A Henny the Bear Cartoon

It’s a safe bet that you’ve never seen a cartoon starring Henny the Bear.

In fact, I’ll bet you’ve never heard of Henny the Bear.

That’s because the animation studio for Henny was in a room in a house in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The story of Henny is one of a number we have stumbled across involving teenagers who wanted to be animated cartoonists, created their own characters and stories, then went to work.

One was Glenn Francis Dale. He later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tennessee. Evidently he was a draft dodger. In 1968, he was indicted by a grand jury for what apparently was non-enlistment. He moved to Toronto. The other, Larry Dale Carroll, not only served in Vietnam, but awarded several medals. He attended East Tennessee State University and later was employed by the university as a graphic artist. His obituary in the Johnson City Press in 2000 states “as a high school student he created cartoons, advertisements and commercials that were used by the local media.” It appears the two partially achieved their goal.

The city’s Chronicle newspaper profiled them, as well as Henny, in its edition of March 30, 1958.

Two Local Boys Produce Their Own Animated Cartoons Starring Henny
By DOROTHY HAMILL
Henny is a personality you’ll want to know better. Henny is a teddy bear who, it's safe to predict, is going to bring fame to his creators. For Henny is the hero in a series of animated cartoons designed, planned, written, drawn and filmed by two 16-year-old boys, Glenn Dale and Larry Carroll.
The Dale and Carroll Productions, of which Henny is star, has been in operation for two years. And it’s astounding what these two boys have accomplished in that time, building much of their own equipment, experimenting, doing the hundreds of painstaking drawings necessary for animation, writing their own story sequences. To borrow some adjectives from the movie industry—stupendous and colossal. [Tralfaz note: “And it’s good, too!” From “Daffy Duck in Hollywood”].
High School Juniors
The young artists—whose parents are Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Dale, West Locust Street, and Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Carroll, West Grand Avenue—have known each other since elementary school days and are now juniors at Science Hill High School. They are both highly gifted in art, and have done some beautiful oil paintings.

After reading the story of Walt Disney, they became interested in that vastly technical field of animated cartoons. "We used to make flip books,” they explained, “the kind where you’d draw characters on each page and they would move as you flipped the pages.” And when Glenn got a movie camera for Christmas, they were ready to begin film animation.
They chose their central figure from a teddy bear Glenn had had when a child. "Henny is to us what Mickey Mouse is to Disney," they declared. During vacations and weekends of the school year, they tried out ideas, discarded some. and investigated new methods. Now they have five series on film, and two they are presently working on. To make it even more remarkable, they’ve done a sound tract, synchronized with the film, for one episode, and they even wrote the theme music themselves. The tune is a catchy, quick-beat rhythm, which they played for recording on their clarinets, with Glenn's brother, Donald, helping on the piano. They also did sound effects and spoke Henny lines.
Work At Dale Home
The workshop of Dale and Carroll Productions is a room in the Dale home. Most professional looking it is, too, with a couple of adjoining tables, typewriter, cameras, paints, record player, microphone, story board.
“First,” Glenn said, "we try to get an idea of the story, making it as original as we possibly can. We feel that originality is very important in movie-making. Then we sit around and discuss the story, and when we have it in mind, we write down the outline.”
During this process, they decide on the characters and what each character will do. After that, they make a series of small sketches highlighting the main bits of action. Some of these they do in pen and ink or, as on a recent occasion, they use shoe polish as a paint material. A few of these individual pictures are pinned on the “story board” which they made of beaverboard. With these before them, they can continue filling in the story idea.
“Every camera angle has to be figured, too,” Larry continued, “and then, of course, comes the drawing." For a seven-minute cartoon, they revealed, over 9,000 separate frames or drawings are needed. If, for instance, Henny should be throwing a ball, a series of sketches must be made, in each one the position of arm changed every so slightly.
Separate Films
Every sketch, also, must be filmed separately. On the movie camera is a device which enables them to film one frame at a time While Glenn operates the camera, Larry moves the pictures, or vice versa.
"Lighting has been a problem and we’ve experimented a great deal," Glenn said. They use photo flood lights, and several are necessary. Each one lasts only about three hours.
The first three cartoons they made are what they refer to as “gags.” They are mainly isolated incidents such as Henny investigating a firecracker that blows up. “The House That Henny Built,” completed about a year ago, is more ambitious. In this the teddy bear decides to build a house in the woods. He stops to rescue a rabbit attacked by a fierce bear, and when the bear goes for Henny, the other animals succor him and then aid in completing the house. This is the cartoon for which they composed background music and did sound effects and spoken lines. The sound tract was made to synchronize with the film.
In the beginning, Glenn and Larry drew in background, then cut it out and superimposed it on the picture. Now they draw their character on a sheet of heavy cellophane and place it on top of the background.

Last year they built themselves a multiplane—a contrivance whereby the camera can be set at the top and take pictures on three different levels, thus giving depth. The homemade multiplane wasn’t sturdy enough, so now they are having a stronger one made for them. The boys designed what they wanted and gave plans to the company building it.
Mix Own Paints
Glenn and Larry mix their own paints, using mostly water color, with oils for the background. They also constructed their sound equipment, using a camera tripod for the base, with another tripod on top and the microphone hung on one arm.
By this time, Henny has become a real person to them. "Henny is the kind of character who always gets himself into unpleasant situations, but he has an ingenious way of getting out of them,” they said. “He looks stupid, but he’s really intelligent. And he's invariably pleasant.”
At the moment, the boys are working hard a cartoon in which Henny goes to the moon. They’ve been reading and doing research on outer space to make the background as scientific as possible. They are using some Stravinksy music as background, and plan to tape in some tunes of their own composition. They’re trying to finish the film by the end of school, and a friend is going to send it to Walt Disney. This friend, by the way, has a relative who close to Disney, so that film is sure to get a viewing by the great expert.
Another cartoon in the process of development is called “For Sale,” and concerns Henny’s attempt to buy a dog. “The idea here,” Glenn declared. “is boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy gets dog.”
Although this is a close working corporation, once a story is planned out, the boys can draw separately at their individual homes. But preliminary drafting, filming, and the major portion of the work go on in the workshop.
Would Stay In Field
Larry and Glenn both would like to go into the animated cartoon field professionally when they are fully grown. To that end, they are endeavoring to learn all they can on motion picture techniques, ordering books to read and gathering any material on the subject. The amazing amount they’ve learned so far has come largely from their experimenting and the developing of their own methods.
They are now experimenting with color film, and plan to see if they can do something on the principle of cinemascope. Stereophonic sound is another idea they want to follow through, revealing to a bewildered reporter that this means getting voices at different spots on the screen.
To illustrate the thoroughness with which these boys work, they do a short test reel in order to check lighting, characters, etc. The expressions on the faces of the animals, in the films we were privileged to see, are marvelous. And the animated action is something that left us breathless with wonderment.
Other plans in the hopper of this brilliant twosome include a possible cartoon strip for their school paper, and the preparation of some television commercials with animated characters. They will probably make up new characters for this last project.
But Henny will remain their top star. Just this week they got Henny copyrighted. That teddy bear, without doubt, is going places. Move over, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse! Here comes Henny!



You’d think, judging by the huge eyes and pupils on Henny, the guys were influenced by Japanese animation. But in Tennessee of 1958, I doubt they ever saw any.

Their style is interesting enough that it’s a shame the series never went further, especially if the animation is good as described by reporter Dorothy Hamill. (Yes, I know. Same name as a figure skater. Let’s move on).

However, we hope we’ve been able to provide you with an interesting footnote in the history of animation toward the end of the Golden Age.