Art Davis and His Real People

Art Davis gets a thumbs-up from me as a director at Warner Bros.

What Makes Daffy Duck? is a great cartoon by any standard; I really enjoy his unit’s boisterous, lippy version of Daffy. Porky Pig is great fun in his hands, especially in Bye Bye Bluebeard. He gave us the Goofy Gophers (vs. the Shakespearean dog). And though his one Bugs Bunny short, Bowery Bugs, has a different feel to it than Bugs cartoons from the other units, it’s a nice little comedy.

I won’t go into a long dissertation about Davis’ directorial work at Warners. Others have done it. And for the ultimate profile of Davis, Devon Baxter has accomplished that in this Cartoon Research piece. This post is prompted solely because I stumbled across a clipping about him in the Saturday, Feb. 8, 1930 edition of the Yonkers Herald. I’m not sure if it’s been re-printed anywhere, so I’ll do it here. I don’t know how old the picture of Davis is; I don’t think he had a lot of hair in 1930.

LOCAL CARTOONIST OFF FOR HOLLYWOOD
Arthur Davis, a native this city, who formerly resided at 155 Hawthorne Avenue, is leaving on Monday [Feb. 10] For Hollywood, Calif., where he will continue drawing animated cartoons for the screen. His present series of "Krazy Kat” cartoon are well-known to movie, audiences throughout the country. Previously Mr. Davis has animated "Mutt and Jeff,” "Out of the Inkwell," and “Song Cartoons," which have been extremely popular.
Mr. Davis left his studies at the Yonkers High School to enter the animated cartoon profession, and during his nine years' affiliation with the industry has been very successful. A brother, Emanuel Davis, is also an animated cartoonist, now with "Aesop's Fables" studio. Mr. Davis is the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. S. Davis, of 199 Hawthorne Avenue, this city. In 1928 he married Miss Ray Kessler at New York City, and they have one child, Herbert. His wife and child will accompany him to the coast where they will make their home.

Art was a 15-year-old honours student at Yonkers High School when this art of his was published in the Herald on January 28, 1921. He won $10 for this drawing and $4 for another drawing he submitted. Davis was musically inclined, with the Herald mentioning that year he was a first violinist in the school's orchestra. Besides finding his way into the animation business, Davis was the official artist of the Chester Club of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, drawing caricatures of members in the group’s programmes as well as “novelty placards.” He showed one of his animated cartoons at a 1928 club banquet.

We'll have more about his animation career below, but let us mention Davis was let go at the former Mintz studio when management found Bob Wickersham would direct for less than what Art was being paid. After a few months, he took a job animating at Warners in 1942 for $70 a week; he had been making between $300 and $400 at Columbia.

The Warner Club News of June 1945 mentioned Davis had taken over the Clampett unit, with George Hill and Hubie Karp writing for him, and their first cartoon was Bacall to Arms; it had been started by Clampett. Karp never got screen credit at Warners. The January 1946 Club News reveals Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner were now writing for Davis.

Davis was the last director hired so when Ed Selzer decided to go to three units from four, Davis’ unit was disbanded. Davis was picked up as an animator by Friz Freleng; the two had worked together in New York. He stayed until 1960 when he was asked to be let out of his contract because he felt the studio broke a promise to let him head a commercial unit. Warren Foster got him in at Hanna-Barbera, where he animated some cartoons, including El Kabong, Jr., then became a story director. His last cartoon short made directly for Warner Bros. was Quackodile Tears (1962), on a freelance basis for Friz.

When animation historians sprouted up with revolutionary research that’s now considered basic by cartoon fans who weren’t alive back then, the public press picked up on it, and pretty soon the papers had feature interviews with Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett. But what of poor Art Davis, the director of the most dispensable unit at Warner Bros.?
It turns out one paper did interview him. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Sunday entertainment section on July 3, 1994 published this article.

Golden animator director gave character to cartoons
“What brings you here laughing boy?” Daffy Duck to murderous wolf in 1948 "What Makes Daffy Duck"
By Martin Renzhofer
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
At the time, Art Davis wasn't aware he was doing anything more than smacking America's funny bone.
"The object was to make them funny," the 90-year-old animator said. "So we devised all sorts of ways to do that."
What Davis did was contribute to the golden age of cartoons. Although not as well known as his contemporaries—Bob McKimson, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery or Chuck Jones—Davis was an important cog in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes machine.
From 1935 to 1955, directors and animators crafted hundreds of cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and others.
The animators fleshed out their characters, giving them lasting influence around the world.
Bugs Bunny is "any wise guy from Brooklyn, while Daffy is a take-charge guy who doesn't know what's going on—and it doesn't matter. Characters were taken from certain types of people," Davis said. "Personalities had a lot to do with it. Despite the screwball things we had them do, they were real people."
Through the years, Davis directed 22 Warner cartoon shorts and as an animator contributed to many others, including the 1958 Academy Award-winner for short subject, "Knighty Knight Bugs."
Davis' "real people" still inhabit Saturday-morning and weekday-afternoon TV.
While he was creating the characters, it never dawned on Davis that he would be part of animation history. "You don't think of those things when you're doing it,” Davis said in his Salt Lake home. “It was like any other job—you have to pay the rent.
“I always liked the idea of being an animator. It’s been my life, ever since I was a kid."
Davis doesn't exaggerate. He began his career in the silent-film era and concluded it in glorious sound and color with the Pink Panther.
Born in Yonkers, N.Y., Davis, at 16, began his career as an errand boy for the Jefferson Film Corp. His older brother Mannie already worked for Jefferson, producer of "Mutt & Jeff" silent shorts.
Davis quickly became involved in the creative side of production, erasing pencil lines from inked drawings. Artists drew the cartoon and inkers added tone and shade.
"In those days," Davis said, "no celluloid [large clear plastic frames used in filmmaking] was used. We photographed the drawings."
Once he moved to the Fleischer studio in the early 1920s, Davis' career as an animator officially began. Max and Dave Fleischer were responsible for "Koko the Clown'' and "Out of the Inkwell," including the sing-along silent cartoon shorts with a bouncing ball.
Davis was the bouncing ball.
"The bouncing ball was a round thumbtack on a black stick," he said. "These were shot live action. I used to bounce the ball and keep time, singing with a ukulele."
During these early days, Davis met another struggling animator—Walt Disney. He has few regrets in life, but one is not accepting Disney's offer of work.
“Three times he asked me," said Davis. "But I was under contract to someone else. They would always give me more money. Most of us didn't have the foresight that Disney had."
As a 22-year-old, Davis was doing well, earning $85 a week.
"My friends thought I was a rich man, considering that married men were making $20 a week, which was good money in those days."
In 1928, Davis joined the Charles Mintz Studio, and for the next decade was a one-man crew: story man, layout artist, animator and director.
Davis’ style began to emerge. The pace of his cartoons became fast and furious with characters that barely stay in control.
"Some of those old cartoons look primitive," Davis said. "We sent through periods where we struggled to make them better."
He concentrated on improving the depth of field in cartoons, striving for a three-dimensional look rather than having characters merely move from left to right on the screen.
Davis became a perfectionist.
"I like to wind things up correctly so that everything has a conclusion," he said. "Everything has a reason. It concludes itself in a logical manner so it doesn't leave the audience hanging."
During his time with Mintz, Davis ran into a bit of trouble with the Hays Office, an organization created in the 1930s to keep film entertainment "wholesome."
A Davis creation, a cartoon titled "Babes at Sea," had naked babies.
"King Neptune frolicks with naked babies swimming in schools," said Davis. "The Hays Office said we had to put pants on them. How do you do that?"
So Davis erased the belly buttons and drew a line around their waists for pants.
Davis also created "The Early Bird and the Worm," "The Foolish Bunny," "Mr Elephant Goes to Town" and "The Way of All Pests."
Cutbacks eventually cost Davis his job at Mintz, which was purchased by Columbia in the mid-1930s.
So Davis tried his hand at business. He purchased a liquor store with his brother Phil, who died six months later.
"I didn't do well," he said. "I was never a businessman and I didn't like what I got into after I got into it. I took a beating when I sold it. You had to be a crook to be a good businessman, and I just couldn't take it."
Davis went to work as an animator for Warner Bros. in 1941. It wasn't a completely happy experience. Davis was hired to replace top Warner Bros. animator Bob Clampett as a unit director and never got over the feeling of being the odd man out.
But Davis was part of the world’s largest cartoon industry, which included four directors and hundreds of layout artists and animators. The characters they created still have a lasting effect. Among Davis titles are "Bowery Bugs," "The Goofy Gophers," “Mexican Joyride," “Quackodile Tears" featuring Daffy Duck and "Odor of the Day" featuring Pepe le Pew.
Eventually, his unit was disbanded, but he continued as an animator until leaving in the early 1950s. The production company was thinking of expanding into television and reactivating Davis' crew.
But the plan fell through.
“They were against TV," Davis said. "They were afraid of it. They didn't know how it was going to work out."
Ironically, it is television that has kept two generations of cartoon-watchers laughing. And Davis continued contributing to that by working with DePatie-Freleng and then Hanna-Barbera, giving the same attention to Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the Pink Panther that he gave Bugs Daffy and Porky.
These days, Davis admires the new computer-generated animation. He loves the new Disney animated films and can't stand the thought of MTV's "Beavis and Butt-head."
“It's a monstrosity," he said, adding that some of today's TV cartoonists are setting back the art form of animation instead of taking it forward.
"We were trying to improve animation. We made a career of our own desires to make entertainment.”

Davis died at the age of 94.

While he wasn’t one of Warners’ major directors, he did his best work there. It’s a shame financial constraints killed his unit as we can only guess how much more he had to offer.