Hicks Lokey was a native of Birmingham and a Phi Kappa Psi at Vanderbilt University, graduating in 1926. Next stop: a career in animation.
The local papers wrote about Lokey a number of times—his parents remained in Birmingham—so allow us to reprint a couple. First is a Birmingham Post article by New York correspondent Helen Warden. By this time, Lokey was working at the top studio in New York.
Hundreds Of Drawings Made For Movie Cartoon
Hicks Lokey, Former Birmingham Man Achieves Success As Betty Boop, Popeye And Little King Artist; Months Spent On One Release
Oct. 7, 1935.
Dear Alyce:
I invited Hicks Lokey in for lunch yesterday. I wanted hear about his work on Betty Boop and Popeye-the-Sailor!
Mr. Lokey’s father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Charles Lokey of Birmingham, can be very proud of their son. He’s a grand person, with a nice sense of humor. (He’d have to have that to use Betty and Popeye for his guinea pigs.)
“I’m afraid I’ll have to eat and run,” Hicks explained, as he joined mother and myself at the luncheon table. “We’re working on a new Little King picture. I've got the Opera Singer on my hands, and she isn’t easy to handle!”
“Is she temperamental?”
“Perhaps,” I hesitated. "I’ll decide later. I’m afraid of difficult women!”
Mr. Lokey and his wife (the former Betty Louise Dangler, sister of an old schoolmate) live on Brooklyn Heights at 26 Middagh-st. The Heights are just across the East River. "We love the place,” Hicks said. “The houses are quaint, the streets are quiet and there is a neighborhood playhouse where we can go and hiss the villain!”
"How long since you’ve been back in Birmingham?” I asked, offering him a lamb chop.
"About five years,” he said. "But mother was up here last Thanksgiving. I’ve been with Max Fleischer two years. Before that I worked with Van Beuren on Aesop's Fables I started animating five years ago.”
“Have you always drawn?”
"I guess so. When I was a kid in school at Birmingham, they used to hop on me for sketching in my books!”
"Where did you study the art?”
“At the Art Students’ League here, and the Grand Central School of Art. I like this dessert—” changing the subject!
How do you animate your pictures?” I persisted.
“That’s a long story. Come meet the Grand Opera Singer, then I'll show you ‘round!”
Max Fleischer's offices are at 1600 Broadway. His factory—for that's just what the bee hive reminds me of—takes up three floors. Mr. Fleischer employs 250 people, mostly artists. Hicks Lokey is one of the chief animators.
"Meet the Opera Singer,” he said, when I arrived at his office. He held a pile of pencil drawings up for inspection. They were all sketches of one figure, a funny fat lady who looked like Mrs. Plush-Horse.
“She’s hard!” Hicks said. “I’m having trouble making her arms reach across her chest, when she trills.
"Is the sound worked out here?”
“No, we just have the music script.”
From what I picked up, I guess the whole thing, every story of Popeye, Betty Boop or any of the other animated cartoon characters which Max Fleischer controls start in the nut department. “There are six nuts,” Hicks said, “who work up ideas and wisecracks. They pass them on to us in manuscript form. We draw our conception of the characters in the rough!”
Then these sketches are given to assistants who work them out in detail. One batch of artists does nothing but ink in. Another flock colors the pictures and still another gang works on backgrounds. The result is a Betty Boop or Popeye reel!
"How many drawings do you make for picture?” I asked Hicks.
"I average about 1200,” he said. “It depends on the action. Sometimes the number runs higher!”
It takes about three months to do a full length film. Popeye, Sinbad and The Little King are in work now. "It's very funny,” said Hicks. “The Little King runs away from the Opera Singer's concert to a Betty Boop show!”
When Hicks stops drawing, he goes to a farm he’s bought near Southbury, Conn. “It’s a swell place,” he said. “Thirty-three acres. I haven’t built a house yet. But we just like to drive up and walk on land that belongs to us!”
A laurel wreath should go to Hicks Lokey for succeeding in a unique profession.
I have my eye on some more Birmingham boys who have made good in the big town. But—that’s for my next letter!
The Post mentioned him a number of times over successive years, featuring him again on its pages in October 27, 1948.
After graduating from Vanderbilt, Lokey worked for the Fables Studio owned by Amedee Van Beuren and run by Paul Terry until 1929. The 1930 Census for New York says he was an “independent” artist. Evidently he returned to the renamed Van Beuren Productions, then to the Fleischers; “Uncle Max” fired him in 1937 for his involvement in the strike against the studio. His next stop was at Walter Lantz in January 1938 and then Disney before entering the military during World War Two, enlisting July 20, 1941. Lokey returned to Disney after being discharged on February 16, 1947.
Three Alabamians Work On Disney Characters
Walt Disney, of course, is the father of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but a Birmingham man certainly is at least a stepfather of these and other animated characters that romp across the nation’s screen to delight movie-goers.
He’s Hicks Lokey, 43, Birmingham artist and son of Dr. and Mrs. C.W. Lokey, Sr., 4344 Cliff-rd.
Although he was born in Talladega, this veteran animator in the Disney studios first was acclaimed as an artist by a kindergarten teacher here.
This talent with pen and sketchpad was heartily supported by his parents and then by teachers at Paul Hayne High, where he studied for a year before going to Castle Heights Military Academy, Lebanon, Tenn.
STUDIES ART
But things military took second place to art and Hicks went to Vanderbilt and then to New York to study with the Art Students League.
Then his talents took him West [sic] to work with Paul Terry Studios and later to animate that plump little cartoon creature, Betty Boop. He did a stint with Universal Films, and in 1939 joined the Disney staff.
Two years later came Pearl Harbor and things military again took a place in Hicks’ life. A major in a tank destroyer outfit, he was among the first to fight on Anzio Beachhead.
Hospitalized at Metz, he was flown home from France and spent a year and a half in Northington General Hospital.
NEW FEATURES
Then back to California. There the man who’d worked on “Fantasia” and “Dumbo” got a new assignment.
He started animation jobs on the “Johnny Appleseed” sequence in “Melody Time.” This completed, he turned to another legendary character in Armericana, Ichabod Crane in the “Two Fabulous Characters” show.
Among Hicks’ most ardent admirers in Birmingham, and justly too, is his father, who is a well-known dental surgeon here.
Hicks, who doesn’t get home too often for a visit, can’t get very homesick in the Golden West, however, for working at the same studio with him are two other Alabamians.
One of them was born in Fairfield. She is Mrs. Beryl Ward Kemper, proficient artist in the Inking and Painting dep’t.
Mrs. Kemper, who puts the finishing touches on characters before they go to the camera, moved from Alabama with her parents when she was two years old.
The third Disney worker from Alabama is Mary Tebb, Montgomery native.
A supervisor in the Color Model dep’t., she helps identify thousands of tints and color shapes and keeps them standardized for use by artists.
She joined the studio in 1930, later took charge of the Inkink [sic] and Painting dep’t. girls, left the studio for several years and finally returned to her present position three years ago.
When Lokey left Disney, I don’t know, but one of the Birmingham papers revealed in 1957 he was animating TV commercials in Los Angeles, though it didn’t name the studio. The Cartoon Research site says he was working for Paul J. Fennell, which had the Keds account from U.S. Tire and also animated spots for Ipana Toothpaste by 1958. He settled in for a long run at Hanna-Barbera, being named in a full-page ad in Variety on June 23, 1960 by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera thanking staff for the Emmy win for The Huckleberry Hound Show that year. He must have been new there, as his name doesn’t appear on screen until the 1960-61 season.
His name continued to appear in credits at H-B through 1986 on Paw Paws, where a large number of veteran artists used what talents they could in limited animation, including Ed Love, Virgil Ross, Ken Muse, and director Art Davis and Bernie Wolf, who both went back to the silent era in New York. Wolf’s work also appeared in Fantasia. Lokey was honoured, with many other long-time animators, at the First Golden Awards in 1984.
In his spare time, he served a stint, starting in 1958, as president of the San Fernando Gun Club.
He died in 1990 at age 84.
Someone was good enough to post a sampling of his animation, which you can see below.
Interesting that Hicks Lokey still got some recognition in 1935! Even if one article has misinformation saying that Terry’s fables Studio was in the west coast instead of east. I also didn’t know that Mary Tebb was from Alabama as well! You learn something new everyday
ReplyDeleteThanks for this profile of Hicks Lokey as reported by his hometown newspaper. I always wondered how he spent the years between his stints at Disney and Hanna-Barbera; I guess there'd be little record of his work in commercials. Delighted to discover that Hicks animated the ecstatic paroxysms of Snuffles!
ReplyDeletePaul, I found a little bit on the Cartoon Research site which I've added to the post.
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