First, a Cartoon From Our Sponsor

Animated commercials in the 1950s are loads of fun. They have great designs, good writing and excellent voice acting. And they provided jobs to animators who had worked on theatrical cartoons.

How many of the actual commercials still exist is anyone’s guess. But thanks to publications like Television Age, we can view frame grabs of a whole pile of them. The trade magazine came out twice monthly and for several years featured articles about animated spots on TV.

Below are some of the ones found in the May 2, 1960 edition.



We’ve talked about some of these companies before. Animation, Inc. was run by Earl Klein, ex-layout man for Chuck Jones. Playhouse Pictures was, more or less, Bill Melendez` baby at one time. Pantomime Pictures later made the Roger Ramjet cartoons. Ray Patin was a former Warners and Disney animator. In New York, Pelican Films’ big creative guy was Jack Zander, Elektra Films was operated by Abe Liss, an ex-UPA artist, while HFH was owned by Howard Henkin, Ronald Fritz and Dan Hunn. And the Albuquerque company was, in 1960, creatively run by Dan Bessie, an ex-assistant animator at MGM.

Television Age included news blurbs about commercial or animation production, usually mentioning executives. The May 2nd issue has line of note: “Stephen Muffatti, formerly with Transfilm, Inc., has been appointed director of commercials for Terrytoons, Inc.” Mufatti went back much further, employed at the Fleischer studio and directing Cubby Bear cartoons for Van Beuren.

Even more interesting are the following two items: “Format Films has added several new staffers to work on the Popeye series being animated for King Features. Hanna-Barbera Productions is in negotiation with CBS-TV for a 90-minute animated Huckleberry Hound spectacular.” How far Hanna-Barbera got on the Huck special is anyone's guess, but you have to wonder where the studio found the staff to work on it. The Flintstones was in production, and that would have taken up much of the studio's efforts. The Format staff members added are not mentioned, but the April 12, 1960 edition of the Hollywood Reporter said Harris Steinbrook, Doris Collins and Ruben Apodaca (assistant animators), Evelyn Sherwood and Jane Phillipi (checkers) and Boris Gorelick (background) had been hired to work under Jack Kinney.

It also mentioned awards by the Art Directors’ Club of New York, with a gold medal going to an animated spot for Instant Butter-Nut coffee produced by Stan Freberg and awards of distinctive merit to Alex Anderson and Fred Crippen for a cartoon commercial for Rival Dog Food Co., produced by Pantomime, and an Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. spot by Saul Bass produced by Playhouse.

Here’s another strip of frames.



Since we’re passing along cartoon news from May 2, 1960, allow me to give you items from the pages of The Hollywood Reporter of that date:

Format Doing Nine Spots
Hebert Klynn, president of Format Films, has signed contracts to do a series of nine animated cartoon TV spots for the Reddi-Starch Co. Leo Salkin will direct the spots, and June Foray, Shepard Menkin and Paul Frees have been signed to record them.

Jay Ward Expands
Jay Ward Productions moves tomorrow to larger quarters at 8218 Sunset Blvd. Move is being made to accommodate a staff of 125 artists, who are preparing three new animated TV series.

Cartoon Strip For TV
New York.—Affiliated Television Productions has acquired rights to the cartoon strip “There Oughta Be a Law” from the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, syndicated in newspapers in over 180 markets. It will be made into a half-hour animated series for national sponsorship.

Among the Ward projects was Super Chicken, which finally became part of the George of the Jungle series toward the end of the decade. Format was still a year away from getting The Alvin Show on TV while the Oughta project was one of a number which was either never made or never sold.