The Terrytoons of 1952 aren’t very avant garde. They don’t look sophisticated compared to Warner Bros., or even Walter Lantz, let alone UPA or stylised TV commercials coming into vogue. But the work of artists—we suspect Art Bartsch and Carlo Vinci were included—got a showing in America’s Fine Arts Capital, New York City, that year.
The owner of the Woolworth’s of animation seems to have had a publicity machine as effective as any other studio. Someone got Terry some ink in Parade, a magazine supplement found in weekend newspapers all across the U.S. This was published (with the Terry photo) on April 13, 1952. Certainly you can’t deny Terry’s longevity in the business.
They All Laughed
Editor's Note: This year Paul Terry will turn out his 1,000 entertainment film. That's more than any one man has ever made in the movie industry. His rib-tickling "Terrytoons" are famous all over the world. Here Terry reminisces about how his career began:
BY PAUL TERRY
Back in 1915, I was a "struggling pioneer" in the field of animated cartoons. I had spent four months completing my first cartoon movie. I called it "Little Herman." I did 1,000 drawings for it myself and photographed them, too. But I couldn't find a buyer. Producers were skeptical then about the idea of ‘moving cartoons.’
● I went all over New York trying to sell "Little Herman"—without luck. Just when I was ready to give up and go back to newspaper work, I heard of a producer-exhibitor in New Rochelle, about 15 miles away.
He Didn't Have Train Fare
I remember very well the day I saw him. It was a beautiful spring morning and I had to borrow money for the train ride. When I reached his office, the producer said he'd prefer to look at my picture with an audience! I rushed out into the street, but there wasn't an adult in sight. I finally rounded up a group of youngsters. They weren't too eager to come. ● As "Little Herman" appeared and went into a magic act, the kids tittered. Then they giggled. At the end they were howling with laughter. The producer roared, too, and "Little Herman" was sold on the spot.
● That was 37 years ago, but I've never forgotten the importance of capturing the attention of children. There is something wondrous about a child's laugh. Wherever it rises in a theater, adults are bound to join in!
Well, Mr. Terry, that’s unless adults are having a smoke or getting concessions to avoid your third-rate Terry Bears or Dingbat.
Terry’s PR department also managed to get the United Press to talk with him about his exhibit. This appeared in papers starting around March 27, 1952.
Pioneer Of Animated Cartoons Has Show In Noted Art Center
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK (U.P.)—The works of Paul Terry are not exactly collectors’ items but he's had his innings at the Museum of Modern Art.
"I don't think the event did Picasso any harm and I'm surely too set in my ways to have been influenced by the surroundings," commented the pioneer master of the animated cartoon.
The father of the Terrytoons, the movie short subjects that feature such characters as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and the Terrybears [sic], was honored by the museum with a week's showing of representative pictures he has made in the past 30 years. There were nine shorts in the program, including Terry's latest release which is his 1,000th cartoon.
"Of course, we work well ahead of release at our plant in New Rochelle," Terry said, "and this particular picture was finished months ago. I imagine that by now we are probably working on the fifteenth film beyond the thousand mark.
“That’s a really accurate figure too. I've kept close track of them from the very beginning. I thought when we reached the 500th picture years back that it certainly was a lot of cartoons but here we are more than double that figure and still going.
“There’s one thing about cartoon short subjects in the movie theaters. Our market runs contrary to the trend of movie business. I mean, when feature films may be off the cartoons are more in demand than ever.
“Cartooning is a really amazing thing when you stop to think about it. I'm including all cartoon work strips—comic strips, comic books, animation—every phase. I don’t imagine that the number of creative workers in the whole field reaches 5,000.
“Now in what other medium will you find a group so small touching the lives of so many millions of persons? It isn't true of the movies, radio or anything else I can think of. Those mediums may reach as many persons but they have many thousands of workers creating their product.”
In addition to the museum’s Terry program, the first such recognition ever given an animated cartoon product, the artist was honored with a testimonial luncheon by the National Cartoonists Society.
There was other free, national publicity for Terry and his cartoons that year. The New Rochelle Standard-Star reported on January 10th:
TERRY SEEN ON SHOW WITH ARTHUR GODFREY
Terrytoons Inc., of 38 Center Avenue, figured in a television viewing last night over a national network. Paul Terry, president of the New Rochelle firm, appeared as guest on Arthur Godfrey’s Show over CBS narrating a film which showed how the cartoons are made in the studio here.
The film which was made at the plant here showed many local people who are involved in the process of making a "Mighty Mouse" cartoon. Among those shown were Philip A. Scheib, musical director; Tom Morrison, head of the story department; Conrad Rasinski, director; Joseph Rasinski, cameraman; Carol Vinci [sic], animator; Anderson Craig, background artist; George McAvoy, film editor; Arthur Bartsch, head of layout department, and several others.
And this unusual Terry appearance, recorded by the Linton Daily Citizen on the front page of its Feb. 7, 1952 edition.
School Gets $230 From ‘Strike It Rich’
The Music Department of the Edwardsport (Indiana) high school today was awarded $230 on the “Strike It Rich” program conducted by a nation-wide broadcasting company.
One of the Edwardsport pupils wrote to the program saying that when the school building burned most of the band instruments had been destroyed.
Paul Terry, creator of the Terry-Toons, animated cartoons, acted as “guest contestant” in behalf of the Edwardsport school, and won the $230 as the school’s share of the award money given away today.
Would this have made him a humani-TERRY-an?
About a week later, Terry asked some local kids “Won’t you be my valentine?”
The caption on this photo in the Feb. 15th is “PAUL TERRY, creator of Terrytoons, proves [sic] the central figure, above, while entertaining children in Bellevue Hospital at a recent Valentin’s Day party. About 200 children laughed at cartoons drawn by the famous illustrator. They munched on lollipops provided by the visitors and admired gifts. In addition, Bob Kuwahara and Jim Tyer, of the Terrytoon staff, drew Terrytoon characters for the children.
Oh, and Terry made one more on-location appearance, this one on March 22, 1952. Two days before, the Standard-Star published this story and picture:
TERRY TO BE GUEST FOR JR. JOY SHOW
Paul Terry, cartoon creator of Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, the talking magpies, and Dinky, will appear at Loew’s Theater Saturday morning to demonstrate animated cartoon work. He will speak at the Junior Joy Show sponsored by the PTA Council.
The show committee announced that Mr Terry will exhibit a 20-minute short subject, with personal narration designed to illustrate how his cartoons are drawn and processed at Terrytoon Fableland in New Rochelle.
The feature film, selected from the Children’s Film Library, will be the “Francis,” (the talking mule) starring Donald O'Connor. Two Terrytoon cartoons, Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle, will also be shown.
Theater doors will open at 9:15 A.M. with the show beginning at 9:45.
Mr. Terry, whose office is at 38 Center Avenue, has been in the animated cartoon field for 37 years. Last week a luncheon was given in his honor by the National Cartoonist Society in recognition of his pioneer work. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City designated last week as an All Paul Terry Show week, showing his early and recent cartoons.
Within a couple of years, Terry sold his studio to CBS, which brought in a creative supervisor named Gene Deitch, who wasn’t interested in children’s laughter but might have hoped for a MOMA showing for his grown-up Terrytoons. His career there was scuttled before he got that chance, but that’s a story for another time.
MOMA's press release for the Paul Terry retrospective contains additional information, including the titles shown:
ReplyDeleteFOR RELEASE MARCH 8, 1952
PAUL TERRY CARTOON SERIES TO BE SHOWN AT MUSEUM
A retrospective program of the cartoons of Paul Terry, creator of the popular series, Terrytoons, and pioneer in the field of film animation, will be shown in the Auditorium, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 [sic] Street, during the week of March 10-16 as part of the regular film showings held twice daily at 3 and 5:30 p.m. "The Cartoons of Paul Terry" will include 9 examples of his work. The latest of these, FLATFOOT FLEDGLING, shortly to be released, is Terry's one-thousandth film cartoon, a milestone in his career.
Other films that make up the program represent Terry's work in animation since the days when the field was all but unexplored. They are: CAT AND THE MICE (1921) and TWO SLICK TRADERS (1922), two of the "Aesop's Fables" series; SPANISH OMELET (1930), the first Terrytoon; two other early Terrytoons, HUNGARIAN GOULASH and SALT WATER TAFFY, also made in 1930; and three more recent Terrytoons, OUT AGAIN, IN AGAIN (1948), SUNNY ITALY and WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE (1951).
Commenting on the program, Richard Griffith, Curator of the Film Library, says: "The Film Library is happy to present this retrospect of Mr. Terry's career in acknowledgment of his remarkable contribution to the medium of film animation and to the genuine entertainment of countless audiences over a period of 37 years. His is a formidable record matched by no other animator, nor indeed by any other eminent film craftsman, with the exception of the indestructible Cecil B. DeMille.
"In 1915, a few years after the editorial and strip cartoonist, Winsor McCay, made one of the first and most famous American film cartoons, GERTIE THE DINOSAUR, Paul Terry, then a newspaper strip cartoonist, entered the field with a film entitled LITTLE HERMAN. Today, a large staff of artists works together on cartoons which contain thousands of individual drawings, but in 1915, Terry had to make each of the drawings for LITTLE HERMAN himself. Then, he faced the even harder problem of selling his finished product in a film world in which cartoons were still an occasional and suspect novelty. Finally he sold LITTLE HERMAN to Edwin Thanhouser, pioneer film producer, whose faith in Terry's work enabled him to continue in the cartoon field.
"In 1920, Terry introduced the well-remembered 'Aesop's Fables' cartoon series. It was so successful that Terry eventually told on the screen 240 more fables than Aesop himself, who had told 220. In 1930, Terry made his first sound cartoon and, at the same time, his first Terrytoon.
"Terry's earliest sound films illustrate a general tendency of the period: every movement on the screen accompanied by a simultaneous phrase of the sound track. But he soon moved on to a much freer relation between sound and visual. His humorous style has always contained a curious flavor of the sardonic, exemplified by all his character creations, from Farmer Al Falfa of 'Aesop's Fables' to today's Mighty Mouse and the two stately Anglo-Brooklynese magpies, Heckle and Jeckle. Although his continuous output for 37 years can only be called mass-production, it has, thanks largely to its satiric qualities, maintained an almost equally continuous level of fresh invention.
"Terry began his regular film work in New York City and in New Rochelle, when that community, with others in nearby New Jersey and New York, was a flourishing center of film production. The motion picture companies then dominant have long since disappeared, and production has transferred itself to Hollywood. But Terry, with his staff of 85 film animators, remains in New Rochelle. Though his cartoons are world famous, he himself has been little publicized even in the film industry with which he has been so closely identified for so many years."
The 9 films are shown at the Museum by permission of Mr. Terry and 20th Century-Fox.
Paul Terry had a 40 year career in cartoons, and by the end of it he was being recognized by art museums and honored by his peers. Gene Deitch thought he could do better than Paul Terry, and he made a lot of unwatchable garbage like Floofle and Fleebus. After two years of that he got fired. He never should have been given the job in the first place.
ReplyDelete"That was 37 years ago, but I've never forgotten the importance of capturing the attention of children. There is something wondrous about a child's laugh. Wherever it rises in a theater, adults are bound to join in!"
ReplyDeleteThe fact Paul Terry seems to have fully embraced the 'animation for kids' mindset decades before that mindset unfortunately got ingrained in Western Animation speaks volumes to the average quality (or lack thereof) in a typical Terrytoon.
I especially can't imagine having Terry's mindset in an era (particularly with the Hays Code in place) when his cartoons were intended to head movies like The Snake Pit and Three Came Home.
Still, even his studio had its saving graces: the Mighty Mouse vs. Oil Can Harry shorts, Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose and Sourpuss, Jim Tyer's animation of the late 40s and 50s (which made otherwise narratively uninteresting shorts a lot more watchable, something 1 animator alone is not usually capable of doing, even in the best cartoon studios). The less said of the Bill Weiss era of Terrytoons though, particularly after he booted Gene Deitch out, the better.