They Animated Cigarettes

It’s safe to say anyone reading this grew up watching old theatrical cartoons. There was a time when anything outside of Disney was pretty much ignored until we were blessed with animation researchers who started building a base of fact and knowledge that, about four decades later, is practically taken for granted. It seems inconceivable today that people had to be told a person named Arthur Q. Bryan voiced a cartoon character.

There has been an awful lot of digging over the years. More digging remains. With the passage of time, animation history becomes more difficult to research.

One area is animated television commercials. Very little is known about the studios and animators who made the majority of them. The lack of credits is a factor. Adding confusion is an advertiser or its agency would not use the same studio for all its spots, or would hire a different studio the following year, maybe on the other side of the country.

Trade magazines of the 1950s and 1960s can be somewhat helpful. Some animated spots were subjects of feature stories. Some were advertised with frames showing what they looked like. Some won awards and the trades would name the studio, the director and maybe even the designer.

Unfortunately, the lack of information results in educated guesses which may not be correct. A good example is the stop-motion commercials for American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes. The assumption by some is they were made at the Jam Handy studio in Detroit. After all, Jam Handy did some fine stop-motion work, and objects in some of its industrial shorts did some high-stepping like the cigarettes.

It turns out Jam Handy had nothing to do with the original Lucky Strike marching cigarette commercials that appeared on TV in 1948. We have the trade magazines to thank for providing some details. The spots were the product of Sarra, Inc. out of New York.

Sarra was an extremely active producer. It took out trade ads showing frames from its spots. Some were live action. Some were animated. Who animated for the studio, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps Devon Baxter will eventually turn up information in the animation union local’s newsletter (if they were a union shop). For now, let’s talk about its marching cigarettes.

This story and poor-quality photo (and incorrect spelling of the announcers’ names) come from the May 1948 edition of Business Screen magazine.

Sarra Television Commercials Set a Standard
♦ SARRA, Inc. has included among their recent releases the first of a series of black and white third dimensional animated film commercials, especially prepared for television, for the American Tobacco Company, together with a production story, filmed at Willow Run, for the Kaiser-Frazer Car Company.
The Kaiser-Frazer spot, produced by Cullen Landis, Director of Motion Pictures for Sarra, has been appearing on Sunday evenings as a commercial announcement on the K-F sponsored Major Bowes Amateur Hour over WABD, New York [the Du Mont flagship station].
The Lucky Strike commercial, produced in Sarra’s New York studio, represents the coordinated efforts of John Boor, of American Tobacco, John Freese, of Foote Cone & Belding, Valentino Sarra and Bob Jenness, who is creating and directing the program for the Sarra organization.
Squads of marching Lucky Strike cigarettes burst from the background of a tobacco leaf and perform intricate maneuvers to the tune of a snappy martial air with the familiar announcements of Basil Rysdale and Andre Barouch in the background.
Extensive tests were conducted by Valentino Sarra and Director Bob Jenness for lighting effects and background created expressly for the video medium. For example, a rough, contrasty background of finely corrugated wood was discovered to be far superior to a neutral shade of board or cork. As the video receiver frame usually contains a narrower angle of view than the film frame being televised, action in the Lucky commercials is confined to center portions of the frame during photography. Extra footage is photographed to allow for fades and smooth transitions at the beginning and end of the show.
The Lucky Strike commercials have been used many times on New York stations as well as 17 other stations throughout the country,
(All Lucky Strike television activity has recently been assigned to N, W. Ayer & Co.)
Variety Accolade to Luckies
♦ VARIETY commenting recently on a Lucky Strike television show (WABD—New York) said that the commercial was one of the best parts of the program. Other video critics have praised Luckies for taking the lead in smart visual selling.

Television Age of November 1953 profiled Sarra in a feature story. It pointed out the 48-second animation and stop-motion opening for the Lucky Strike Hit Parade was made in 1948 at a cost of $9,500 and was used for four years.

It also revealed something about two of the creative people at the studio, names you likely don’t know.

Chief creative man in the firm’s tv setup is Rex Cox, who has been with Sarra for six years following an 11year stretch as an animator and story director for Walt Disney. For every production Rex works with a story board which he describes as being “a series of rough sketches indicating the action and staging of a film.” Sarra does no work on speculation. The fee for submitting a story board is from $350 to $500.

When stop-motion is required, tv production chief, Bob Jenness, credited with 18 years of experience in the field with animators like George Pal and Charles Mintz, steps in. He defines his specialty as “animation done in three dimension.” The basic technique is the same as in animation except models instead of drawings are used. For each job Jenness must create different devices—called jigs—by which he controls the movements of the models and props.

At the time, Sarra was responsible for the animated and live-action opening “Come see, come save at A & P” for Paris and Peart, Stopette’s live and stop-motion “Poof ... there goes perspiration” for Earle Ludgin and Pabst’s animation and stop-motion “What’ll you have?” spots for Warwick & Legler. We caution the article does not state exactly which footage it is referring to. Claiming the “Poof!” opening on What’s My Line? is what it mentioned is only speculation, unless further information is made available, though another article reveals Sarra made commercials for a powder that appeared during the show. Fact A + Fact B don’t always equal Fact C. To the right are some frames of some of the animated commercials made by Sarra in the 1950s; the top one is for something named Musterole.

There is a post-script to the story involving someone stop-motion fans should be familiar with. Ray Harryhausen sued Sarra in 1957, claiming he brought the stop-motion cigarette march idea to the company and it was rejected. The next thing he knew, there it was on television. If you want more information, a transcript of the testimony can be found here.