure of Pinocchio and Fantasia, Disney produced a low-budget feature film, Dumbo
. Just a few days after rough animation was complete on Dumbo the Disney animators' strike
broke out. This was caused by the Screen Cartoonists' Guild (which had been formed in 1938), who severed many ties between Walt Disney and his staff, while encouraging many members of the Disney studio to leave and seek greener pastures. Later that year Dumbo became a big success, the first time since Snow White. The critically acclaimed film brought in much-needed revenue and kept the studio afloat. A few months after Dumbo was released the United States entered the War after Perl Harbor was attacked. This caused the mobilization of all movie studios (including their cartoon divisions) to produce propaganda
material to bolster public confidence and encourage support for the war effort. The war (along with the strike) shook Walt Disney's empire, as the US Army had seized Disney's studio as soon as the US entered World War II in December 1941. Due to this Disney put the feature films Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Wind in the Willows, Song of the South, Mickey and the Beanstalk and Bongo on hold until the war was over. The only feature film that was allowed to continue production was Bambi which was released in 1942. Bambi was ground breaking in terms of animating animals realistically. However due to the war Bambi failed at the box-office and received mixed reviews from the critics. However this was short lived and grossed a considerable amount of money in the 1947 re-release.
Disney was now fully committed to the war and contributed by producing propaganda shorts and a feature film entitled Victory Through Air Power
. Victory Through Air Power was a box office failure and the studio lost around $500,000 as a result. The required propaganda cartoon shorts were also not as popular as Disney's regular shorts, and by the time the Army ended its stay at Disney Studios when the war ended in 1945, Disney struggled to restart his studio, and had a low amount of cash on hand.
Further Disney feature films of 1940s were modestly budgeted collections of animated short segments put together to make a feature film. Beginning with Saludos Amigos
in 1942 and continued this during the war with The Three Caballeros
in 1944 and after the war with Make Mine Music
in 1946, Fun and Fancy Free
in 1947, Melody Time
in 1948 and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
in 1949. For the feature films Mickey and the Beanstalk, Bongo and Wind in the Willows he condensed them into the package films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad since Walt feared that the low-budget animation would not become profitable. The most ambitious Disney film of this period was the 1946 film Song of the South
, a film blending live-action and animation which drew criticism for accusations of racial stereotyping in later years.
In 1950 Disney produced Cinderella
. Cinderella was an enormous success becoming the highest grossing film of 1950, and would become Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney's first single narrative feature film since Bambi.
Disney also started producing full live-action films beginning with Treasure Island
in 1950. He also had been creating nature documentaries since Seal Island
in 1948 and started broadcasting on television with his One Hour in Wonderland
special. Due to this Walt Disney was needed on several different units at one time and was spending less time in the animation department. However this was only when it came to actual production stages (Lay-out, Rough animation, Clean-Up
etc.) and was always present at story-meetings, where they needed him the most. In 1951 he released Alice in Wonderland
, a project he had been working on since the late-1930's and had been shelved during the war. Alice in Wonderland was only moderately successful and received mixed reviews from the critics. However in 1953 he released Peter Pan
which was a big success both critically and financially. In 1955 he created Lady and the Tramp
, the first animated film in CinemaScope
. Upon building Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney regained a huge amount of popularity among the public, and turned his focus at producing his most ambitious movie; Sleeping Beauty. However, after the expensive failure of Sleeping Beauty, the studio suffered from severe downsizing and less money invested in animation projects. In 1960 Disney (soon followed by other studios) replaced traditional hand-inking with Xerography
, a technique that resulted in films with a "sketchier" look. After the completion of 101 Dalmatians
, the first feature to utilize the Xerox process, the animation department was downsized even more. According to Floyd Norman
, who was working at Disney at the time, the time felt like the end of another era.
, the head of Fleischer Studios
, which produced cartoons for Paramount Pictures
. Fleischer Studios was a family-owned business, operated by Max Fleischer and his younger brother Dave Fleischer
, who supervised the production of the cartoons. The Fleischers scored successful hits with the Betty Boop
cartoons and the Popeye the Sailor series. Popeye's popularity during the 1930s rivaled Mickey Mouse at times, and Popeye fan clubs sprang up across the country in imitation of Mickey's fan clubs; in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. However, during the early 1930s, stricter censorship rules enforced by the new Production Code
in 1934 required animation producers to remove risqué humor. The Fleischers in particular had to tone down the content of their Betty Boop cartoons, which waned in popularity afterwards. The Fleischers also had produced a number of Color Classics
cartoons during the 1930s which attempted to emulate Walt Disney's use of color, but the series was not a success.
in 1936, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves
in 1937, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp
in 1939.
In 1938 after Disney's success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount gave the Fleischers permission to produce a feature film and Fleischer studio relocated itself from New York to Miami, Florida
in order to avoid organized unions, which became a threat to the studio after a five month strike occurred among Fleischer Studio workers in late 1937. Here the Fleischers produced Gulliver's Travels
which was released in 1939. It was a small success and encouraged the Fleischers to produce more.
In May 1941, the Fleischers gave Paramount full ownership of the studio as a collateral to pay off their debts left from the loans they obtained from the studio to make unsuccessful cartoons like Stone Age, Gabby, and Color Classics. However, they still maintained their positions as heads of their studio's production. Under Paramount rule, the Fleischers brought Popeye into the Navy and contributed to the war effort, and would gain more success by beginning a series of spectacular Superman cartoons
(the first of which was nominated for an Oscar) that have become legendary in themselves.
Despite the success Superman gave the studio, a major blow to the studio would occur when the married Dave started having an adulterous affair with the Miami secretary. This led to many disputes between the Fleischer Brothers until Max and Dave were no longer speaking to eachother. In 1941 they released Mister Bug Goes to Town
, unfortuantly it was released a few days before the attack on Perl Harbour which caused Mister Bug to fail at the box-office. Shortly after the films failer Dave Fleischer, still maintaining his position as co-chief of his studio, had left Fleischer Studios to run Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems
cartoons. Due to this Paramount Pictures expelled the Dave and Max Fleischer from their positions as the head of the cartoon studio.
In a move that remains controversial to the present day (though it has not been closely examined by film historians), Paramount took over the Fleischer studio completely and brought it under the fold of their own studio, renaming it Famous Studios and continuing the work that the Fleischers began. Paramount also discontinued the expensive Superman cartoons in 1943. The departure of the Fleischers had an immediate effect on the studio: the Paramount cartoons of the war years continued to be entertaining and popular and still retained most of the Fleischer style and gloss, After the war ended in May 1945, a decline in story and animation quality began that would become more and more evident as the decade came to a close.
who had previously tryed an unsucsessful attempt to set up a cartoon studio in New York inorder to compete with Disney, agreed to distribute the series. Under producer Leon Schlesinger
's guid Harman and Ising created Looney Tunes
(the title being varyation on Disney's Silly Symphonies) starring their character Bosko
. A second Harman-Ising series, Merrie Melodies
, followed in 1931. Both series showed the strong influence of the early Disney films.
After disputes over money, Harman-Ising parted company with Schlesinger in 1933, taking Bosko with them. Schlesinger began his own cartoon operation under the new name Leon Schlesinger Productions, hiring Harman-Ising animator Friz Freleng
and several others to run the studio. Schlesinger created a Bosko clone known as Buddy
and answered to Disney's use of colour in Silly Symphonies cartoons in 1934, and began making all future Merrie Melodies cartoons in colour. However since Disney had an exclusice deal with Technicolor, Schlesinger was forced to use Cinicolor and Two Strip Technicolor until 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired.
In a 1935 Merry Melody directed by Friz Freeling entitled I Haven't Got a Hat
made the first screen aperance of Porky Pig
. Also in 1935, Schlesinger hired a new animation director who proceeded to revitalize the studio: Tex Avery
. Schlesinger put Avery in charge of the low-budget Looney Tunes in a low run-down old build the animators named Termite Terrice. Under Avery, Porky Pig would replace the Buddy series and become the first Warner Bros. character to achieve star power and . Also at Termite Terrice animator Bob Clampett
redesinged Porky from a fat, chubby pig to a more cute and childlike character.
Unlike the other cartoon producers at the time, Avery had no intetion of competing with Disney, but instead brought a new wacky, zany style of animation to the studio that would increase the Warner Bros. cartoons' popularity in the crowded marketplace. This was firmly established in 1937 when Tex Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt
. During production of the short lead animator Bob Clampett elaberated the exit of the Duck character by having him jump up an down on his head, flip around and hollor off into the sunset. This created the character of Daffy Duck
. After Daffy Duck was created, he would add even more success to Warner Bros cartoons and replaced Porky Pig as the studio's most popular animated character, and Bob Clampett took over Termite Terrice, whilst Tex Avery took over the Merry Melodies department
The 1940 Academy Award nominated, cartoon A Wild Hare
(directed by Avery) made the Bugs Bunny
's official debut. Bugs Bunny quickly replaced Daffy as the studio's top star and by 1942 he had become the most popular charater. Because of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, the Schlesinger studio now had risen to new heights, and Bugs quickly also became the star of the color cartoons Merrie Melodies, which had previously been used for one-shot character appearances.By 1942, Warners' shorts had now surpassed Disney's in sales and popularity.
After several disputes with Schlesinger, Avery left Warner Bros. and went to work at M.G.M. By this time Warners' cartoons directors of the 1940's were Friz Freleng
, Chuck Jones
and Bob Clampett. Their cartoons are now considered classics of the genre. Clampett in particular brought the six-minute animated cartoon to a level of wild surrealism, directing noted cartoons such as Porky in Wackyland
in 1938, Tortoise Wins By a Hare
in 1943 and Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
in 1943. Leon Schlesinger sold his studio outright to Warner Bros. in 1944 renaming the studio Warner Bros. Cartoons. In 1946, after a dispute between Clampett and the new head Eddie Selzer
, Clampett left Warner Bros. and strike out on his own. He worked as one of the pioneers of children's programming in the newly born field of television, where he created the popular Time for Beany
television show.
Warner Bros. Cartoons closed their doors for five months in 1953. During this time, some of the driving forces like Chuck Jones
left. The studio was never able to recover, and the decline would continue into the 1960s. Warner Bros shut down the Original Termite Terrace studio in 1963 and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
assumed production of the shorts, licensed by Warner Bros. After DePatie-Freleng ceased production of Looney Tunes in 1967, Bill Hendricks was put in charge of production of the newly renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
animation studio, and hired veterans such as Alex Lovy and LaVerne Harding from the Walter Lantz studio, Volus Jones and Ed Solomon from Disney, Jaime Diaz who later worked on The Fairly OddParents
as director, and David Hanan, who previously worked on Roger Ramjet
. Hendricks brought only three of the original Looney Tunes veterans to the studio such as Ted Bonniscken, Norman McCabe and Bob Givens. The studio's one shot cartoons from this era were critically acclaimed. Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, Norman Normal and Chimp and Zee were praised as being highly creative and having extremely clever writing and design that compensated for the extremely low budgets the crew had to work with by this time. Alex Lovy left the studio in 1968 and Robert McKimson took over. McKimson mostly focused on the recurring characters Alex Lovy had created and two of his own creation, Bunny and Claude. The last of the original Looney Tunes shorts produced was Bugged by a Bee and the last Merrie Melodies short was Injun Trouble, which shares its name with another Looney Tunes short from 1938. The Warner Bros.-Seven Arts studio finally shut down in 1969 and a new studio opened its doors in 1980 named Warner Bros. Animation
, which exists to this day.
, who was also a technical innovator in cartoons, and drew an average of 600 drawings for Disney on a daily basis; Disney was responsible for the ideas in the cartoons, and Iwerks was responsible for bringing them to life. However, Iwerks left the Disney studio in 1930 to form his own company, which was financially backed by Celebrity Pictures owner Pat Powers. After his departure, Disney eventually found a number of different animators to replace Iwerks. Iwerks would produce three cartoon series during the 1930s: Flip the Frog
and Willie Whopper
for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, and the ComiColor Cartoons
for Pat Powers' Celebrity Productions. However, none of these cartoons could come close to matching the success of Disney or Fleischer cartoons, and in 1933, MGM, Iwerks' cartoon distributor since 1930, ended distribution of his cartoons in favor of distributing Harman and Ising cartoons, and Iwerks left after his contract expired in 1934. After his stay with MGM, Iwerks' cartoons were distributed by Celebrity Pictures, and Iwerks would answer to Disney's use of Technicolor and create the Comicolor series, which aired cartoons in two-strip Cinecolor. However, by 1936, the Iwerks Studio began to experience financial setbacks and closed after Pat Powers withdrew financial aid to the studio. Iwerks returned to Disney in 1940, where he worked as the head of the "special effects development" division until his retirement in the late 1960s.
cartoons which were emulative of Disney's Silly Symphonies
. However they failed to make a success in the theaters, and in 1937 the Bosko and Happy Harmonies series were discontinued by and M.G.M fired Harman and Ising and replaced them with Fred Quimby.
.
In 1940 William Hanna
and Joseph Barbera
scored a hit with their short film Puss Gets The Boot
, which was nominated for an Oscar
. They then set themselves to producing a long-running series of Tom and Jerry
cartoons that won accolades for MGM - as a string of Academy Awards that was unmatched by any other studio except for Disney. After appearing in Puss Gets the Boot, Tom & Jerry quickly became the stars of MGM cartoons.
Meanwhile, Tex Avery came to MGM in 1942 and revitalized their cartoon studio with the same spark that had infused the Warner animators. Between the Tom and Jerry series and Tex Avery's wild, surreal masterpieces of his MGM days. This included Blitz Wolf
, Jerky Turkey
, Who Killed Who and Red Hot Riding Hood
which set new standards for "adult" entertainment in Code
-era cartoons. Tex Avery did not like to use recurring characters, but did stay faithful to character through out his career at MGM; Droopy, which was created in Dumb-Hounded
in 1943. Tex also created Screwy Squirrel in 1944, but Tex was less fond of him and discontinued the series after five cartoons. With Hanna-Barbera and Tex Avery under their belts, MGM was finally able to compete with Disney (and now Warner Bros.) in the field of animated cartoons. In 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer closed down the Tex Avery
unit, and the rest of the cartoon studio followed in 1957.
. Their first and most successful project was animating the opening titles for the 1964 film, The Pink Panther
, starring Peter Sellers
. The film and its animated sequences were so successful that United Artists
commissioned the studio to produce a Pink Panther cartoon series. The first short, The Pink Phink
, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film of 1964
. The studio also produced other successful cartoon series such as The Inspector
and The Ant and the Aardvark
. Meanwhile, Chuck Jones, who had been fired from Warner Bros., moved to MGM to produce thirty-four theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoons in late 1963. These cartoons were animated in his distinctive style, but they never quite matched the popularity of the Hanna and Barbera originals of the 1940s and 1950s heyday, However, they were more successful than the Gene Deitch
Tom and Jerry shorts, which were produced overseas during 1961 and 1962.
From 1964 to 1967, Depatie-Freleng produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts under contract with Warner Bros. These cartoons can be recognized easily because they use the modern abstract WB logos instead of the famous bullseye WB shield concentric circles. The studio also subcontracted 11 Road Runner cartoons to Format Films. DePatie-Freleng ceased production of the Looney Tunes and moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1967 to continue production of their Pink Panther cartoons. In 1981, the studio was purchased by Marvel Comics
and was renamed Marvel Productions
.
cartoons for Columbia Pictures. He also created a new series featuring a boy named Scrappy
, created by Dick Huemer
in 1931. Scrappy was a big break for Mintz and was also his most successful creation too, but his studio would suffer irreparable damage after Dick Huemer was fired from the Mintz Studio in 1933. In 1934, Mintz, like most other animation studios at the time, also attempted to answer Disney's use of Technicolor, and began making color cartoons through the Color Rhapsodies
series; the series was originaly in either cinicolor or two-strip Technicolor, but moved to three-strip Technicolor after Disney's contract with Technicolor expired in 1935. However, the series failed to garner attention, and by 1939, Mintz was largely indebted to Columbia Pictures. As a result, Mintz sold his studio to Columbia. Columbia renamed the studio, which Mintz still managed, Screen Gems
; Mintz died the following year.
Frank Tashlin
and John Hubley
, were Disney animators who left during the strike, and obtained jobs at Screen Gems, where Tashlin served was head producer whislt Hubley acted as director for studio. Tashlin helped Screen Gems gain more success by introducing The Fox and the Crow
, Screen Gems biggest stars. Tashlin maintained his position until Columbia Pictures released him from the studio in favor of Dave Fleischer in 1942. The Screen Gems cartoons were only moderatly sucsessful and never gained the artistic tallent of Disney, Warner Bros. or MGM. Columbia Pictures closed the studio in 1946 and started looking for a new cartoon production company.
. The first short from the newly formed studio was Hell-Bent for Election
(directed by Warners veteran Chuck Jones
), a cartoon made for the re-election campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt
. Although this new film was a success, it did not break the boundaries that Hubley and his staffers had hoped. It wasn't until the third short, Bobe Cannon's Brotherhood of Man, that the studio began producing shorts aggressively stylized in contrast to the films of the other studios. Cannon's film even preached a message that, at the time, was looked down upon – racial tolerance. By 1946, the studio was renamed as United Productions of America
(UPA), and Hilberman and Schwartz had sold their shares of the studio stock to Bosustow.
In 1948, UPA also found a home for itself at Columbia Pictures and began producing theatrical cartoons for the general public, instead of just using propaganda and military training themes; UPA also earned itself two Academy Award nominations during its first two years in production. closed in 1946. From there, the UPA animators began producing a series of cartoons that immediately stood out among the crowded field of mirror-image, copycat cartoons of the other studios. The success of UPA's Mr. Magoo
series made all of the other studios sit up and take notice, and when the UPA short Gerald McBoing-Boing
won the Oscar, the effect on Hollywood was immediate and electrifying. The UPA style was markedly different from everything else being seen on movie screens, and audiences responded to the change that UPA offered from the repetition of usual cat-mouse battles. Mr Magoo would go on to be the studio's most successful cartoon character. However, UPA would suffer a major blow after John Hubley was fired from the studio during the McCarthy Era
in 1952, due to suspicions of having ties to Communism; Steve Bosustow took over, but was not as successful as Hubley, and the studio was eventually sold to Henry Saperstein.
By 1953, UPA had gained great influence within the industry. The Hollywood cartoon studios gradually moved away from the lush, realistic detail of the 1940s to a more simplistic, less realistic style of animation. By this time, even Disney was attempting to mimic UPA. 1953's Melody
and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom
in particular were experiments in stylization that followed in the footsteps of the newly formed studio.
with the voice talents of Judy Garland
. In 1964 UPA decided to abondon in animation and simply become a distribution company.
replaced Charles Mintz as producer of Universal Studios cartoons. Lantz's main character at this time was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
, whose earlier cartoons had been produced by both Walt Disney and Charles Mintz. Also Lantz started to experiment with color cartoons, and the first one called Jolly Little Elves was released in 1934. In 1935, Lantz made his studio independent from Universal Studios, and Universal Studios was now only the distributors of his cartoons, instead of the direct owners.
In the 1940's Oswald began to lose popularity. Lantz and his staff worked on several ideas for possible new cartoon characters (among them Meany, Miny, and Moe
and Baby-Face Mouse
). Eventually one of these characters clicked; his name was Andy Panda
, who aired in Technicolor. However successful Andy was, it was not until the character's fifth cartoon, Knock Knock that a real breakthrough character was introduced. This was none other than Woody Woodpecker
, who become Lantz's most successful creation.
Walter Lantz Studio
closed at the end of 1948 due to financial problems. It opened again in 1950 with a downsized staff, mainly because Lantz was able to sign a deal with Universal (by this time now known as Universal-International) for more Woody Woodpecker cartoons, starting with 1951's Puny Express
. The character would continue to appear in theatrical shorts until 1972, when Lantz finally closed his studio. Luckily for Lantz Woody Woodpecker's survival was lengthened when he started appearing in The Woody Woodpecker Show
from 1957 to 1958, from which it entered syndication until 1966. NBC revived the show twice-in 1970 and 1976, and finally in 1985 Lantz sold all of the Woody Woodpecker shorts to Universal
, then part of MCA.
After losing his Aesop's Film Fables
series to the Van Beuren in 1929, Paul Terry
established a new studio called Terrytoons
. Neither the Van Beuren studio nor the Terrytoon studio were able to compete with the success of any of the other studios, Disney in particular.
In 1934, as other studios were putting cartoons in Technicolor to answer to Disney's Silly Symphonies cartoon series, Van Beuren Studios abandoned its remaining cartoons and answered Disney's use of Technicolor by creating the Rainbow Parade
series, which was all color. However, the series was not a success, and by 1936, RKO Pictures, the owner of the Van Beuren Studio, closed the Van Beuren Studio as RKO chose to instead distribute Disney cartoons.
gave voice to many of Warner Bros. most popular characters, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig (starting in 1937), and Daffy Duck. Other voices and personalities from vaudeville
and the radio era contributed to the popularity of animated films in the Golden Era.
Cartoons of this era also included scores played by studio orchestra
s. Carl Stalling
at Schlesinger/Warner Bros. and Scott Bradley
at MGM composed numerous cartoon soundtracks, creating original material as well as incorporating familiar classical and popular melodies. Many of the early cartoons, particularly those of Disney's Silly Symphonies
series, were built around classical pieces. These cartoons sometimes featured star characters, but many had simple nature themes.
serial
s of the 1940s used animated sequences of Superman flying and performing super-powered feats were used in the place of live-action special effects, but this was not a common practice.
The exclusivity of animation also resulted in the birth of a sister industry that was used almost exclusively for motion picture special effects: stop motion
animation. In spite of their similarities, the two genres of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation rarely came together during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Stop-motion animation made a name for itself with the 1933 box-office hit King Kong
, where animator Willis O'Brien
defined many of the major stop motion techniques used for the next 50 years. The success of King Kong led to a number of other early special effects films, including Mighty Joe Young, which was also animated by O'Brien and helped to start the careers of several animators, including Ray Harryhausen
, who came into his own in the 1950s. George Pal
was the only stop-motion animator to produce a series of stop-motion animated cartoons for theatrical release, the Puppetoon
series for Paramount, some of which were animated by Ray Harryhausen. Pal went on to produce several live-action special effects-laden feature films.
Stop motion animation reached the height of its popularity during the 1950s. The exploding popularity of science fiction
films led to an exponential development in the field of special effects, and George Pal became the producer of several popular special-effects laden films. Meanwhile, Ray Harryhausen's work on such films as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
drew in large crowds and encouraged the development of "realistic" special effects in films. These effects used many of the same techniques as cel animation, but still the two media did not often come together. Stop motion developed to the point where Douglas Trumbull
's effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey
seemed lifelike to an unearthly degree.
Hollywood special effects continued to develop in a manner that largely avoided cel animation, though several memorable animated sequences were included in live-action feature films of the era. The most famous of these was a scene during the movie Anchors Aweigh
, in which actor Gene Kelly
danced with an animated Jerry Mouse
(of Tom and Jerry fame). But except for occasional sequences of this sort, the only real integration of cel animation into live-action films came in the development of animated credit and title sequences. Saul Bass
' opening sequences for Alfred Hitchcock
's films (including Vertigo
, North by Northwest
, and Psycho) are highly praised, and inspired several imitators.
instructional film cartoons especially for viewing by enlisted soldiers.
, there was no longer a booking guarantee on the theatres for cartoons from any of the studios, making it a more risky business and because of this less resources were invested in the theatrical shorts, causing a gradual decline. By the beginning on the 1960s, the medium of television was beginning to gain more momentum, and the animation industry began to change as a result. At the head of this change were the tandem of William Hanna
and Joseph Barbera
, the creators of Tom and Jerry. The new Hanna-Barbera
utilized the limited animation
style that UPA had pioneered. With this limited animation, Hanna and Barbera created several characters including Huckleberry Hound
, The Flintstones
, Yogi Bear
and Top Cat
. With television's growing popularity, a decline began in movie-going. To face the competition from TV, the theaters did what they could to reduce their own costs. One way of doing so was booking features only and avoiding the expenses of shorts, which were considered unnecessary and too expensive. Those few shorts that found their way to the theaters despite this are often viewed by critics as inferior to their predecessors.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
history that began with the advent of sound cartoons
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
in 1928 and continued into the early 1960s when theatrical animated shorts slowly began losing to the new medium of television animation.
Many memorable characters emerged from this period including Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
, Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
, Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
, Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
, Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
, Popeye
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...
, Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
, Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
, Mr. Magoo
Mr. Magoo
Quincy Magoo is a cartoon character created at the UPA animation studio in 1949. Voiced by Jim Backus, Quincy Magoo is a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem...
, Woody Woodpecker
Woody Woodpecker
Woody Woodpecker is an animated cartoon character, an anthropomorphic acorn woodpecker who appeared in theatrical short films produced by the Walter Lantz animation studio and distributed by Universal Pictures...
, Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
and a popular adaptation of Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
. Feature length animation also began during this period, most notably with Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, Pinocchio
Pinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
, Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
, Dumbo
Dumbo
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...
and Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
.
Early years
The motion picture industry was revolutionized by the introduction of sound filmSound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
, and within two years this innovation spread to animation. Although the first cartoon to use synchronized sound was Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
's My Old Kentucky Home
My Old Kentucky Home (film)
My Old Kentucky Home is a short animation film originally released on 13 April 1926, by Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios as one of the Song Car-Tunes series...
in 1926, Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...
(1928), the third theatrical appearance of Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
, was more successful and popular. Considered an enormous financial gamble, Steamboat Willie was a box-office success, drawing in crowds and sparking Disney's rise to fame.
Disney's greatest competitor during the silent era, the Pat Sullivan
Pat Sullivan (film producer)
Patrick Sullivan was an Australian cartoonist, pioneer animator and film producer, best known for producing the first Felix the Cat silent cartoons. Sullivan arrived in the United States around 1910, after spending several months in London...
studios, came into trouble after the failure of the Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history...
sound cartoons. This led to a rise in Mickey Mouse's popularity throughout the early 1930s.
Disney
After Steamboat Willie was released, Disney gained huge dominance in the animation field using sound in his future cartoons. Mickey Mouse's popularity put the animated character into the ranks of the most popular screen personalities in the world. Merchandising based on Disney cartoons rescued a number of companies from bankruptcy during the depths of the Depression, and Disney took advantage of this popularity to move forward with further innovations in animation. In in 1929 he launched a new series entitled Silly SymphoniesSilly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
which was based around music with no reoccurring characters. However they did not become as popular as the Mickey Mouse series until 1932 when Walt Disney worked with the Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
company to create the first full three-strip color cartoon, Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees
Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932...
. After the success of this cartoon, Disney negotiated an exclusive, but temporary deal with Technicolor so only he could use the three-strip process in animated films. However he withheld making Mickey Mouse in color and because he thought that Technicolor may boost the Silly Symphony’s popularity.
In 1933 Disney was continuing to emphasis on story development and characterization which resulted in yet another hit for Disney: Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs (film)
Three Little Pigs is an animated short film released on May 27, 1933 by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burt Gillett. Based on a fairy tale of the same name, Three Little Pigs won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. In 1994, it was voted #11 of the 50...
, which is seen as the first cartoon in which multiple characters displayed unique, individual personalities; the cartoon is still considered to be the most successful animated short of all time, and also featured the hit song that became the anthem in fighting the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".
In the Mickey Mouse series he continued to add personalities to his characters, this resulted in the creation of new characters such as Pluto
Pluto (Disney)
Pluto, also called Pluto the Pup, is a cartoon character created in 1930 by Walt Disney Productions. He is a light brown , medium-sized, short-haired dog. Unlike Goofy, Pluto is not anthropomorphic beyond some characteristics such as facial expression...
in 1930 with The Chain Gang
The Chain Gang
The Chain Gang is a Mickey Mouse animated film produced in 1930 by Walt Disney for Columbia Pictures. It is one of a group of shorts of strikingly uneven quality produced by Disney immediately after Ub Iwerks left the studio. The cartoon was primarily drawn by Norm Ferguson, and featured a pair...
, Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
in 1932 with Mickey's Revue
Mickey's Revue
Mickey's Revue is a 1932 Walt Disney cartoon, directed by Wilfred Jackson, which features Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow performing a song and dance show.-Synopsis:...
and Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
in 1934 with The Wise Little Hen
The Wise Little Hen
The Wise Little Hen is a Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies cartoon, based on the fairy tale The Little Red Hen. This cartoon marked the debut of Donald Duck. Donald and his friend Peter Pig try to avoid work by faking stomach aches until Mrs. Hen teaches them the value of labor. This cartoon was...
(under the Silly Symphony series). In 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired the Mickey Mouse series was moved into Technicolor stating with The Band Concert
The Band Concert
The Band Concert is an animated short film produced in Technicolor by Walt Disney Productions and released to theaters on February 23, 1935 by United Artists. The film was the first Mickey Mouse film produced in color and remains one of the most highly acclaimed of the Disney shorts...
. In addition, Mickey was partially redesigning for Technicolor later that year.
In 1937, Disney was the first to use the advanced multiplane camera
Multiplane camera
The multiplane camera is a special motion picture camera used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another...
shots in his Silly Symphony cartoon The Old Mill
The Old Mill
The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937...
. Much of Disney's work was heavily influenced by European stories and myths, and the work of illustrators such as Doré
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
and Busch
Wilhelm Busch
Wilhelm Busch was an influential German caricaturist, painter, and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts....
.
Due to its distribution contract with RKO, Disney would continue to produce shorts into the early '50s, even if they had to cut some corners to keep the costs down. When the contract expired at the end of 1953, Disney, concerned about the instability of RKO (due to owner Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
' increasingly erratic control of the studio), started distributing its own films through its newly created Buena Vista Distribution
Buena Vista Distribution
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is a motion picture and television feature distribution company owned by Disney Enterprises, Inc. Buena Vista International was the international distribution arm, Buena Vista Home Entertainment was the firm's video and DVD distribution arm, and Buena Vista...
subsidiary. This allowed a higher budget for shorts than the last few years of cartoons made for RKO dictated, which made it possible to make some of the cartoons in the new CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
format, but the budget per short was nowhere near as high as it had been in the 1940s as Disney had been focusing more on live action, television, and feature animation and less on short animation. In 1953, shortly after the switch from RKO to Buena Vista, Disney released its final Mickey Mouse short, The Simple Things
The Simple Things
The Simple Things is a 1953 animated short subject, part of the Mickey Mouse series, produced by Walt Disney Productions. Released by RKO Radio Pictures on April 18, 1953, the short is notable as the final regular entry in the Mickey Mouse theatrical cartoon series...
. From there the studio produced fewer animated shorts by the year until the animated shorts division was eventually closed in 1957. Any future short cartoon work was done through the feature animation division.
Feature-length films
In 1937, Walt Disney produced Snow White and the Seven DwarfsSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, the first American feature-length animated film. This was the culmination of four years of effort by Disney studios. Walt Disney was convinced that short cartoons would not keep his studio profitable in the long run, so he took what was—yet again—seen as an enormous gamble. The critics predicted that Snow White would result in financial ruin for the studio. They said that the the colors would be to bright for the audience and they would get sick of the gags and leave. However the critics were proven wrong. Snow White was a worldwide box office success, and was universally acclaimed as a landmark in the development of animation as a serious art form.
After the success of Snow White, Disney went on to produce Pinocchio
Pinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
which was released in 1940. It was considered a stunning achievement in both technically and artistically costing twice as much as Snow White. However Pinocchio was not a financial success since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(which began in 1939) had cut off 40% of Disney's foreign release market and although it was a moderate success in the United States the domestic gross alone was not enough to make back it's revenue. However the film did receive very positive reviews and has made millions from subsequent re-releases. Later that year Disney produced Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
. It originally started with the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Sorcerer's Apprentice in an attempted to recapture Mickey's popularity which had sharply declined sharply to Max Fleischer's Popeye and Disney's Donald Duck. In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse was redesigned by Fred Moore. This redesign of Mickey is still in use today. The short featured no dialogue only music which was conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
. When the budget for the short grew very expensive Stokowski suggested to Disney that it would be part of feature film with other pieces of classical music matched to animation. Disney agreed and production started. Fantasia would also become the first commercial film to be released in stereophonic sound
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
. However like Pinocchio, Fantasia was not a financial success. Fantasia was also the first Disney film not to be received well acclaiming mixed reviews from the critics. It was looked down upon by music critics and audiences, who felt that Walt was striving for something beyond his reach by trying to introduce mainstream animation to abstract art, classical music, and "elite" subjects. However, the film would be reevaluated in later years and considered a significant achievement in the art of animation.
In 1941 in order to compensate for the relative failure of Pinocchio and Fantasia, Disney produced a low-budget feature film, Dumbo
Dumbo
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...
. Just a few days after rough animation was complete on Dumbo the Disney animators' strike
Disney animators' strike
The Disney animators' strike was a labor strike by the animators of Walt Disney Studios in 1941.-History:The 1930s led to a rise of labor unions in motion pictures as in other industries such as The Screen Actors Guild which was formed in 1933. Animators of Fleischer Studios went on strike in 1937...
broke out. This was caused by the Screen Cartoonists' Guild (which had been formed in 1938), who severed many ties between Walt Disney and his staff, while encouraging many members of the Disney studio to leave and seek greener pastures. Later that year Dumbo became a big success, the first time since Snow White. The critically acclaimed film brought in much-needed revenue and kept the studio afloat. A few months after Dumbo was released the United States entered the War after Perl Harbor was attacked. This caused the mobilization of all movie studios (including their cartoon divisions) to produce propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
material to bolster public confidence and encourage support for the war effort. The war (along with the strike) shook Walt Disney's empire, as the US Army had seized Disney's studio as soon as the US entered World War II in December 1941. Due to this Disney put the feature films Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Wind in the Willows, Song of the South, Mickey and the Beanstalk and Bongo on hold until the war was over. The only feature film that was allowed to continue production was Bambi which was released in 1942. Bambi was ground breaking in terms of animating animals realistically. However due to the war Bambi failed at the box-office and received mixed reviews from the critics. However this was short lived and grossed a considerable amount of money in the 1947 re-release.
Disney was now fully committed to the war and contributed by producing propaganda shorts and a feature film entitled Victory Through Air Power
Victory Through Air Power
Victory Through Air Power is a 1942 non-fiction book by Alexander P. de Seversky. It was made into a 1943 Walt Disney animated feature film of the same name: Victory Through Air Power.-Theories:...
. Victory Through Air Power was a box office failure and the studio lost around $500,000 as a result. The required propaganda cartoon shorts were also not as popular as Disney's regular shorts, and by the time the Army ended its stay at Disney Studios when the war ended in 1945, Disney struggled to restart his studio, and had a low amount of cash on hand.
Further Disney feature films of 1940s were modestly budgeted collections of animated short segments put together to make a feature film. Beginning with Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos
Saludos Amigos is a 1942 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is the 6th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It is the first of six package films made by the Disney studio in the 1940s...
in 1942 and continued this during the war with The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros is a 1944 American animated feature film, produced by Walt Disney and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The film premiered in Mexico City on December 21, 1944. It was released in the United States on February 3, 1945...
in 1944 and after the war with Make Mine Music
Make Mine Music
Make Mine Music is an animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on August 15, 1946. It is the eighth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series....
in 1946, Fun and Fancy Free
Fun and Fancy Free
Fun and Fancy Free is a 1947 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures on September 27, 1947. It was one of the "package films" that the studio produced in the 1940s...
in 1947, Melody Time
Melody Time
Melody Time is a 1948 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia Melody Time is a 1948...
in 1948 and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated feature produced by Walt Disney. The film was released to theaters on October 5, 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures and is the eleventh animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
in 1949. For the feature films Mickey and the Beanstalk, Bongo and Wind in the Willows he condensed them into the package films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad since Walt feared that the low-budget animation would not become profitable. The most ambitious Disney film of this period was the 1946 film Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...
, a film blending live-action and animation which drew criticism for accusations of racial stereotyping in later years.
In 1950 Disney produced Cinderella
Cinderella (1950 film)
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "Cendrillon" by Charles Perrault. Twelfth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film had a limited release on February 15, 1950 by RKO Radio Pictures. Directing credits go to Clyde Geronimi,...
. Cinderella was an enormous success becoming the highest grossing film of 1950, and would become Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney's first single narrative feature film since Bambi.
Disney also started producing full live-action films beginning with Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
in 1950. He also had been creating nature documentaries since Seal Island
Seal Island
Seal Island is a small land mass located 5.7 km off the northern beaches of False Bay, near Cape Town, in South Africa. The island is so named because of the great number of Cape Fur Seals that occupy it. There are a few sea birds as well. It is an outcrop of the Cape granite and rises no more...
in 1948 and started broadcasting on television with his One Hour in Wonderland
One Hour in Wonderland
One Hour in Wonderland is a 1950 television special made by Walt Disney Productions. It was first seen on Christmas Day, 1950, over NBC for Coca-Cola, and was Walt Disney's first television production...
special. Due to this Walt Disney was needed on several different units at one time and was spending less time in the animation department. However this was only when it came to actual production stages (Lay-out, Rough animation, Clean-Up
Clean-up
Clean-up is a part of the workflow in the production of hand-drawn animation, in which "clean" versions of the "rough" animation drawings are produced....
etc.) and was always present at story-meetings, where they needed him the most. In 1951 he released Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (1951 film)
Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney and based primarily on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with a few additional elements from Through the Looking-Glass. Thirteenth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was released in New...
, a project he had been working on since the late-1930's and had been shelved during the war. Alice in Wonderland was only moderately successful and received mixed reviews from the critics. However in 1953 he released Peter Pan
Peter Pan (1953 film)
Peter Pan is a 1953 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by J. M. Barrie. It is the fourteenth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and was originally released on February 5, 1953 by RKO Pictures...
which was a big success both critically and financially. In 1955 he created Lady and the Tramp
Lady and the Tramp
Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released to theaters on June 22, 1955, by Buena Vista Distribution. The fifteenth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, it was the first animated feature filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen...
, the first animated film in CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
. Upon building Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney regained a huge amount of popularity among the public, and turned his focus at producing his most ambitious movie; Sleeping Beauty. However, after the expensive failure of Sleeping Beauty, the studio suffered from severe downsizing and less money invested in animation projects. In 1960 Disney (soon followed by other studios) replaced traditional hand-inking with Xerography
Xerography
Xerography is a dry photocopying technique invented by Chester Carlson in 1938, for which he was awarded on October 6, 1942. Carlson originally called his invention electrophotography...
, a technique that resulted in films with a "sketchier" look. After the completion of 101 Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians, often abbreviated as 101 Dalmatians, is a 1961 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith...
, the first feature to utilize the Xerox process, the animation department was downsized even more. According to Floyd Norman
Floyd Norman
Floyd E. Norman is an American animator who worked on the Walt Disney animated features Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, and The Jungle Book, along with various animated short projects at Disney in the late '50s and early '60s.- Biography :Norman had his start as an assistant to comic...
, who was working at Disney at the time, the time felt like the end of another era.
Fleischer Studios
One of Disney's main competitors was Max FleischerMax Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
, the head of Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
, which produced cartoons for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. Fleischer Studios was a family-owned business, operated by Max Fleischer and his younger brother Dave Fleischer
Dave Fleischer
David "Dave" Fleischer was an American animator film director and film producer, best known as a co-owner of Fleischer Studios with his two older brothers Max Fleischer and Lou Fleischer...
, who supervised the production of the cartoons. The Fleischers scored successful hits with the Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
cartoons and the Popeye the Sailor series. Popeye's popularity during the 1930s rivaled Mickey Mouse at times, and Popeye fan clubs sprang up across the country in imitation of Mickey's fan clubs; in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse. However, during the early 1930s, stricter censorship rules enforced by the new Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
in 1934 required animation producers to remove risqué humor. The Fleischers in particular had to tone down the content of their Betty Boop cartoons, which waned in popularity afterwards. The Fleischers also had produced a number of Color Classics
Color Classics
Color Classics were a series of animated short subjects produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 as a competitor to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. As the name implies, all of the shorts were made in color, with the first entry in the series, Poor Cinderella, being the...
cartoons during the 1930s which attempted to emulate Walt Disney's use of color, but the series was not a success.
Feature-length films
In 1934 Max Fleischer became interested in producing an animated feature film shortly after Disney's announcement of Snow White, however Paramount vetoed the idea. In 1936, Fleischer Studios produced the first of three two-reel Popeye Technicolor features: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the SailorPopeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is a two-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Popeye Color Feature series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on November 27, 1936 by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Inc. and directed by Dave...
in 1936, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves is a two-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Popeye Color Feature series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on November 26, 1937 by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Inc. and directed...
in 1937, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp
Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp
Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is a two-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Popeye Color Specials series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on April 7, 1939 by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Max, and directed by Dave Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Inc., with David...
in 1939.
In 1938 after Disney's success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount gave the Fleischers permission to produce a feature film and Fleischer studio relocated itself from New York to Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
in order to avoid organized unions, which became a threat to the studio after a five month strike occurred among Fleischer Studio workers in late 1937. Here the Fleischers produced Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels (1939 film)
Gulliver's Travels is a 1939 American cel-animated Technicolor feature film, directed by Dave Fleischer and produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios. The film was released on Friday, December 22, 1939 by Paramount Pictures, who had the feature produced as an answer to the success of Walt...
which was released in 1939. It was a small success and encouraged the Fleischers to produce more.
Superman and decline
Superman (1940s cartoons)
The Fleischer & Famous Superman cartoons are a series of seventeen animated Technicolor short films released by Paramount Pictures and based upon the comic book character Superman....
(the first of which was nominated for an Oscar) that have become legendary in themselves.
Despite the success Superman gave the studio, a major blow to the studio would occur when the married Dave started having an adulterous affair with the Miami secretary. This led to many disputes between the Fleischer Brothers until Max and Dave were no longer speaking to eachother. In 1941 they released Mister Bug Goes to Town
Mister Bug Goes to Town
Mr. Bug Goes to Town, also known as Hoppity Goes to Town and Bugville, is an animated feature produced by Fleischer Studios and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on December 5, 1941...
, unfortuantly it was released a few days before the attack on Perl Harbour which caused Mister Bug to fail at the box-office. Shortly after the films failer Dave Fleischer, still maintaining his position as co-chief of his studio, had left Fleischer Studios to run Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
cartoons. Due to this Paramount Pictures expelled the Dave and Max Fleischer from their positions as the head of the cartoon studio.
In a move that remains controversial to the present day (though it has not been closely examined by film historians), Paramount took over the Fleischer studio completely and brought it under the fold of their own studio, renaming it Famous Studios and continuing the work that the Fleischers began. Paramount also discontinued the expensive Superman cartoons in 1943. The departure of the Fleischers had an immediate effect on the studio: the Paramount cartoons of the war years continued to be entertaining and popular and still retained most of the Fleischer style and gloss, After the war ended in May 1945, a decline in story and animation quality began that would become more and more evident as the decade came to a close.
Warner Bros.
In 1929, former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising made a cartoon entitled Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid and tryed to sell it to a distributer in 1930. Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
who had previously tryed an unsucsessful attempt to set up a cartoon studio in New York inorder to compete with Disney, agreed to distribute the series. Under producer Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...
's guid Harman and Ising created Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
(the title being varyation on Disney's Silly Symphonies) starring their character Bosko
Bosko
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros...
. A second Harman-Ising series, Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
, followed in 1931. Both series showed the strong influence of the early Disney films.
After disputes over money, Harman-Ising parted company with Schlesinger in 1933, taking Bosko with them. Schlesinger began his own cartoon operation under the new name Leon Schlesinger Productions, hiring Harman-Ising animator Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
and several others to run the studio. Schlesinger created a Bosko clone known as Buddy
Buddy (Looney Tunes)
Buddy is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons.-Looney Tunes:Buddy has his origins in the chaos that followed the severing of relations between animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising from producer Leon Schlesinger...
and answered to Disney's use of colour in Silly Symphonies cartoons in 1934, and began making all future Merrie Melodies cartoons in colour. However since Disney had an exclusice deal with Technicolor, Schlesinger was forced to use Cinicolor and Two Strip Technicolor until 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired.
In a 1935 Merry Melody directed by Friz Freeling entitled I Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat
I Haven't Got a Hat is a 1935 animated short film, directed by Isadore Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series. Released by Warner Bros. on March 9, 1935, the short is notable for featuring the first appearance of several Warner Bros. cartoon...
made the first screen aperance of Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
. Also in 1935, Schlesinger hired a new animation director who proceeded to revitalize the studio: Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
. Schlesinger put Avery in charge of the low-budget Looney Tunes in a low run-down old build the animators named Termite Terrice. Under Avery, Porky Pig would replace the Buddy series and become the first Warner Bros. character to achieve star power and . Also at Termite Terrice animator Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
redesinged Porky from a fat, chubby pig to a more cute and childlike character.
Unlike the other cartoon producers at the time, Avery had no intetion of competing with Disney, but instead brought a new wacky, zany style of animation to the studio that would increase the Warner Bros. cartoons' popularity in the crowded marketplace. This was firmly established in 1937 when Tex Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt
Porky's Duck Hunt
Porky's Duck Hunt is an animated short film produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, directed by Tex Avery, and released on April 17, 1937 by Warner Bros. Pictures. Porky's Hare Hunt was the sequel to this one....
. During production of the short lead animator Bob Clampett elaberated the exit of the Duck character by having him jump up an down on his head, flip around and hollor off into the sunset. This created the character of Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
. After Daffy Duck was created, he would add even more success to Warner Bros cartoons and replaced Porky Pig as the studio's most popular animated character, and Bob Clampett took over Termite Terrice, whilst Tex Avery took over the Merry Melodies department
The 1940 Academy Award nominated, cartoon A Wild Hare
A Wild Hare
A Wild Hare is a 1940 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, directed by Tex Avery, and written by Rich Hogan. It was originally released on July 27, 1940...
(directed by Avery) made the Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
's official debut. Bugs Bunny quickly replaced Daffy as the studio's top star and by 1942 he had become the most popular charater. Because of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, the Schlesinger studio now had risen to new heights, and Bugs quickly also became the star of the color cartoons Merrie Melodies, which had previously been used for one-shot character appearances.By 1942, Warners' shorts had now surpassed Disney's in sales and popularity.
After several disputes with Schlesinger, Avery left Warner Bros. and went to work at M.G.M. By this time Warners' cartoons directors of the 1940's were Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
and Bob Clampett. Their cartoons are now considered classics of the genre. Clampett in particular brought the six-minute animated cartoon to a level of wild surrealism, directing noted cartoons such as Porky in Wackyland
Porky in Wackyland
Porky in Wackyland is a 1938 animated short film, directed by Robert Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes series....
in 1938, Tortoise Wins By a Hare
Tortoise Wins by a Hare
Tortoise Wins by a Hare is a Merrie Melodies cartoon released on February 20, 1943 and directed by Bob Clampett. It stars Bugs Bunny and Cecil Turtle. Bob Clampett took Tex Avery's scenario from Tortoise Beats Hare and altered it for this film. The title is an appropriate pun on "hair"...
in 1943 and Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on January 16, 1943 by Warner Bros...
in 1943. Leon Schlesinger sold his studio outright to Warner Bros. in 1944 renaming the studio Warner Bros. Cartoons. In 1946, after a dispute between Clampett and the new head Eddie Selzer
Eddie Selzer
Edward "Eddie" Selzer was an American film producer, most noted for been the producer of Warner Bros. Cartoons from 1944 to 1957....
, Clampett left Warner Bros. and strike out on his own. He worked as one of the pioneers of children's programming in the newly born field of television, where he created the popular Time for Beany
Time for Beany
Time for Beany was an American television series, with puppets for characters, which aired locally in Los Angeles starting in 1949 and nationally on the improvised Paramount Television Network from 1950 to 1955...
television show.
Warner Bros. Cartoons closed their doors for five months in 1953. During this time, some of the driving forces like Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
left. The studio was never able to recover, and the decline would continue into the 1960s. Warner Bros shut down the Original Termite Terrace studio in 1963 and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981. They produced theatrical cartoons, animated series, commercials, title sequences and television specials. Notable among these is The Pink Panther film titles and cartoon shorts and the Dr....
assumed production of the shorts, licensed by Warner Bros. After DePatie-Freleng ceased production of Looney Tunes in 1967, Bill Hendricks was put in charge of production of the newly renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts was formed in 1967 and became defunct in 1970, when Seven Arts Productions acquired Jack Warner's controlling interest in Warner Bros. for $32 million and merged with it. The deal also included Warner Bros. Records, Reprise Records and the B&W Looney Tunes library...
animation studio, and hired veterans such as Alex Lovy and LaVerne Harding from the Walter Lantz studio, Volus Jones and Ed Solomon from Disney, Jaime Diaz who later worked on The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents is an American-Canadian animated television series created by Butch Hartman about the adventures of Timmy Turner, who is granted fairy godparents named Cosmo and Wanda. The series started out as cartoon segments that ran from September 4, 1998 to March 23, 2001 on Oh Yeah!...
as director, and David Hanan, who previously worked on Roger Ramjet
Roger Ramjet
Roger Ramjet is an animated American children's television comedy series that first ran in 1965 and has aired in syndication since. Starring Roger Ramjet and the American Eagle Squadron, the show was known for its crude animation, frenetic pace, and frequent references to popular culture, which...
. Hendricks brought only three of the original Looney Tunes veterans to the studio such as Ted Bonniscken, Norman McCabe and Bob Givens. The studio's one shot cartoons from this era were critically acclaimed. Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, Norman Normal and Chimp and Zee were praised as being highly creative and having extremely clever writing and design that compensated for the extremely low budgets the crew had to work with by this time. Alex Lovy left the studio in 1968 and Robert McKimson took over. McKimson mostly focused on the recurring characters Alex Lovy had created and two of his own creation, Bunny and Claude. The last of the original Looney Tunes shorts produced was Bugged by a Bee and the last Merrie Melodies short was Injun Trouble, which shares its name with another Looney Tunes short from 1938. The Warner Bros.-Seven Arts studio finally shut down in 1969 and a new studio opened its doors in 1980 named Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
, which exists to this day.
Iwerks Era (1930-1934)
At first, Mickey was drawn by Disney's long-time partner and friend Ub IwerksUb Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
, who was also a technical innovator in cartoons, and drew an average of 600 drawings for Disney on a daily basis; Disney was responsible for the ideas in the cartoons, and Iwerks was responsible for bringing them to life. However, Iwerks left the Disney studio in 1930 to form his own company, which was financially backed by Celebrity Pictures owner Pat Powers. After his departure, Disney eventually found a number of different animators to replace Iwerks. Iwerks would produce three cartoon series during the 1930s: Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933...
and Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. The Whopper series was the second from the Iwerks studio to be produced by Pat Powers and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It lasted only two years; from 1933 to 1934.-History:Willie is a young lad who...
for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, and the ComiColor Cartoons
ComiColor Cartoons
The ComiColor Cartoon series was a series of 25 animated short subjects produced by the Ub Iwerks studio from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by the studio; after losing distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, the Iwerks studio's senior company Celebrity Pictures had to distribute...
for Pat Powers' Celebrity Productions. However, none of these cartoons could come close to matching the success of Disney or Fleischer cartoons, and in 1933, MGM, Iwerks' cartoon distributor since 1930, ended distribution of his cartoons in favor of distributing Harman and Ising cartoons, and Iwerks left after his contract expired in 1934. After his stay with MGM, Iwerks' cartoons were distributed by Celebrity Pictures, and Iwerks would answer to Disney's use of Technicolor and create the Comicolor series, which aired cartoons in two-strip Cinecolor. However, by 1936, the Iwerks Studio began to experience financial setbacks and closed after Pat Powers withdrew financial aid to the studio. Iwerks returned to Disney in 1940, where he worked as the head of the "special effects development" division until his retirement in the late 1960s.
Harman-Isning Era (1934-1937)
After M.G.M dropped Iwerks they hired Harman and Ising from Van Buron Studio and appointed them heads of the studio. They began producing Bosko and Happy HarmoniesHappy Harmonies
Happy Harmonies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938....
cartoons which were emulative of Disney's Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
. However they failed to make a success in the theaters, and in 1937 the Bosko and Happy Harmonies series were discontinued by and M.G.M fired Harman and Ising and replaced them with Fred Quimby.
Fed Quimby Era (1937-1955)
After Quimby took over, he kept a number of Harman and Ising's staff and scouted other animation studios for talent. He created an animated adaptation of the comic book series The Katzenjammer Kids which he re-titled The Captain & The Kids. The Captain & The Kids series was unsuccessful. In 1939, however, Quimby gained success after rehiring Harman & Ising. After returning to MGM, Ising also created M.G.M's first successful animated star, Barney BearBarney Bear
Barney Bear was a series of animated cartoon short subjects produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. The titular character was an anthropomorphic cartoon character, a sluggish, sleepy bear who often is in pursuit of nothing but peace and quiet....
.
In 1940 William Hanna
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...
and Joseph Barbera
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century....
scored a hit with their short film Puss Gets The Boot
Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot is a one-reel animated cartoon and the first Tom and Jerry short, although not billed as such in the cartoon. It was released on June 24, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
, which was nominated for an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
. They then set themselves to producing a long-running series of Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
cartoons that won accolades for MGM - as a string of Academy Awards that was unmatched by any other studio except for Disney. After appearing in Puss Gets the Boot, Tom & Jerry quickly became the stars of MGM cartoons.
Meanwhile, Tex Avery came to MGM in 1942 and revitalized their cartoon studio with the same spark that had infused the Warner animators. Between the Tom and Jerry series and Tex Avery's wild, surreal masterpieces of his MGM days. This included Blitz Wolf
Blitz Wolf
Blitz Wolf is an early anti-German World War II Hitler-parodying cartoon produced in 1942 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Tex Avery and produced by Fred Quimby. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons.-Plot:...
, Jerky Turkey
Jerky Turkey
Jerky Turkey is an animated theatrical short, directed by Tex Avery, released on 7 April 1945 by MGM. The story for this cartoon was written by Heck Allen, the music by Scott Bradley, and the animation was done by Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams. Voices were provided by radio actors Harry...
, Who Killed Who and Red Hot Riding Hood
Red Hot Riding Hood
Red Hot Riding Hood is an animated cartoon short subject, directed by Tex Avery and released on May 8, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1994 it was voted #7 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field...
which set new standards for "adult" entertainment in Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
-era cartoons. Tex Avery did not like to use recurring characters, but did stay faithful to character through out his career at MGM; Droopy, which was created in Dumb-Hounded
Dumb-Hounded
Dumb-Hounded is an American animation short from 1943. It's notable for being the first cartoon to star Droopy.-Plot:The wolf escapes from prison. Several police dogs are freed to search him, but one one them, Droopy, remains behind and informs the audience that he is the hero of the story. He...
in 1943. Tex also created Screwy Squirrel in 1944, but Tex was less fond of him and discontinued the series after five cartoons. With Hanna-Barbera and Tex Avery under their belts, MGM was finally able to compete with Disney (and now Warner Bros.) in the field of animated cartoons. In 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer closed down the Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
unit, and the rest of the cartoon studio followed in 1957.
DePatie-Freleng
The 1960s saw some creative sparks in the theatrical film medium, in particular from DePatie-Freleng EnterprisesDePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981. They produced theatrical cartoons, animated series, commercials, title sequences and television specials. Notable among these is The Pink Panther film titles and cartoon shorts and the Dr....
. Their first and most successful project was animating the opening titles for the 1964 film, The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther (1963 film)
The Pink Panther is a 1963 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and co-written by Edwards and Maurice Richlin, starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, and Claudia Cardinale...
, starring Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
. The film and its animated sequences were so successful that United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
commissioned the studio to produce a Pink Panther cartoon series. The first short, The Pink Phink
The Pink Phink
The Pink Phink is a 1964 animated short comedy film, directed by Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt, featureing Blake Edwards' Pink Panther competing with the Little Man over the new colour scheme of a house...
, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film of 1964
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
. The studio also produced other successful cartoon series such as The Inspector
The Inspector
The Inspector is a series of 1960s theatrical cartoons produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and released through United Artists. The titular character is based on Jacques Clouseau, a comical French police officer who is the main character in the Pink Panther series of films.-Plot:Although the...
and The Ant and the Aardvark
The Ant and the Aardvark
The Ant and the Aardvark is a series of 17 theatrical short cartoons produced at DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and released by United Artists from 1969 to 1971.-Production:...
. Meanwhile, Chuck Jones, who had been fired from Warner Bros., moved to MGM to produce thirty-four theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoons in late 1963. These cartoons were animated in his distinctive style, but they never quite matched the popularity of the Hanna and Barbera originals of the 1940s and 1950s heyday, However, they were more successful than the Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
Tom and Jerry shorts, which were produced overseas during 1961 and 1962.
From 1964 to 1967, Depatie-Freleng produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts under contract with Warner Bros. These cartoons can be recognized easily because they use the modern abstract WB logos instead of the famous bullseye WB shield concentric circles. The studio also subcontracted 11 Road Runner cartoons to Format Films. DePatie-Freleng ceased production of the Looney Tunes and moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1967 to continue production of their Pink Panther cartoons. In 1981, the studio was purchased by Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
and was renamed Marvel Productions
Marvel Productions
Marvel Productions Ltd. , last called New World Animation, was a television and film studio subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment Group , based in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, then New World Entertainment and News Corporation/Fox...
.
Mintz/Screen Gems/UPA
After Charles Mintz was fired from Universal, he was still in charge of his own cartoon operation producing Krazy KatKrazy Kat
Krazy Kat is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George Herriman, published daily in newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run...
cartoons for Columbia Pictures. He also created a new series featuring a boy named Scrappy
Scrappy
Scrappy is a cartoon character created by Dick Huemer for Charles Mintz's Krazy Kat Studio. A little round-headed boy, Scrappy often found himself involved in off-beat neighborhood adventures. Usually paired with his little brother Oopy , Scrappy also had an on-again, off-again girlfriend named...
, created by Dick Huemer
Dick Huemer
Dick Huemer was an animator in the Golden Age of Animation.- Career :...
in 1931. Scrappy was a big break for Mintz and was also his most successful creation too, but his studio would suffer irreparable damage after Dick Huemer was fired from the Mintz Studio in 1933. In 1934, Mintz, like most other animation studios at the time, also attempted to answer Disney's use of Technicolor, and began making color cartoons through the Color Rhapsodies
Color Rhapsodies
Color Rhapsodies was a series of usually one-shot animated cartoon shorts produced by Charles Mintz for Columbia Pictures. They were launched in 1934, following the phenomenal success of Walt Disney's Technicolor Silly Symphonies...
series; the series was originaly in either cinicolor or two-strip Technicolor, but moved to three-strip Technicolor after Disney's contract with Technicolor expired in 1935. However, the series failed to garner attention, and by 1939, Mintz was largely indebted to Columbia Pictures. As a result, Mintz sold his studio to Columbia. Columbia renamed the studio, which Mintz still managed, Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
; Mintz died the following year.
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, also known as Tish Tash or Frank Tash was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director.-Animator:...
and John Hubley
John Hubley
John Hubley was an American animation director, art director, producer and writer of traditional animation films known for both his formal experimentation and for his emotional realism which stemmed from his tendency to cast his own children as voice actors in his films.- Biography :Hubley was...
, were Disney animators who left during the strike, and obtained jobs at Screen Gems, where Tashlin served was head producer whislt Hubley acted as director for studio. Tashlin helped Screen Gems gain more success by introducing The Fox and the Crow
The Fox and the Crow
The Fox and the Crow are a pair of anthropomorphic cartoon characters created by Frank Tashlin for the Screen Gems studio. The characters, the refined but gullible Fauntleroy Fox and the streetwise Crawford Crow, appeared in a series of animated short subjects released by Screen Gems through its...
, Screen Gems biggest stars. Tashlin maintained his position until Columbia Pictures released him from the studio in favor of Dave Fleischer in 1942. The Screen Gems cartoons were only moderatly sucsessful and never gained the artistic tallent of Disney, Warner Bros. or MGM. Columbia Pictures closed the studio in 1946 and started looking for a new cartoon production company.
United Productions of America
In 1943, John Hubley left Screen Gems and formed a studio with former Disney animators Stephen Bosustow, David Hilberman, and Zachary Schwartz, who -like Hubley- had left Walt's nest during the animator's strike. The studio Hubley founded was a newer, smaller animation studio that focused on pursuing Hubley's own vision of trying out newer, more abstract and experimental styles of animation. Bosustow, Hilberman, and Schwartz named the new studio as Industrial Film and Poster Service, or IFPS. Artistically, the studio used a style of animation that has come to be known as limited animationLimited animation
Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames. One of its major trademarks is the stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design...
. The first short from the newly formed studio was Hell-Bent for Election
Hell-Bent for Election
Hell-Bent For Election was a 1944 two-reel animated cartoon short subject. The short was one of the first major films from United Productions of America , which would go on to become the most influential animation studio of the 1950s...
(directed by Warners veteran Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
), a cartoon made for the re-election campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
. Although this new film was a success, it did not break the boundaries that Hubley and his staffers had hoped. It wasn't until the third short, Bobe Cannon's Brotherhood of Man, that the studio began producing shorts aggressively stylized in contrast to the films of the other studios. Cannon's film even preached a message that, at the time, was looked down upon – racial tolerance. By 1946, the studio was renamed as United Productions of America
United Productions of America
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio of the 1940s through present day, beginning with industrial films and World War II training films. In the late 1940s, UPA produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures, most notably the Mr. Magoo series. In...
(UPA), and Hilberman and Schwartz had sold their shares of the studio stock to Bosustow.
In 1948, UPA also found a home for itself at Columbia Pictures and began producing theatrical cartoons for the general public, instead of just using propaganda and military training themes; UPA also earned itself two Academy Award nominations during its first two years in production. closed in 1946. From there, the UPA animators began producing a series of cartoons that immediately stood out among the crowded field of mirror-image, copycat cartoons of the other studios. The success of UPA's Mr. Magoo
Mr. Magoo
Quincy Magoo is a cartoon character created at the UPA animation studio in 1949. Voiced by Jim Backus, Quincy Magoo is a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem...
series made all of the other studios sit up and take notice, and when the UPA short Gerald McBoing-Boing
Gerald McBoing-Boing
Gerald McBoing-Boing is an animated short film produced by United Productions of America and given wide release by Columbia Pictures on November 2, 1950...
won the Oscar, the effect on Hollywood was immediate and electrifying. The UPA style was markedly different from everything else being seen on movie screens, and audiences responded to the change that UPA offered from the repetition of usual cat-mouse battles. Mr Magoo would go on to be the studio's most successful cartoon character. However, UPA would suffer a major blow after John Hubley was fired from the studio during the McCarthy Era
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
in 1952, due to suspicions of having ties to Communism; Steve Bosustow took over, but was not as successful as Hubley, and the studio was eventually sold to Henry Saperstein.
By 1953, UPA had gained great influence within the industry. The Hollywood cartoon studios gradually moved away from the lush, realistic detail of the 1940s to a more simplistic, less realistic style of animation. By this time, even Disney was attempting to mimic UPA. 1953's Melody
Melody (1953 film)
Melody is a 1953 Walt Disney short cartoon film, originally released on May 28, 1953. It was the very first cartoon to be filmed in 3-D.-Synopsis:In this cartoon, Professor Owl teaches his class about melody and its importance to the world of music....
and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom
Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom is an educational Adventures in Music animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, and originally released to theaters by Buena Vista Distribution on November 10, 1953...
in particular were experiments in stylization that followed in the footsteps of the newly formed studio.
Feature-length films
In 1959 UPA released 1001 Arabian Nights staring Mr Magoo In 1962 UPA released Gay Purr-eeGay Purr-ee
Gay Purr-ee is an animated film musical produced by United Productions of America and released by Warner Bros. in 1962. It features the voice talent of Judy Garland in her only animated-film role.- Plot:...
with the voice talents of Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
. In 1964 UPA decided to abondon in animation and simply become a distribution company.
Walter Lantz Productions
In 1929 Walter LantzWalter Lantz
Walter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...
replaced Charles Mintz as producer of Universal Studios cartoons. Lantz's main character at this time was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s...
, whose earlier cartoons had been produced by both Walt Disney and Charles Mintz. Also Lantz started to experiment with color cartoons, and the first one called Jolly Little Elves was released in 1934. In 1935, Lantz made his studio independent from Universal Studios, and Universal Studios was now only the distributors of his cartoons, instead of the direct owners.
In the 1940's Oswald began to lose popularity. Lantz and his staff worked on several ideas for possible new cartoon characters (among them Meany, Miny, and Moe
Meany, Miny, and Moe
Meany, Miny, and Moe are Walter Lantz characters, who made their first appearance in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon "Monkey Wretches", in 1935...
and Baby-Face Mouse
Baby-Face Mouse
Baby-Face Mouse is a Walter Lantz character, who made his first appearance in the cartoon "Cheese-Nappers", in 1938. His final appearance was in 1939, in "Arabs With Dirty Fezzes".List of appearances:*"Cheese-Nappers"...
). Eventually one of these characters clicked; his name was Andy Panda
Andy Panda
Andy Panda is a cartoon character who starred in his own series of animated cartoon short subjects produced by Walter Lantz. These "cartunes" were released by Universal Pictures from 1939 to 1947 and United Artists from 1948 to 1949. The titular character is an anthropomorphic cartoon character, a...
, who aired in Technicolor. However successful Andy was, it was not until the character's fifth cartoon, Knock Knock that a real breakthrough character was introduced. This was none other than Woody Woodpecker
Woody Woodpecker
Woody Woodpecker is an animated cartoon character, an anthropomorphic acorn woodpecker who appeared in theatrical short films produced by the Walter Lantz animation studio and distributed by Universal Pictures...
, who become Lantz's most successful creation.
Walter Lantz Studio
Walter Lantz Studio
Walter Lantz Productions was an American animation studio. It was in operation from 1928 to 1948 and then 1950 to 1972 and was the principal supplier of animation for Universal Studios, now part of the media conglomerate NBC Universal.-History:...
closed at the end of 1948 due to financial problems. It opened again in 1950 with a downsized staff, mainly because Lantz was able to sign a deal with Universal (by this time now known as Universal-International) for more Woody Woodpecker cartoons, starting with 1951's Puny Express
Puny Express
Puny Express is an American cartoon, and the 32nd animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on January 22, 1951, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal International....
. The character would continue to appear in theatrical shorts until 1972, when Lantz finally closed his studio. Luckily for Lantz Woody Woodpecker's survival was lengthened when he started appearing in The Woody Woodpecker Show
The Woody Woodpecker Show
The Woody Woodpecker Show is a long-running 30-minute American television series mainly composed of animated cartoon escapades of the world-famous woodpecker and other Walter Lantz characters including Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, and Inspector Willoughby released by Walter Lantz Productions...
from 1957 to 1958, from which it entered syndication until 1966. NBC revived the show twice-in 1970 and 1976, and finally in 1985 Lantz sold all of the Woody Woodpecker shorts to Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, then part of MCA.
Other studios
Aesop's Film Fables
Aesop's Film Fables was a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Terry came upon the inspiration for the series by young actor-turned-writer Howard Estabrook, who suggested making a series of cartoons based on Aesop's Fables. Although Terry later claimed he...
series to the Van Beuren in 1929, Paul Terry
Paul Terry (cartoonist)
Paul Houlton Terry was an American cartoonist, screenwriter, film director and one of the most prolific film producers in history...
established a new studio called Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
. Neither the Van Beuren studio nor the Terrytoon studio were able to compete with the success of any of the other studios, Disney in particular.
In 1934, as other studios were putting cartoons in Technicolor to answer to Disney's Silly Symphonies cartoon series, Van Beuren Studios abandoned its remaining cartoons and answered Disney's use of Technicolor by creating the Rainbow Parade
Rainbow Parade
Rainbow Parade was a series of 27 animated shorts produced by Van Beuren Studios between 1934 and 1936. This was Van Beuren's all-color series....
series, which was all color. However, the series was not a success, and by 1936, RKO Pictures, the owner of the Van Beuren Studio, closed the Van Beuren Studio as RKO chose to instead distribute Disney cartoons.
Sound in animation
While much of the focus in an animated cartoon is on the visuals, the vocal talents and symphonic scores that accompanied the images were also very important to the cartoons' success. As motion pictures drew audiences away from their radio sets, it also drew talented actors and vocal impressionists into film and animation. Mel BlancMel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
gave voice to many of Warner Bros. most popular characters, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig (starting in 1937), and Daffy Duck. Other voices and personalities from vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and the radio era contributed to the popularity of animated films in the Golden Era.
Cartoons of this era also included scores played by studio orchestra
Studio orchestra
A studio orchestra is an orchestra that exists only in a recording, movie, or television studio. That is, it does not perform in public concerts or for audiences generally. They are typically run by movie and television studios to produce film and television soundtrack recordings. Nearly all...
s. Carl Stalling
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...
at Schlesinger/Warner Bros. and Scott Bradley
Scott Bradley
Scott Bradley was an American composer, pianist and conductor.Bradley is best remembered for scoring the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical cartoons, including those starring Tom and Jerry , Droopy , Barney Bear , and the many one-shot cartoons.Bradley was a...
at MGM composed numerous cartoon soundtracks, creating original material as well as incorporating familiar classical and popular melodies. Many of the early cartoons, particularly those of Disney's Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
series, were built around classical pieces. These cartoons sometimes featured star characters, but many had simple nature themes.
Stop motion and special effects
For a great part of the history of Hollywood animation, the production of animated films was an exclusive industry that did not branch off very often into other areas. The various animation studios worked almost exclusively on producing animated cartoons and animated titles for movies. Only occasionally was animation used for other aspects of the movie industry. The low-budget SupermanSuperman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
serial
Serial (radio and television)
Serials are series of television programs and radio programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode by episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the full run of the series, which distinguishes them from...
s of the 1940s used animated sequences of Superman flying and performing super-powered feats were used in the place of live-action special effects, but this was not a common practice.
The exclusivity of animation also resulted in the birth of a sister industry that was used almost exclusively for motion picture special effects: stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animation. In spite of their similarities, the two genres of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation rarely came together during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Stop-motion animation made a name for itself with the 1933 box-office hit King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
, where animator Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....
defined many of the major stop motion techniques used for the next 50 years. The success of King Kong led to a number of other early special effects films, including Mighty Joe Young, which was also animated by O'Brien and helped to start the careers of several animators, including Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...
, who came into his own in the 1950s. George Pal
George Pál
George Pal , born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre...
was the only stop-motion animator to produce a series of stop-motion animated cartoons for theatrical release, the Puppetoon
Puppetoon
Puppetoon animation is a type of replacement animation, which is itself a type of stop-motion animation. In traditional stop-motion, the puppets are made with movable parts which are repositioned between frames to create the illusion of motion when the frames are played in rapid sequence...
series for Paramount, some of which were animated by Ray Harryhausen. Pal went on to produce several live-action special effects-laden feature films.
Stop motion animation reached the height of its popularity during the 1950s. The exploding popularity of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
films led to an exponential development in the field of special effects, and George Pal became the producer of several popular special-effects laden films. Meanwhile, Ray Harryhausen's work on such films as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a 1958 fantasy film released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Nathan H. Juran and produced by Charles H. Schneer...
, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...
drew in large crowds and encouraged the development of "realistic" special effects in films. These effects used many of the same techniques as cel animation, but still the two media did not often come together. Stop motion developed to the point where Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...
's effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
seemed lifelike to an unearthly degree.
Hollywood special effects continued to develop in a manner that largely avoided cel animation, though several memorable animated sequences were included in live-action feature films of the era. The most famous of these was a scene during the movie Anchors Aweigh
Anchors Aweigh (film)
Anchors Aweigh is a 1945 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney in which two sailors go on a four-day shore leave in Hollywood, accompanied by music and song, meet an aspiring young singer and try to help her get an audition at MGM...
, in which actor Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
danced with an animated Jerry Mouse
Jerry Mouse
Jerry Mouse is a fictional animated character, one of the main characters in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's series of Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon short films. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Jerry is a brown anthropomorphic mouse, who first appeared in the 1940 MGM animated short Puss...
(of Tom and Jerry fame). But except for occasional sequences of this sort, the only real integration of cel animation into live-action films came in the development of animated credit and title sequences. Saul Bass
Saul Bass
Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....
' opening sequences for Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's films (including Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
, North by Northwest
North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau...
, and Psycho) are highly praised, and inspired several imitators.
The wartime era
The major Hollywood studios contributed greatly to the war effort, and their cartoon studios pitched in as well with various contributions. Over at the Fleischer studios, Popeye the Sailor joined the Navy and began fighting Nazis and "Japs"; while the Warner Bros. studio produced a series of Private SnafuPrivate Snafu
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional cartoon shorts produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The character was created by director Frank Capra, chairman of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, and most were written by...
instructional film cartoons especially for viewing by enlisted soldiers.
Decline of theatrical shorts
In 1946, the animation union of the time negotiated a pay increase of 25%, making the cartoons more expensive to produce on a general basis. After the 1948 verdict following the Hollywood Antitrust caseUnited States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 US 131 was a landmark United States Supreme Court anti-trust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would...
, there was no longer a booking guarantee on the theatres for cartoons from any of the studios, making it a more risky business and because of this less resources were invested in the theatrical shorts, causing a gradual decline. By the beginning on the 1960s, the medium of television was beginning to gain more momentum, and the animation industry began to change as a result. At the head of this change were the tandem of William Hanna
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...
and Joseph Barbera
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century....
, the creators of Tom and Jerry. The new Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
utilized the limited animation
Limited animation
Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames. One of its major trademarks is the stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design...
style that UPA had pioneered. With this limited animation, Hanna and Barbera created several characters including Huckleberry Hound
Huckleberry Hound
The Huckleberry Hound Show is a 1958 syndicated animated series and the second from Hanna-Barbera following The Ruff & Reddy Show, sponsored by Kellogg's. Three segments were included in the program: one featuring Huckleberry Hound; another starring Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo Boo; and a third...
, The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
, Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear is a fictional bear who appears in animated cartoons created by Hanna-Barbera Productions. He made his debut in 1958 as a supporting character in The Huckleberry Hound Show. Yogi Bear was the first breakout character created by Hanna-Barbera, and was eventually more popular than...
and Top Cat
Top Cat
Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...
. With television's growing popularity, a decline began in movie-going. To face the competition from TV, the theaters did what they could to reduce their own costs. One way of doing so was booking features only and avoiding the expenses of shorts, which were considered unnecessary and too expensive. Those few shorts that found their way to the theaters despite this are often viewed by critics as inferior to their predecessors.