Terry made a nice living out of making B-list cartoons. They weren’t all that polished, but he had a few characters that audiences liked, and that was all that mattered in the long run—if the cartoons entertained, they accomplished their goal.
Here’s the old man himself talking with the New York Herald Tribune in a story published on July 22, 1951. Terry had no qualms about stealing ideas from other cartoons; he readily admits it. And, yes, his first sound short came out in 1928 before Disney’s Steamboat Willie, but historians say Terry initially didn’t really want to spend money on sound and that caused his break with Amadee Van Beuren on the Aesop Fables series. Perhaps Van Beuren was waiting for him as well, as per the last sentence.
Terrytoons, 20 Years Old, Going Strong
By JAMES S. BARSTOW, Jr.
Twentieth Century-Fox’s annual convention in Hollywood recently sported an out-of-town guest of honor in the person of Paul Terry, sponsor of Terrytoon color cartoon shorts. The occasion of Terry’s trip to the film capital where the ten-minute adventures of Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and other Terry creations take shape was ostensibly to celebrate the twentieth year of association between the cartoon producer and the film company that releases his Technicolored fantasies. While sentiment was undoubtedly involved, there was a hard core of commercial appreciation on the part of Twentieth behind the festivities.
In these times of straitened circumstances in Hollywood the steady financial returns from the Terry films, heretofore unheralded among the plush post-war profits of major productions, now stand out in comforting black and white on the studio’s ledgers. The individual income from each short may be small, but Terry makes twenty-six a year, and where other Hollywood films have been failing at the box office. Terrytoons have gained steadily in popularity to a point where today they reach an estimated weekly audience of 40,000,000 through 450,000 bookings in 17,000 theaters.
Like What He Does
The man behind Terrytoons is about as far removed from the usual conception of a producer of such financial magnitude as his suburban New York studio is from Hollywood, a fact that is probably primarily responsible for his success. A chunky man in his sixties, with all his original sandy hair and a deceptively calm and easy-going manner, Terry believes in his films. Where other producers have occasionally had to sponsor studio projects that they would not want to make on their own initiative, Terry likes what he is doing and has felt that way for a long, long time.
Terry did so with a conviction of purpose that has survived the passing of time with little abatement. There have been tremendous changes in execution and technique since his initial black-and-white “Little Herman” cartoon of thirty-six years ago, but Terry has been one step ahead of the evolutions of sound, color and other developments with a curious combination of sentiment and hard common sense that is the other key to his longevity and freshness in the medium. Perhaps the best example of the Terry composition is his attitude toward what appears to be his major interest outside of cartooning, the volunteer fire department of New Rochelle. He has a warm and affectionate regard for the smoke-eating tradition—a fireman’s hat occupies a handy and important spot in his office—but at the same time he shrewdly estimates that the conclave around the firehouse of a small town is the best vantage point for satisfactory social maneuvers.
Long-Time Employed
Among the friends and employees in the small, three-story studio in New Rochelle, the Terry approach shows up in the fact that the average length of service of his associates is ten years, while his musical director, Philip A. Scheib, has been with him for twenty. If he is sure of those who help him turn out a record-breaking twenty-six cartoons a year, he takes no chances on the fickle public taste, keeping tabs on his audiences with a variety of methods that would put fiction’s top private eyes to shame. There is one man on the Terry payroll who does nothing but go to theaters and take voluminous notes on audience reactions on all types of entertainment. Anything and everything that draws a laugh is reported to Terry and his panel of writers, directors and artists for possible use in future Terrytoons.
Terry is equally certain that the ten-minute film is the best cartoon size. He professes to great respect for his chief competitor’s technique, but feels that Disney’s feature-length pictures are too much for audiences to handle. The cartoon film requires tremendous concentration, he says, and anything over the short length becomes tiring, with the result that most of what you put on the screen after that goes by unnoticed.
After thirty-six years in cartoons, Terry admits to a comfortable feeling that, if not himself, at least his Terrytoons will go on forever. “You know,” he said reflectively, “before sound and Terrytoons came in twenty-odd years ago, we made 460 Aesop Fable cartoons. He wrote only 220 stories—I’m afraid to die, he’ll be waiting for me.”
I'll just assume that "Winsor MacKay" is from the alternate universe where things are ground out as cheaply as possible, as opposed to Winsor McCay, the artist from our universe.
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