Let's Get a Better Look at That

Characters had to stand out on the screen in Tex Avery’s mind. There couldn’t be any potential distractions in the background art.

I’ve seen layout drawings from three different Avery cartoons at MGM that have had things in the background crossed out. One of them is below.

The Farm of Tomorrow (1954) is a weak sauce effort by Avery and writer Heck Allen, who put together a bunch of hokey “we crossed a X with a Y and got a punny XY” gags that build to nothing. I can’t help but think ol’ Tex needed to come up with something fast to fill up the MGM release schedule, and this was it. These were the kinds of puns Avery used to ridicule during his films, not make them centrepieces.

But Tex still put care into it. Gene Hazelton is the uncredited layout artist. He rendered the “ten-foot pole cat” below. Notice how Avery has crossed out trees so your eyes are strictly focused on the gag character.

Here is the end result in the cartoon.

The swirling purple sky (an interesting choice) is by background artist Joe Montell, who soon moved on to John Sutherland Productions. Tex’s animators are Bob Bentley added to the usual crew of Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton. Paul Frees and June Foray provide some of the voices.