Cartoon Odds and Ends

There are times in a writer’s life (not that I’m a writer) where you run into information and wonder “What am I going to do with that?” There isn’t enough for a full post so it sits in a lonely file, half-forgotten.

Let’s fish a few of these out of the folder and pass them along.

To the right you see two members of Friz Freleng’s unit at the Schlesinger studio during the early ‘40s. On the left is Lin Larsen. The other is Dave Brown. He might be the only Schlesinger employee who died in the war. The story about him in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News of July 14, 1944 reads:

David Brown, Once Carrier, Now Missing
Another former Citizen-News carrier has been listed as missing in action.
The War Department has notified Mr. and Mrs. Frank F. Brown, 1565 N. McCadden Pl., that their son, First Lt. David William Brown, 26, was reported missing May 28 over Biak Island, New Guinea. Prior to entering the Army Air Forces about two years ago, Lieutenant Brown was an assistant animator for Leon Schlesinger Productions.
A bomber pilot, he was trained at Brooks Field, Tex., and Will Rogers Field, Okla., before going overseas seven months ago. He had completed approximately 30 missions.
Lieutenant Brown was a graduate of Hollywood High School, Los Angeles City College and Otis Art Institute. His father formerly worked in the Citizen-News job printing department.

Brown’s body was found and he is buried in Glendale. His mother was about 3½ months shy of 100 when she died in 1994.

Anyone who knows the biography of Tex Avery knows he was suspended by Schlesinger in 1941 in a dispute over the ending of The Heckling Hare. How much trouble Avery had with ol’ Leon before that isn’t known, but we can tell you he ran afoul of the censor. This is from Erskine Johnson’s column for NEA, March 13, 1939:

Hayes office censors are cracking down on celluloid burlesques of President Roosevelt. Scene of a worm labeled “FDR” and saying “my friends” was deleted from Leon Schlesinger’s new animated cartoon short, “Fresh Fish.”

Considering how Hollywood seems to have venerated Roosevelt, I can’t picture the footage to be insulting. But “respect for the presidency” in those days meant not putting him in a comic situation.

After leaving Walter Lantz in 1954, Tex Avery opened a one-man studio; layout man Jerry Eisenberg says he and animator Ken Harris used to go there. There were all kinds of these little commercial operators. It’s one reason there are huge blanks trying to put together the careers of some Golden Age animators; they went into these industrial operations where no credits exist.

The Citizen-News of September 16, 1953 tells where two of them went.

THE UNDERSIGNED do hereby certify that they are conducted an animated motion picture production business at 1515 Crossroads of the World, City of Hollywood, County of Los Angeles, State of California under the fictitious firm name of Associated Animators Productions, and that said firm is composed of the following persons, whose names and addresses are as follows, to wit:
RUSS DYSON, 11115 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, California.
RUDY CATALDI, 1447 Allison St., Los Angeles 26, California.

Dyson had worked at Disney, but he was one of the “new” McKimson unit animators at Warners after the 3-D shutdown ended in 1954 and Warners decided a few months later to re-activate a third unit under Bob McKimson. None of McKimson’s animators wanted to return after a year away so a new group was cobbled together. Dyson was hired by November 1954 and was first credited on Weasel Stop, released in January 1956. He died at age 50 on September 25, 1956. I suspect there’s a reason it was not mentioned in the Warner Club News. The United Press put an account of it on the wire:

Screen Cartoonist Hangs Self in Jail Cell
SANTA BARBARA (UP)— Russell Beaumont Dyson, 52, identified as a Hollywood screen cartoonist and photographer was arrested as a drunk early Saturday and later hanged himself in a jail cell.
Dyson, of 7472 Hollywood Blvd., was found wandering in a field by U-S Highway 101. The California Highway Patrol said his car was parked in a northbound lane of the road.
CHP officers said he cried hysterically while being booked at Santa Barbara county jail. He hanged himself with his belt after being booked for drunkenness.

McKimson’s unit lost an assistant animator the following month with the sudden death of Chuck Whitton, whose wife had died only weeks before.

Cataldi went on to a long career in animation, including time with thrifty producer Sam Singer. We wrote about Rudy in this post. He died Jan. 4, 2019 at 91.

The McKimson unit at the time of Dyson’s death included animator Ted Bonnicksen. He, too, had worked for Disney and arrived about the time the unit started up again in March 1954. Where was he before he ended up at Warners? Well, the Los Angeles Daily News of August 31, 1949 reported the fall semester was underway at the Hollywood Art Center School, and...

David Brown, Once Carrier, Now Missing
Three new instructors have been added to the faculty. Including the dean of portrait painters, John Hubbard Rich, Robert W. Mallary, commercial layout artist and Ted Bonnicksen, cartoonist and animator.

Bonnicksen animated on the saddest of Warners cartoons—the ones at the very end. Yes, Cool Cat, Chimp and Zee, Merlin the Magic Mouse, all your least favourite characters. When Warners closed in 1969, Bonnicksen found employment at Filmation.

There’s a bit of a conflict in official records about his birth and death dates. His WW2 Draft Card states he was born September 8, 1915 (and working for Disney). This would match the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Census. Death records say he died July 22, 1971. A bit of trivia: Bonnicksen animated the Jack Benny tribute cartoon The Mouse That Jack Built (1959). Benny was from Waukegan, Illinois. That’s where Bonnicksen was born.

Ham Hamilton went back to the silent days with Walt Disney, then trailed after Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, making cartoons for several studios, one of them for Warner Bros. via Leon Schlesinger. He ended up back at Schlesinger a couple of times, lastly getting screen credit on a pair of cartoons in 1939 in the Tex Avery unit. What happened next? The answer is buried in the July 28, 1939 edition of the Hollywood Reporter:

Rollin C. Hamilton, veteran animator, joins the Fleischer studios in Miami on a term ticket. He starts on Paramount’s all-color cartoon feature, “Gulliver’s Travels.”

Restorer/Historian Devon Baxter found him at the end of the decade. A ‘Help Wanted’ ad in the Hollywood Citizen-News of December 9, 1949 was looking for an animator at Pearson’s Studios, which mainly specialised in photography. The ad read “Attention, Ham Hamilton.” He died June 3, 1951 at age 52.

The trades will mention people who never get screen credit. Broadcasting magazine reported in March 1941:

AL SPAN, CBS Hollywood sound effects director, in addition to his network duties, has been signed by Walter Lantz, film producer, to handle sound on all cartoon pictures to be released through Universal Pictures Co.

How long Span was there is unclear. Al Glenn was the long-time sound man after the studio reopened in 1950.

And since we’re speaking of Lantz, our last item comes from the Valley Times. You may have read about the fascination with square dancing at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the early ‘50s. Even producer Eddie Selzer took part. But there was another producer who was into square dancing around the same time. Below you see a group in the San Fernando Valley called the “Woody Woodpecker Woodchuckers.” It’s a shame the scan is so poor because you can’t make out the Woodys in the photos, but you’ll notice Walter Lantz in the top picture. The Woody hats are really cool. There were eight married couples who were members of the group.