From a Volkswagen to a Rolls-Royce

The role of the Hanna-Barbera studio in the history of animation has been debated to death for years and I doubt anything new could be propounded. My opinion is the studio put out some pleasant-to-funny cartoons at the beginning, then things got blander and repetitious through overwork, followed by interference by network executives and pressure groups.

For better or worse, Hanna-Barbera and other cartoons-for-TV outfits kept the old artists employed as theatrical and industrial studios closed. There was work for newcomers. But, as we mentioned, there was more work than the studio could really handle. This was H-B’s excuse years later for runaway production, which it had considered as early as 1960 after Jay Ward Productions pulled it off with some success.

This story from the King Features Syndicate gives you an idea of how busy things were in 1977. It appeared in papers starting around August 11th. As someone who enjoys Carlo Vinci’s work, it is nice to see a reference to him.

Television Market Cartoon Business Booms: More Artists Are Needed
By CHARLES WITBECK
Business is booming for Hanna-Barbera Productions, makers of animated TV cartoon shows. Believe it or not, artists are needed.
It's good to report new life in the Hollywood animation business after 25 years of stagnation. Since the early ‘50s, skilled animators, artists from Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz and other shops, found themselves without jobs when film costs mounted to the extent of killing off the movie theater cartoon.
At that time, the makers of MGM's grand “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera entered the TV business, drastically cutting the finer points of animation to scratch out a profit on Saturday morning kiddie shows.
“Comparing TV animation to theater animation is like comparing a Volkswagen to a Rolls-Royce,” said Barbera. “It's another world. For one thing you don’t have any time, and the repetition is endless.”
Disgusted with the product, part-time work and an uncertain future, a lot of the good animators simply quit the business. Others have retired so the supply at local 839 of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists has steadily declined.
All that is about to change, at least at Hanna-Barbera. Not only is business burgeoning on Saturday morning for H-B at all three networks, but the big three have placed orders for specials.
NBC wants four animated movies of the week, plus four "Flintstones" epics.
ABC has two, one, "Suffer the Little Children," a live action.
CBS has three including a 20-year retrospective, the "Happy World of Hanna Barbera," put together by Marshall Flaum, documentary-maker for Jacques Cousteau.
Now for the kicker. Taft Broadcasting, which owns H-B, has come up with front money, $7,500,000, for three animated theatrical releases.
After looking at the grosses piled up by H-B's "Charlotte's Web," which included a pair of TV re-runs, Taft sees gold in full-length animation.
To Joe Barbera that means three years of steady work ahead, not part-time piecework.
Therefore, artists are needed at the factory. "We finally stopped talking about it," Joe says, "and opened our own animation college."
So far, out of 100 attending studio classes four nights a week on animation, layout, storyboard, design, background painting, checking and camera operation, 70 are now on the payroll while still in school. Another 130 will be required to meet production requirements through 1978.
Veteran Harry Love is in charge of the animation school. Prospective students bring portfolios of art work of film footage, and Love selects the most promising. The teaching staff, led by the bosses, includes Martie Murphy, the skilled animator-cartoonist. A man like Murphy couldn’t be found at H-B two years ago, so his presence means quality has arrived.

Barbera hopes to uncover and develop a new crop of artists—the brilliant moving up through TV cartoons to theatrical projects.
Joe started off as a kid drawing cartoons, and got a job in New York by saying he could animate. He spent four days at it, didn't like it, and quit.
An idea man, Barbera landed another job alongside Carlo Vinci, who works for H-B today, and learned the trade, staying up half the night to catch up. Courses at Pratt Institute and the New York Art Students league were part of the curriculum.
"I'm basically a story man," Barbera explains. "And I don’t know how you find that talent."
Competing in TV's Saturday morning cartoon market has come to be more of a headache than a picnic these days what with network people and activist protest groups looking over your shoulder.
"Networks always wail as long as possible before giving a buy order," Barbera says. "Then it's rush, rush, rush with no time to work the bugs out. By the time we're through with a show we know what's wrong. Now Bill and I have a SWAT team that tries to fix up a show as we go along."
The anti-violence pressure groups, a welcome ally earlier in causing networks to buy cartoon shows, now appear, at least to Barbera, to have gone overboard on the subject, equaling slapstick comedy with violence.
"A pie in the face is really forbidden now. A clown would be out of business on TV," said Barbera. "Charlie Chaplin would be tossed off the screen for kicking. Our old 'Tom and Jerry’ shows couldn't pass the censor."

Hanna-Barbera’s corporate ownership was swallowed by an even bigger corporate owner, which was gobbled down again by an even larger corporation. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera are gone. Their beloved studio on Cahuenga Boulevard is an office complex. But so long as they can make enough money, their characters will live on. And I don’t care how H-B naysayers feel. I still enjoy watching a cartoon dog from 1958 that says nothing but “Yowp.”