Multiple Screening

What was one of the great animators of the Walt Disney studio doing in 1950? This:



This is Multiple Screening, a live action/animation short made for the Pennsylvania Department of Health in 1950 by Tempo Productions. It was co-directed by none other than Bill Tytla.

Tempo was founded in New York as Zac-David by Dave Hilberman and Zack Schwartz, both formerly of UPA. Hilberman is the other director on the cartoon, and the stylised design you see above owes more to him than Tytla. Nowhere is Tytla’s work evident. He was wasted on cycles and extremely limited animation (there are stretches of this short with nothing but still drawings and background pans).

In this scene, Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Smith, average Americans of a half-century ago become current (1950) versions of themselves in a dissolve. Not exactly the chernabog transforming in Fantasia.



Eric Barnouw wrote the script for what’s a pretty uninteresting piece of film.

Tempo made animated commercials in addition to industrials—and then got caught in the blacklist, thanks to the hate-mongering magazine Counterattack, which scared off corporate clients and forced the sale of the company in 1954 and Hilberman’s temporary departure to England.

Tytla was interviewed about his career in 1968. You can listen to him by clicking here.