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.
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In 1923, after Walt Disney's previous Laugh-O-Grams cartoon studio went bankrupt, Walt moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles and lived with his brother Roy O. Disney who was working as a banker at the time. Walt was able to use an unreleased short entitled Alice's Wonderland as a pilot to sell to potential distributors. Alice's Wonderland was loosely inspired by Alice in Wonderland and featured a live-action 5-year-old girl named Alice (Virginia Davis) who had adventures in a fully animated world with her cat sidekick Julius. Margaret J. Winkler of Winkler Pictures liked the cartoon and agreed to distribute the Alice Comedies. On 16, October 1923 the Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio opened in their Uncle Robert's garage and hired back former employees of the Laugh-O-Grams studio including; Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman Maxwell and Friz Freleng. A few months later, the company moved into the back of a real estate office in downtown Los Angeles, until 1926 when the studio moved to a newly constructed studio facility on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district.
In 1924 Winkler fell pregnant. She retired from her job and left the business to her husband Charles Mintz. In 1927 Mintz ordered Disney to stop producing Alice Comedies due to the costs of combining live-action and animation and since the cartoons were beginning to focus more on Julius rather than Alice, it would make more economic sense to create a fully animated series.
Mintz managed to gain a distribution deal with Universal Studios, however it was Mintz-not Disney that signed the deal. Disney and lead animator Ub Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit who debuted in Trolley Troubles in 1927. The Oswald series was a success and became the first hit for the Disney studio.
In the spring of 1928, Walt travelled to New York to ask Mintz for a budget increase. Walt's claim was harshly denied by Mintz and pointed out in the contract Mintz had signed with Universal; it was Universal-not Disney that owned the rights to the character. Mintz revealed to Disney that he had hired most of his staff away from the studio (except for Ub Iwerks, Les Clark and Wilfred Jackson who refused to leave) and threatened unless he took a 20% budget decrease, he would drop Disney and continue the Oswald series by himself. Walt refused, and Winkler Pictures dropped its distribution.
While Disney was fininshing the remaining cartoons for Mintz, Disney and his staff secretly came up with a new cartoon character to replace Oswald; Mickey Mouse.
The inspiration for Mickey has never been clear. Walt Disney said that he came up with the idea on the train ride back to Los Angeles shortly after the confrontation with Mintz, but other records say that he came up with the idea after he returned to the studio. Walt once said that he was inspired by a pet mouse he once had at the old Laugh-O-Grams studio, but more commonly said that he chose a mouse because a mouse had never been the central character of a cartoon series before. Some animation historians claim that Ub Iwerks created Mickey and should be him that receive the credit of the creation of Mickey Mouse.
In 1928 Plane Crazy became the first entry into the Mickey Mouse series, however it was not released because of a poor reaction from test screenings and failed to gain a distributor. The second Mickey Mouse cartoon The Gallopin' Gaucho also failed to gain attention of the audience and a distributor. Walt knew what was missing; sound. Sound film had been captivating audiences since 1927 with The Jazz Singer and Walt decided that the next cartoon Steamboat Willie would be in sound. Steamboat Willie was not the first sound cartoon, Max and Dave Fleischer had produced Song Car-Tunes since 1926. However they failed to keep the sound synchronized with the animation and the main focos of the cartoons were the bouncing ball sing-a-long. The Song Car-Tunes were not a success and some staff members doubted wheather a cartoon with sound would be successful. So Walt aranged a special preview screening with the music and sound effects being played live behind stage through a microphone. The Steamboat Willie test screening was a success and managed to gain a distributor; Celeberaty Pictures chief Pat Powers. However the fist attemped to synchronize the sound with the animation was a disaster with the timing being all wrong. Inorder to finace the second recording Walt had to sell his car. This time he used a click track to keep his musicans on the beat (Disney later learned that it was easier to record the diologe, music and sound effects first and animate to the sound). Little more than a month before Steamboat Willie's premire Paul Terry released his sound cartoon Dinner Time, however it was not a finacial success and Walt Disney described it as "a bunch of racket".
Steamboat Wille was released on 18 Novermber 1928 and was a huge sucsess. Disney quickly gained huge dominance in the animation field using sound in his future cartoons by doubbing Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho and the nearly completed The Barn Dance. Mickey Mouse's popularity put the animated character into the ranks of the most popular screen personalities in the world. Disney's bigest compeditor Pat Sullivan with his Felix the Cat was eclipced by Mickey's popularity and the studio closed in 1930. 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 Symphonies which was based around music with no reoccurring characters. However they did not become as popular as the Mickey Mouse series
In 1930 afer a falling out with Powers, Disney switched distributors to Columbia Pictures. However Ub Iwerks left Disney with Powers to form his own cartoon studio since he felt that he was the master behind Mickey Mouse and Disney was getting all the credit.
In 1932 Mickey Mouse had become an international sensation, but the Silly Symphonies had not. Columbia Pictures backed-out it's distribution of the series and Disney was lured over to move the Silly Symphonies to United Artists by a budget increase.
Walt Disney then worked with the Technicolor company to create the first full three-strip color cartoon, Flowers and Trees. It was a huge success and also became the first cartoon to win an Academy Award. Shortly afterwood Disney negotiated an exclusive, but temporary deal with Technicolor so only he could use the three-strip process in animated films-no other studio was permited to use it.[1][2] 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,[3] and also featured the hit song that became the anthem in fighting the Great Depression "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".[4]
In the Mickey Mouse series he continued to add personalities to his characters, this resulted in the creation of new characters such as Pluto with The Chain Gang in 1930, Goofy with Mickey's Revue in 1932 and Donald Duck in 1934 with The Wise Little Hen (under the Silly Symphony series). When Disney's contract with Technicolor expired the Mickey Mouse series was moved into Technicolor stating with The Band Concert in 1935. In addition, Mickey was partially redesigning for Technicolor later that year.[5]
In 1937, Disney invented the multiplane camera which gave an illousion of depth to the animated world, he first used this on the Silly Symphony cartoon The Old Mill.[6] Much of Disney's work was heavily influenced by European stories and myths, and the work of illustrators such as Doré and Busch.
Also in 1937, Disney changed distributors to RKO Radio Pictures and remained under distibution until the early 50's.
In 1937, Walt Disney produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 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 seen as an enormous gamble. The critics predicted that Snow White would result in financial ruin for the studio. They said that the colors would be to bright for the audience and they would get sick of the gags and leave.[7] 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.[8][9] In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse was redesigned by Fred Moore. This redesign of Mickey is still in use today.[5] 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.[10] 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.[10] 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.[11]
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.[12] 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.[13]
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 in 1951. Due to this Walt Disney was needed on several different units at one time and was spending less time in the animation department. However and never lost interest in animation 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 like Alice in Wonderland had been in production since the late-30's, early-40's and was shelved during the war. However unlike Alice, Peter Pan was a big success both critically and financially.
When Disney's contract with RKO expired at the end of 1953, instead of renewing it as usual Disney was concerned about the instability of RKO (due to owner Howard Hughes' increasingly erratic control of the studio) and started distributing its own films through its newly created Buena Vista Distribution subsidiary. This allowed a higher budget for shorts and feautes 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.
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,[14] and turned his focus at producing his most ambitious movie; Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty was filmed in Super Technirama 70mm film and in Stereophonic Sound like Fantasia. Sleeping Beauty also signaled a change in the style of drawing with cartoony and angular characters; taking infleuence from United Productions of America. Although Sleeping Beauty was the second highest grossing film of 1959 (just behind Ben-Hur), the film went over budget costing 6 million dollars and the film failed to make back it's revenue. The studio was in serious debt and had to cut the cost of animation. In 1960 this resulted in Disney invented Xerography, that replaced the traditional hand-inking. The first feature film that used Xerox cels was 101 Dalmatians in 1961. It was a huge success, however the Xerox resulted in films with a "sketchier" look and lacked the quality of the hand-inked films. According to Floyd Norman, who was working at Disney at the time, the time felt like the end of an era.[15]
On the 15th of December 1966, Walt Disney died of lung cancer. The last film he was involved in was The Jungle Book released a year after his death. After Walt Disney's death the animated films produced by the Disney company were only moderately successful. The animation department did not fully recover until the late-80's, early-90's with the Disney Renaissance.
One of Disney's main competitors was Max Fleischer, 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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18]
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 Sailor 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.[19] 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.[20] 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 each other.[20] In 1941 they released Mister Bug Goes to Town, unfortunately it was released a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbour, which caused Mister Bug to fail at the box-office.[20] Shortly after the films failure 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.[20]
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.
In 1929, former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising made a cartoon entitled Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid and tried to sell it to a distributor in 1930. Warner Bros. who had previously tried an unsuccessful attempt to set up a cartoon studio in New York in order to compete with Disney, agreed to distribute the series. Under producer Leon Schlesinger's guide Harman and Ising created Looney Tunes (the title being variation 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.[21] However since Disney had an exclusive 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 appearance 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 redesigned Porky from a fat, chubby pig to a more cute and childlike character.
Unlike the other cartoon producers at the time, Avery had no intention 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 elaborated the exit of the Duck character by having him jump up an down on his head, flip around and holler off into the sunset.[22] 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,[23] 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 character.[23] 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.[23] By 1942, Warners' shorts had now surpassed Disney's in sales and popularity.[24]
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 1940s 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.
A decade later, after the success of the film, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which consisted of predominately of footage from the classic shorts by Jones, a new in-house studio to produce original animation opened its doors in 1980 named Warner Bros. Animation, which exists to this day.
At first, Mickey was drawn by Disney's long-time partner and friend Ub Iwerks, who was also a technical innovator in cartoons, and drew an average of 600 drawings for Disney on a daily basis;[25] Disney was responsible for the ideas in the cartoons, and Iwerks was responsible for bringing them to life.[25] However, Iwerks left the Disney studio in 1930 to form his own company, which was financially backed by Celebrity Pictures owner Pat Powers.[26] 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.[27] 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.[28] However, by 1936, the Iwerks Studio began to experience financial setbacks and closed after Pat Powers withdrew financial aid to the studio.[29] 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.
After M.G.M dropped Iwerks they hired Harman and Ising from Van Beuren Studios and appointed them heads of the studio. They began producing Bosko and Happy Harmonies cartoons which were emulative of Disney's Silly Symphonies.[30] 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.[31] 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.[31] 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 Bear.[31]
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 (seven in totally) 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.[31] With Hanna-Barbera under their belts, MGM was finally able to compete with Disney (and now Warner Bros.) in the field of animated cartoons. Hanna and Barbera also produced/directed for MGM cartoon studio half a dozen one-shot theatrical shorts besides Tom and Jerry series, including Gallopin' Gals (1940), Officer Pooch (1941), War Dogs (1943) and Good Will to Men (1955). Meanwhile, Tex Avery came to MGM in 1942 and revitalized their cartoon studio with the same spark that had infused the Warner animators. Tex Avery's wild surreal masterpieces of his MGM days 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. In 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer closed down the Tex Avery unit. Fred Quimby retired in 1955, with Hanna and Barbera replacing him in charge of all the rest of MGM cartoons (including the last seven Tex Avery's Droopy episodes as well) until 1957, when the studio shut down the H-B unit, ending all the animation productions.
After Charles Mintz was fired from Universal, he was still in charge of his own cartoon operation producing Krazy Kat 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.[32] 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;[33] the series was originally 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;[34] 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 whilst Hubley acted as director for studio.[35] 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.[35] The Screen Gems cartoons were only moderately successful and never gained the artistic talent of Disney, Warner Bros. or MGM. Columbia Pictures closed the studio in 1946 and started looking for a new cartoon production company.
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.[36] Bosustow, Hilberman, and Schwartz named the new studio as Industrial Film and Poster Service, or IFPS.[36] Artistically, the studio used a style of animation that has come to be known as limited animation. 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.[36]
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;[37] UPA also earned itself two Academy Award nominations during its first two years in production. closed in 1946.[35] 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.[38] 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;[38] Steve Bosustow took over, but was not as successful as Hubley, and the studio was eventually sold to Henry Saperstein.[38]
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.
In 1959 UPA released 1001 Arabian Nights staring Mr Magoo In 1962 UPA released Gay Purr-ee with the voice talents of Judy Garland. In 1964 UPA decided to abandon in animation and simply become a distribution company.
In 1929 Walter Lantz 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. Lantz also 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.[39]
In the 1940s 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,[40] 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.[41]
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.[42] 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.[43]
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 Blanc 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 orchestras. 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.
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 Superman serials 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.
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 Snafu instructional film cartoons especially for viewing by enlisted soldiers.
The 1960s saw some creative sparks in the theatrical film medium, in particular from DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. 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 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.
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 case, 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.
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