Bill Nolan

Bill Nolan was an animation pioneer who, among other things, is credited with inventing the long background that could be slid under animation, and redesigning Felix the Cat to make him rounder and, presumably, easier to animate.

He’s also a bit of an enigma. He was directing for Walter Lantz until 1934 and then he left in October for what Variety termed “a nervous condition.” He surfaced at the Charles Mintz studio in April 1936, was the head animator for Mayfair Productions, which completed the first Skippy cartoon for United Artists by July 1937, was signed by Oct. 2, 1937 by the brand-new MGM studio to work on “The Captain and the Kids” series before moving to Florida to work for the Fleischers in 1939.

There are a few newspaper clippings out there about him that fill in a bit of his background. First this story from the Long Branch Daily Record of February 27, 1917.

LOCAL CARTOONIST IS WINNING PROMINENCE
William C. Nolan, a nephew of Kerin J. Nolan, one of the youngest cartoon artists doing newspaper and magazine work, who is well known in this city, where he has resided for two or three years at the Nolan cottage in Garfield avenue, is fast winning recognition among the older workers in comic art.
Mr. Nolan, who is 23 years old, is a New London, Conn., youth. His first published cartoon appeared in the Waterbury Herald and dealt with license conditions in the town of Plainfield, where he at one time resided. His anti-booze-cartoon attracted the attention of the Connecticut State police and officials of Plainfield, and as a result the town received the greatest shake-up in its history.
His next effort was a series of the means of breaking up school board graft in Plainfield. It meant the abolishment of graft and placing the schools on a higher plane. It was at this time that young Nolan saw the possibilities offered by comic art, and he left a good position to start work with Barre, the celebrated International cartoonist, who was then doing work for the Edison Company in animated cartoons.
Later Mr. Nolan joined the International film service to animate Powers' famous Joys and Glooms, and Krazy Kat, originated by George Herrimen. [sic] He is now animating the great Mutt and Jeff series. Besides this work, Mr. Nolan has done considerable magazine and newspaper work. The Waterbury Herald, in its editorial section of February 18, publishes a double column half-tone cut of Mr. Nolan, together with a brief history of his young career.

Long after Nolan’s death, the Asbury Park Press of March 7, 1971 profiled him in its series on New Jersey pioneers. It goes more deeply into his background, but glosses over the portion after he left Universal. It also skips the “Bill Nolan Newslaffs” series he made for F.B.O. starting in 1927.

Bill Nolan (William C.) was not only the first Monmouth County resident to become an animator of movie cartoons, he was one of the first in that industry's history.
Best known for his famous film feline, "Krazy Kat," Mr. Nolan was to animate during his 50-year career Mutt and Jeff, Felix the Cat, Francis the Mule and nearly every other comic strip character that moved from newspaper to movieland exposure.
It was at Long Branch that Mr. Nolan was introduced to the idea of becoming an animator and for 15 years he produced the drawings for "Krazy Kat" there.
Bill Noland [sic] was born in Connecticut in June 1894, but was raised and educated in Providence, R.I. He was to relate later with a wry grin that "one of the most dreaded periods in school was that devoted to art."
"I could not draw a line until I was out of high school."

Curiously, his first job after he was graduated from high school was in the art department of a Providence department store. One day, while killing time, he started to copy a poster in the store. An artist passing through was startled by the youth's native talent and urged young Nolan to study art seriously.
So Bill enrolled in a Providence art school which prepared him for a job with a N. Y. newspaper as a sports cartoonist. While working on the paper he continued to study art. His heavy schedule impaired his health and he was finally forced to stop work for awhile to go away for a rest.
All during his boyhood Mr. Nolan had spent summer vacations with his grandmother, Mrs. Mary Nolan, at her home in Long Branch. Therefore, it was there he went for his health. In the year that he moved permanently to the Shore (1914), he met a summer visitor at the beachfront, Raoul Barre, inventor of animated cartoons. Mr. Barre persuaded the young artist to enter the animation field.
Mr. Nolan turned to the new medium with enthusiasm and for the next 15 years was to draw "Krazy Kat" at Long Branch. The only interruption was during World War I when he served with the Navy.
After the war Hollywood emerged as world capital of the movie industry. There is where careers were made and already established careers were furthered. So in 1929 Mr. Nolan went to the West Coast to work for Universal Studios for whom he drew "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit."
From then until his death in 1954 Mr. Nolan worked as animator and creator of cartoons. During these 50 years he drew his famous cartoon characters more than 7 million times, he estimated shortly before his death.
He once explained that an animated cartoon of average length generally ran to 500 feet of film. To have the animation run smoothly required 16 drawings for each foot of film.
Not long before his death Mr. Nolan said "Movie cartoons are still tops, having completely put the old movie-comedy out of business. But I will not hazard a guess as to how long they will last."
It was not long after that that TV began to run the neighborhood movie theater out of business. But since then TV has attracted large audiences for the animated cartoon with its children's programs. Undoubtedly Mr. Nolan would be delighted to see his creations being rerun for a new generation.
In 1915, at Long Branch, Bill Nolan met Miss Viola Golden, a resident of the city, whom he married. They had two sons – William C. Jr., now an advertising executive in San Francisco, and Thomas, a physician in Greenboro, N.C.
Mrs. Nolan returned from California after her husband’s death and now lives in Long Branch.

Francis the Mule, you’re asking. Yes. Let’s give you a bit of insight into it from this portion of a story in the Wisconsin State Journal of February 16, 1958. It actually deals with a local industrial filmmaker who worked with Nolan in Hollywood and reveals Nolan and (I guess) George Nicholas opened an industrial company after World War Two which seems to have closed around Nolan’s death.

Cartoon Man Likes It Here
By DONALD DAVIES
(State Journal Staff Writer)
Bill Williams is an aeronautical engineer turned cartoonist, brick-maker turned talent scout, and former neighbor of Clark Gable, turned resident of Madison. He's also practically turned the Williams' home at 3422 Lake Mendota dr. into a small film studio and his family into a most loyal movie-making unit.
Williams is a producer of animated commercial films—"cartoons that tell or sell"— and lives in Shorewood on the shore of Mendota in preference to Hollywood, mecca of most producers of animated films.
He came to Madison for the first time in August, 1934, to direct an industrial film for Gisholt Machine Co. It was to take four or five months, so he decided to bring his family with him and temporarily close his Hollywood animated film studio.
The Williams family has been back in California only about three months in the past three years.
"Each year in the spring we go back to Hollywood to visit relatives and friends," Williams said "In about a month, we've had our fill of the hustle and bustle of Hollywood and are happy to come back to our home here.
"To give you an idea of what I mean," he said, "it used to take about 20 minutes to drive the 14 miles from our home in Encino to the studio in Hollywood. There was one stoplight.
"Today it takes 75 minutes and stoplights are all over the place. It gets ridiculous. It takes all day to get a suit to the cleaners."
And cartoonists—who most times sit within arm's reach of 130 to 200 bottles of paint—worry about things like that.
Williams, a native of Kansas City who dropped into the cartoon business purely by accident, said that his youthful ambition was to become an aeronautical engineer—so he did. He graduated from Curtiss Wright Technical of Aeronautics in Glendale, Calif., now California Aeronautical Institute, worked for Lockheed aircraft industries, and then went with Timm Aircraft in 1941 to help design Navy trainers.
"The Navy needed illustrated handbooks to go with the aircraft for training purposes," he explained. "I had drawing experience and liked the work, so I was given the job of hiring a group and getting handbook production under way."
As the war knocked the movie cartoon industry out of business because of film priority, Williams was able to hire four or five cartoonists to illustrate the booklets. One of these was Bill Nolan, former head of Universal International's cartoon studio and pioneer in the cartoon business. He created the old-time, cartoon favorite, Oswald the Rabbit, and the fabulous Walt Disney worked for him once.
Another was Cliff Arquette, who today is the homespun Charlie Weaver of radio and television fame who recently scored a big hit on Jack Paar's "Tonight" television show.
"Those two years were the greatest," Williams said. "We talked cartoons most of the time. This was my education and there was no course or school that could have given me the same basis in animation."
Engineering gave way to cartooning and film work in Williams' life. In 1944 with the training manuals completed, he went into the Navy to help produce visual education movies and service films, using much of what he had learned about animation.
After discharge in 1946—"wanting to do nothing but loaf for a year"—Williams decided he'd like to design and build his own home—"and have a big happy time doing it," he added.
[deleted portion of story]
At the same time, television had created a big demand for commercial cartoons and animated films. In 1949, Williams, Bill Nolan, and Nick Nic[h]olas formed Williams-Nic[h]olas Animated Productions in Hollywood, which closed in 1954 when Williams came to Madison and brought key personnel with him.
During these years, the firm did some work for the movies. Nolan became technical director on the series of "Francis" movies, about a talking mule, and the show, "Rhubarb," about a cat which inherited a baseball team. Nolan was the person responsible for making Francis talk.

Nolan died during a stay at the Sawtelle V.A. Hospital in North Hollywood on December 6, 1954. He was 60.

Note: My thanks to Devon Baxter for discovering the middle clipping and making it available.