Tendlar and Betty

In 1950, a local newspaper staff writer named Erma Bombeck told readers about alumni artists from Stivers High School in Dayton. First on the list was Milt Caniff. Second was an animator by the name of Dave Tendlar.

Tendlar’s career in animator stretched more than 50 years. He was cartooning a little before that. The Dayton Daily News of March 14, 1926 mentions he had been drawing for the student newspaper. A 1925 story mentions he was musically inclined, but didn’t state what instrument he played in the Stivers Orchestra.

His father was a tailor and by 1930 had moved the family to the Bronx, where the elder Tendlar was in the fur business. The Census that year lists Tendlar’s occupation as “cartoonist, movie.” He told the late Jim Korkis, quoted on Cartoon Research: “I started at Fleischer as a painter [in 1927]. It was opaqueing, but now they call it painting. I was there a very short time but they reorganized Fleischers so I went to Krazy Kat for a couple of years. And then I went back to Fleischer as an animator.” There was also a stop at the John McCrory studio in between.

Tendlar’s first screen credit was on the Betty Boop/Bimbo short Crazy-Town (copyrighted 1931 but released in 1932). He followed the Fleischers to and from Miami, where he was president of the Flippers social club (the club had a 40-page magazine called Flip. Oh, if copies survived!).

He was part of the staff when Fleischers became Famous. Evidently, he left the studio briefly, then returned, as the 1950 Census records him as “cartoonist, novelty films.” He was back at Famous that year. When Gene Deitch arrived at Terrytoons, Tendlar was hired to work for him. Near the end of the 1960s, he had moved west where he worked for Filmation and then Hanna-Barbera, where he was picked to train new animators, among other duties.

In 1936, the Dayton Herald announced he was coming to town to visit friends. The Daily News followed up with a story about him in its August 7, 1936 edition. He talks about the changes in Betty Boop's design.

Comic Movie Artist on Visit
David Tendlar, native of Dayton, but now one of the most interesting of the commercial artists in New York is home on a visit to family and former haunts. And with him is Mrs. Tendlar on her first visit.
Tendlar is the leading artist of a group of animators for the “Betty Boop” and “Pop-Eye” cartoons, seen in the movies. He spends a full working day either drawing one of the characters, depending upon which one is in production at the New York studios of Max Fleischer.

When interviewed at the Biltmore where he is domiciled while in Dayton, Tendlar, personable, jolly and interesting, said that the making of an animated cartoon such as those he works on was a great job. “An artist makes about four and one-half feet a day,” said he; “that is all he can do. The average visual length of a completed film is about six minutes on the screen. Ninety feet of film pass in one minute, so you see the cartoon is about 550 feet in length. Each move is a frame, and each frame is a separate shot for the photographer, and that makes more shots than one could figure up in a few moments.
“We sketch our figures on thin paper, and the first move is placed on another piece of paper, and so on and on. A bright electric light bulb is under our sketching desk, and in that way we watch the progress of the figure across the screen.
“The figures are then placed on transparent celluloid and colored, as the background is stationary for each scene, only the figures are changed.
“About 10,000 separate sketches are made for each cartoon,” and with that amazing statement Mr. Tendlar was asked to sketch the figures of the famous Betty and also Pop-Eye, Olive and Wimpy in the interviewers book which he did. Said the artist, “We have lots of fun with Pop-Eye, and we can make these figures do anything, fall down, hit each other, and indulge in all sorts of slap-stick comedy, hut it is different with Betty. She is always dignified. She must never fall, never be treated too roughly, and for that reason she is a very difficult character.”
Eagerly the idea to include Betty’s missing garter was made, but it seems that the censors preferred to have Betty eliminate that obsolete piece of apparel, and also to observe that the fashion trend was for an added inch or so on her skirt length, and so that is the reason why Betty flirts a longer skirt.
Tendlar went to Stivers high school, and was interested in art always. When quite a youngster he admits that he went in for cartooning and copying all sorts of pictures, and chose the wall paper (on the wall) for “bigger and broader fields.” Martha Schauer was the teacher of art at Stivers, and encouraged Tendler and Milton Caniff, also a Stivers student, when they sketched for the Stivers paper. Caniff lives in New York.
The first visit of Tendlar in some years is finding him visiting various places which he remembers most happily. For instance, Thursday afternoon was to be spent at Lakeside park and the Soldiers home. Tendlar wanted to see the lake, and the spots in Lakeside park in which he remembered having good times.
Max Fleischer owns Betty Boop, and has been making cartoons with this character for eight years, also with Pop-Eye, although the character is copyrighted by someone else.
Saturday Mr. and Mrs. Tendlar will complete a number of social gatherings which have feted them during the week of their visit in Dayton, and will then return to New York to start work on several technicolor cartoons.

Tendlar was 84 when he died in Los Angeles on September 8, 1993.