Friday 30 November 2012

Banana Duck of Tomorrow

If there’s a Tex Avery cartoon of the ’50s that gets bashed, it’s “Farm of Tomorrow.” While his “Car of Tomorrow” makes fun of the increasingly outrageous design of autos of the decade and “TV of Tomorrow” spoofs technology and banal programming, “Farm” is a string of puns that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Still, there are nice little poses, as good as anything Chuck Jones tried with the coyote at Warners. For example, when you cross a duck with a banana, “you don’t have to pick him, girls. You just peel him.”




This is another one of Tex’s limited animation specials. Lots of static background drawings made by Joe Montell, a buddy of Ed Benedict’s, who was Tex’s main layout artist. Montell was on his way to the John Sutherland studio and went on to work in Mexico on Rocky and Bullwinkle after a brief stop at Hanna-Barbera. Mike Lah, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Bob Bentley are the animators.

2 comments:

  1. Umm, Yowp, i've read on several places that Gene Hazelton was the layout guy here, instead of Ed Benedict, but neither each other of them (be it Ed or Eugene) are credited, in terms of layout artists.

    Asim.

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  2. Could be, Asim. I've never been able to get an indication which cartoons Hazelton worked on for either unit or when he left MGM.

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