Animation's Prince of Wales

You know Friz and Chuck and Tex and Tash and Bob (times two) and even Art. They’re the big-name directors who plied their trade on Warner Bros. cartoons.

There were a few others after the studio parted company with Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising in 1933 and Leon Schlesinger put together his own cartoon operation. One was Earl Duvall.

Who was Earl Duvall, you ask.

We’re really fortunate Duvall supplied his own biography to the June 20, 1931 edition of Motion Picture Daily in an invaluable article on employees of the Walt Disney studio. We’ve posted it here before, but let’s do it again:

Earl Duvall: “Born June 7, 1898, in a front room across from the Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Public schools too difficult . . . entered business college. Big success at fourteen as page for U. S. Senator Joseph Weldon Baily of Texas. Joe got in bad with Senate and Mrs. Duvall’s son joined the regular army. Served during the war at Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, New York. After the war hooked up with the New York World and then entered art department Washington Times. Later with Washington Post, Bell Syndicate, New York. Came to California for no reason whatsoever and Walt gave me a job. Married, have one son and hay fever.”

Census records show that Owen Earl Duvall, Jr. was born to Owen Earl and Roberta A. Duvall. Newspaper reports say his father became a policeman in 1900, and was later assigned to the bicycle squad. We presume the article to the right, praising George Herriman, was sent to the Washington Times comic editor by soon-to-be-animator Duvall. It appeared on January 18, 1922. He married Jane Cornish in D.C. in 1923; a unique twist was after his ceremony, his best man and the maid of honour surprised everyone by announcing they were getting married, too, right then and there. The 1924 Washington directory lists his occupation as “clerk” but the 1925 City Directory shows he was a self-employed artist; he and his wife appeared in a play for the Order of the Eastern Star that year. In 1929, he drew a Christmas serial for the Paramount Feature Syndicate. He was still in D.C. in the 1930 Census, but must have left soon after. Mike Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons (pg. 105) states Duvall was hired by Disney in June 1931, designing backgrounds and making character sketches for Wilfred Jackson for a brief time before going into story work.



Disney director Jack Kinney mentioned Duvall in his autobiography.

Of course, out of all the characters at the studio, there were a few welshers—one was Earl Duvall, a charming story man who kept a tab running with Mary [Flanigan, the receptionist in the animation building who would also loan money]. Earl drove a snappy eight-cylinder Auburn runabout roadster. He dressed well, bought his clothes at elite men’s stores, and ate lunch at Leslie’s Bar and Hardware Store—the studio “in” place. In fact, Earl was the spitting image of the Prince of Wales at the time [Norm McCabe said the same thing in an interview].
However, rumor had it that Earl lived beyond his means. He would sometimes go on the cuff for over a month, but somehow his horse would come in, and Mary always got paid first.
Now, Ted Sears’s large corner office was sort of a gathering place for the department. Walt would drop in from time to time to see how things were going, and Earl, who was sort of a loner, would drop in too, to check on his horse bets for the day. Whenever he bumped into Walt, Walt would ask him how his story was going, and Earl answered, “I’m trying to tighten up the boards.” “Well, Walt replied, “let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll get together.” “Okay, Walt, it won’t be long.”
This went on for some time, and finally, one Friday, Walt said to Earl, “Let’s set up a time and see what you’ve got.” To which Earl said, “How about Monday at ten A.M.?”
That was fine with Walt, who told Ted to set up a meeting.
Monday morning arrived, as it usually did, and the troops assembled in Earl’s room with Walt and four empty storyboards, but no Earl. We waited awhile, and still no Earl. Walt became impatient, tapping his fingers and wondering where Earl hid his boards. We searched around, but there were no clues, and no Earl either.
Earl had taken this time to terminate his employment with the Walt Disney Studios and had simply disappeared, leaving Walt holding the bag and also several bill collectors, including the Auburn car agency, who would have liked to repossess Earl’s speedster.

Duvall also owed Mary Flanigan, but the story department secretly paid his debt to uphold its honour.

He had one other duty at Disney. The October 1956 edition of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories answered a question, saying Duvall wrote the Silly Symphonies Sunday comic from the start until early 1933 and he had pencilled and inked it from the start until April 1932.

It’s not clear when Duvall joined Leon Schlesinger’s studio making Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, but Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons (pg. 324) says the last of the staff was hired early in June 1933. The first thing the studio had to do was come up with a starring character to replace Bosko, who Harman and Ising took with them to MGM. Duvall was the one, according to a Bob Clampett interview in 1969, who originated Buddy.

Duvall supervised five cartoons at Schlesinger; the first three spelled his last name with one ‘l’ on the title cards.

Buddy’s Beer Garden (Looney Tunes, Nov. 18, 1933)
Buddy’s Show Boat (Looney Tunes, Dec. 9, 1933)
Sittin’ On a Backyard Fence (Merrie Melodies, Dec. 16, 1933)
Honeymoon Hotel (Merrie Melodies, Feb. 17, 1934)
Buddy’s Garage (Looney Tunes, Apr. 14, 1934)

Jones dismissed Duvall as a “poor storyman from Disney, lousy director at Schlesinger” but Backyard Fence perks along nicely with some interesting overhead layouts, a sequence on some telegraph lines that changes angles and a nice twist ending. But then he imploded. Friz Freleng told Jerry Beck in an interview published in the great fan magazine Animato! (Spring, 1989):

Friz: He was a very lovable man, but a heavy drinker. And he did the best cartoons over there before I got there. And when I came over they let Tom Palmer go. Really, these were not writers [Palmer and Jack King]. They were pretty good animators, but they were not creative people. I met Earl Duval [sic] at the drugstore for breakfast one morning, and he was drunk already, and he said, “I’m going in and I’m going to tell Leon off a bit. I’m going to get more goddamn money than he ever wanted to put out.

Jerry: And that was the last we saw of Earl Duval.

Friz: I kept warning him. I said, “Don’t do it now. Wait until some other day when you’re sober. He said, “I’m sober now.” And he walked down the driveway.
By the time I finished breakfast and came down the driveway, here comes Earl Duval back. He said, “I got fired.” He was a bad influence, in a way, because of his attitude.”

We lose track of Duvall until 1942. His draft registration, dated Feb. 16th that year has him back in Washington as a self-employed commercial artist. It would appear he was divorced; Jane was in D.C. and only she is mentioned in a Washington Evening Star story about their son in 1944. After the war, he resumed his art career and the Copyright Catalogue for 1947 shows he was the illustrator of a 29-page, unpublished book called “My A-B-C To Health.” How and why he died is a mystery for now, but he passed away on December 21, 1950 at age 52 and is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery.



NOTE: Devon Baxter has found additional information about Duvall's travels. See the comment section.