“Paul Terry took an active part in the story work not only by feeding his own gags to the stories but by a sort of assault-tactic on the story department,” recalled writer Izzy Klein about his former employer.
In the December 1973 edition of Cartoonist Profiles, he said: “During my first two weeks Terry seemed to be a quiet soul, but soon enough his crash method of forcing a story out every two weeks became evident. He considered himself Mr. Story Department for Terrytoons, from whom all ideas originated. Other people’s ideas were merely fillers. Nevertheless, he expected and demanded support from the ‘backfield.’”
If anyone disbelieves Klein’s opinion, they need look no further than the April 1945 edition of New Dynamo magazine. This was an internal publication of 20th Century Fox, which released Terrytoons until the studio stopped making them. The issue features a rather lengthy feature story on Terry, how his studio made cartoons, and an overview of what exhibitors were getting in the current season and would be available at film exchanges in the next season.
It’s worth reading for its, at-times, almost poetic recitation of superlatives about Terry and his product that Fox was distributing. About the studio, it states:
The keystone of the structure is its President. His personal and professional history and temperament have been the core around which this cohesive and efficient organization could readily form and absorb enough of the Terry character to compose a unified, consistent and smoothly-working mechanism.
Due to the length, we won’t reprint the full article. It is available for your pleasure at the handy Archive.org site (off-line until further notice). Instead of the portion about Terry himself, we’ll transcribe the portion about how Terrytoons were made. Note what is said about stories.
Thirty years after his venturesome plunge into the animated cartoon arena, and, despite the many strenuous intervening years, expended in inspiring and superintending successful production in a highly competitive field, Paul Terry today shows few signs of wear and tear. Most people at first sight would estimate his age as being ten years less than it actually is.
This is because he has long since made the virtually perfect adjustment between the ideals and fancies of the creative artist, and the practical thought-processes of the executive, that is so essential to the role he has to play in the world.
To constitute the driving and controlling force of an organization like Terrytoons, as he does, it is necessary first for Mr. Terry to be an originator, a creator. This faculty, of course, had to be born in him, and it was developed by the art education of his very early years, by his work as a newspaper artist and cartoonist, and still more rapidly and fully by the flowering of his imagination and technical abilities after he had plunged into the swift and turbulent stream of animated cartoon work and found himself thoroughly at home there.
Acting on his life-long belief that one must "take in" in order to "give out," Mr. Terry reinforced his natural talents and his training by studiously delving, over a long period of years, into the fictional lore of all nations. Beginning with Aesop, and completely absorbing every recorded word that the ancient genius ever uttered, he stored his mind with the narrative masterpieces of thousands of years and of every country on the globe.
From this rich and inexhaustible stock of themes, characters, situations, backgrounds and miscellaneous ideas, Mr. Terry, adding the indispensable ingredient of original conception, distills the concrete inspiration which starts the machinery rolling on the production of another cartoon.
Over a course of many years, Paul Terry has assembled a staff of executives and artists, most of them long known to him, who can work with each other and with him harmoniously and with the highest degree of effectiveness. To the specialized experts of the Story Department he hands the theme and the principal ideas of the new cartoon-to-be, and they shape it in elaborate detail, over a period of two weeks, in sketch form. Backgrounds are visualized, the successive situations are worked out so as to tell the story in the most forceful and cogent form, the "gags," which are to bring the laughs from the audiences, are conceived and inserted in the places where they will be most effective, and the dialogue completed down to the carefully-selected last word.
Even sound effects are calculated with care and precision. A staff of talented and experienced scenarists, headed by John Foster, who has been a noted Story Director for many years, handles this end of the work. Mr. Terry, however, keeps his eye on this vital task and frequently alters the course of the story for the better, or suggests new situations, "gags," or bits of dialogue to sharpen it up.
The completed story consists of hundreds of sketches, depicting, in order, the various scenes that have been carefully knit together — their backgrounds and their action — and a script describing all the action in detail, with the dialogue and sound effects.
One of the picture directors, who are assigned pictures in turn, takes over the story in this form, and he cooperates with the musical director, Philip Scheib, in "timing" all the action in the cartoon. This is a long and involved task, in which every movement of the characters is measured in fractions of a second, and the exact time consumed for each is set down in the music sheets, for the accompanying music, which is so important, must synchronize exactly with the action of the figures.
Mr. Scheib, a musical director of wide reputation over a long period of years, next takes charge of the music sheets. He composes a score calculated to accompany and illustrate all the action throughout the picture, indicate the changing moods, and emphasize the high points. The music must stimulate and excite the listener in one place, uplift him in another, soothe or charm him in other passages. The Music Department is one in which Terrytoons particularly excel.
The score, with sound effects and dialogue, is recorded at the 20th Century-Fox Sound Studio in New York, under the supervision of Mr. Scheib and the picture director, with the assistance of an orchestra and various actors and singers who have specialized in this form of work.
The director in charge of the picture now takes over the music sheets, where the score as well as the action, dialogue and sound effects have been set down in finished form. He spreads the multitudinous sketches delineating the story, on a great board filling one wall of his office, and gets down to work. The director must be a craftsman of long experience and exceptional talent, familiar with all departments of animated cartoon work, as well as a forceful executive. He now plans, in detail, the execution of all the scenes in the picture, and calls in the layout men to make careful drawings of characters, key action attitudes, and backgrounds.
The next step is for the director to hand out the scenes of the picture, which may be anywhere from 45 to 70 in number, to the various animators, with the layouts for each scene and detailed instructions as to how it is to be treated to achieve the best effects in respect to action and humor. Twenty animators and as many "in-betweeners" work for a month, or longer, completing the scenes for each cartoon. Nine or ten thousand drawings in elaborate, smoothly-coordinated sequence, are necessary to depict in finished fashion the action of the average Terrytoon.
The drawings are next taken to the Tracing and Painting Department, where about 50 young artists, most of them girls, carefully trace the drawings on to celluloid sheets, and paint in the variegated colors in which the characters appear.
All this time, the Background Department has been working up, in full color, charming, whimsical, dramatic or fantastic settings (whichever may be called for) from the drawings furnished by the layout men. The Background Department is staffed by outstanding landscape artists, whose distinctive work is one of the superior features of Terrytoons, adding much to the vividness and charm of the pictures.
The thousands of celluloid sheets, with the action drawings traced and painted on them, are now taken to the Camera Department, where seven great modem color cameras dominate a full equipment of every mechanical device known to the improved production of animated cartoons. Scene by scene, the backgrounds are fitted under the vertical cameras, and on them are laid the celluloids depicting the action, three or four at a time. This process continues under the various cameras until the entire cartoon is photographed.
The picture has now been completely recorded on a long roll of film, and this is dispatched to Hollywood by airplane, printed in Technicolor, and the prints swiftly returned by plane to the New Rochelle main office of Terrytoons. There the picture is projected with all executives and workers present, when criticism is invited and changes are made if found necessary. Changes, however, are actually infrequent in the case of these cartoons, as every operation involved in their creation has been executed with the utmost care, from the sketching of the first idea to the final click of the camera in the last scene.
This, in brief, is the story of the evolution of a Terrytoon. Many details of the process have been omitted, and whole departments vital to the conduct of the business have been overlooked. However, the foregoing is an adequate summary of the most important moves in the production of a modern animated cartoon of the first order, calculated to please, thrill and bring the boon of happy laughter to millions of followers.
Terry started closing a deal in late 1955 to sell his studio to CBS. Terrytoons continued to be made for about another 15 years. Say what you will about him, but Paul Terry was an animation pioneer and produced cartoons popular with more than one generation.
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