Up to 1934, the Van Beuren cartoons weren’t drawn or written that well, though there were a few exceptions. Distributor RKO evidently wasn’t happy. So Van Beuren got rid of studio overseer Gene Rodemich and brought in the one man he thought could make his cartoons as good as Disney’s.
Burt Gillett.
Gillett had animated in New York before heading west to work for Walt Disney. He directed the Oscar-winning The Three Little Pigs, arguably the most popular cartoon the Disney studio made up to that point (meaning the most popular cartoon of all time). Film Daily announced April 7, 1934 that Amadee Van Beuren had hired Gillett to run his cartoon department.
The Newburgh Daily News had employed Gillett at one point and decided to welcome home the former employee in print. This was published June 22, 1934.
Burt Gillett Tames Big Bad WolfIn late 1933, Amadee Van Beuren had gone to the expense of signing Amos ‘n’ Andy to a series of cartoons. They were the most popular duo on radio. The series should have been a success. Only two cartoons were made; they’re incredibly ugly and suffer from the studio’s inability to put together a cohesive story. The series was gone by the time Gillett arrived; at that point George Stallings was directing both the Cubby Bear cartoons and the ones starring The Little King, based on the Otto Soglow comic.
Ex-Staff Member of The News Gets New Big Job
Silly Symphony’s Director Now in Demand
BURTON F. Gillett, former Newburgh News staff artist, the man who immortalized the Big Bad Wolf in song and animated cartoon, has, as a result, not only kept the wolf from the door, but has the vicious animal practically eating out of his hand today.
Ever since Mr. Gillett produced for Walt Disney that ingenious, brilliant symbolical “Three Little Pigs" last spring, he has been in great demand hy producers of animated cartoons to guide the destinies of their staffs. Though the wolf was not, figuratively speaking, at Mr. Gillett's door in Hollywood, he nevertheless accepted a flattering offer of the Van Beuren Corporation, Picture Cartoons.
The Native Returns
And now, Mr. Gillett, who was one of the first movie cartoon animators to leave the East for the West Coast, has returned to head tha Van Beuren Corporation's vast cartoon studio in New York City. Incidentally, the very building to which the native returns is the one in which he began his carter as an animator.
Mr. Gillett's rise in this difficult branch of the motion picture industry has been the result of long, arduous work and endless research. The Gillett creative genius has been seen in many of the Mickey Mouse productions, which include the revolutionary animated drawings in color.
Films Awarded Prizes
Three years ago Walt Disney appointed Mr. Gillett a director and, since then, he has collaborated in the writing and has directed many of the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony successes. Burt Gillett directed the first Technicolor Silly Symphony, "Trees and Flowers," which, in 1931, was awarded the special certificate of merit by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
During the time that these Silly Symphonies were made, Burt Gillett also directed many successful Mickey Mouse cartoons. Just prior to leaving the Disney organization, Mr. Gillett directed "The Big Bad Wolf,” a sequel to “The Three Little Pigs," which received a four star rating in Liberty.
Burt Gillett brings to the Van Beuren organization a new view point on cartoon values as applied to motion picture audiences. He has been largely responsible for developing the human interest angle in cartoon? The old black and white cartoons were built solely on the lines of slapstick gags and the usual cartoon absurdities, such as were embodied successfully for many years in the Aesop's Fables. With the advent of sound, an entirely new technique of cartoon production sprang up. Sound opened up opportunities and Burt Gillett was one of the first to recognize and make use of these new possibilities.
Lives in Scarsdale
Mr. and Mrs. Gillett and their son are now making their home in Scarsdale.
"I was reluctant to leave California as I like the climate and my associates out there very much." he says. “However, business is business and this looks like a splendid opportunity, so here I am.”
Mr. Gillett has many friends in Newburgh, where he worked several years for The News as reporter, cartoonist and photographer. He says he plans to drive up here to visit his friends some weekend soon.
None of this would do for Gillett. He scrapped them all, removed Stallings and gave another chance at directing to Steve Muffatti and Jim Tyer, as well as former independent producer Ted Eshbaugh. Gillett came up with Rainbow Parades to complete against Disney’s Silly Symphonies, only with less colour, and a combination live action/animation series called Toddle Tales. The Tales were a disaster and the series was cut short at three releases. It was now 1935 and Gillett decided to bring in a co-director he could trust, someone who had also worked at Disney—Tom Palmer. Palmer is better known as Leon Schlesinger’s director who was so bad, Friz Freleng had to rework his cartoons so Warner Bros. would accept them for release.
Gillett had some pretty good people as 1936 began—Jack Zander, Bill Littlejohn, Dan Gordon, Alex Lovy, Carlo Vinci and Joe Barbera. But time simply ran out. RKO decided to ignore the cartoon studio it part-owned and, instead, release cartoons from Gillett’s old boss, Walt Disney. The Van Beuren studio was gone by mid-1936 and Gillett toddled with his tail (as opposed to “tales”) between his legs back to the West Coast. Eventually, he got out of animation. His 1942 draft registration lists him as employed at McDonnell’s Restaurant on Pico Street in Los Angeles; his 1943 marriage certificate states he was a machine operator.
You can read a far more complete biography of Gillett in this thorough piece of research by Devon Baxter.
Personally I very much prefer the Van Beuren cartoons before Burt Gillett. Though not all of them were great, they had a certain charm that is completely missing from these later cartoons.
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