Ozark in Florida

If you have a favourite animator in the Golden Age, it may be almost impossible to trace their careers. Only a few people had their names appear on screen at the start of a cartoon—and the credits may not have been accurate—and that was usually for theatrical shorts and features only.

Animators and other artists worked anonymously on commercials. If they were fortunate, trade papers mentioned their names if they won an award. Some of them picked up piecework, so they were more-or-less freelancing on industrials and commercial films and not regularly employed by a studio.

A good example is Jacob Ozarkawitz, born February 21, 1914, in Chicago. You know him as Jack Ozark. He started with the Fleischers in the early ‘30s. If you watched TV cartoons in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you would have seen his name on Filmation shows. He did some things in between, including operating his own studio in Miami. This story was in the Herald on March 7, 1954.

TV Cartoons Take Days to Prepare
Those animated cartoons which keep even the most rabid haters of TV commercials fascinated require days of tedious art work to prepare.
Frank Spalding and Jack Ozark, animators for Reela Films Inc., a subsidiary of WTVJ, spend almost two weeks, for example, in bringing a 20-second cartoon commercial to life.
It takes, they report, 240 separate drawings to put an exterminator superman through his bug chasing routine in 20 seconds time.
A minute-long commercial, they say, could run the number of drawings as high as 1,440 depending on the amount of action involved.
The animators put a cartoon together after studying the commercial script. They run a test of pencil drawings first to determine whether their cartoon idea works. If it passes the test then backgrounds are prepared and the tedious drawing-by-drawing animation is done on transparent acetate sheets.
The animators use an ink with an adhesive ingredient to make it stick on the slick sheets.
The completed pile of drawings then goes to an animator camera where the frame-by-frame photographing is done.
The result is a highly entertaining and sales persuasive commercial which Michael Brown, Reela Films' production manager, reports is gaining increasing favor among advertisers and viewers alike here and throughout the nation.

A non-animation item about Ozark surfaced in the Hollywood Citizen-News in the “Racin’ With Mason” column of June 11, 1963.

Top Cartoons By Jack Ozark
By ERNIE MASON
READERS POST-TIME—Recently I have noticed quite a few cartoons of race horses, jockeys and trainers done by a Jack Ozark. The likenesses of the subjects are perfect. Is Mr. Ozark connected with anyone locally and do you happen to know where I can get in touch with him? Jerry Herron, Pomona.
I have to agree that Jack Ozark’s turf cartoons are terrific works of art. The talented gentleman currently is doing free lance turf sports cartooning and can be reached here at the press box at Hollywood Park.

Ozark had a conversation some years ago—he died in 2000—with historian Harvey Deneroff, whose father worked at Fleischer with Ozark. View it below.