A number of studios inserted names of staff members in the backgrounds their cartoons. The frame below is no exception.
At first glance, you might think “Abe’s Sea Food” refers to animator Abe Levitow. This film was made in 1952 when Levitow was still at Warners. You can tell by the drawing style this is not a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Observe the “Hotel Foutz” sign. It refers to non-other than C. Moray Foutz.
Who?
Charles Moray Foutz’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times of December 11, 1998 tells us he was born in L.A. on January 24, 1917 and “His many years in the film industry actually began as a young boy of eight when he made the acquaintance of a neighbor by the name of Walt Disney. Moray and a handful of other neighborhood youngsters were involved in the very earliest Disney efforts which were then live action, rather than animation.”
After graduating from Beverly Hills High, he went to work for Disney. The obit doesn’t say what he did, but it does mention a later venture which is the subject of this post. The Business Screen Magazine production review for 1953 has this entry:
ACADEMY PRODUCTIONS
7934 Santa Monica Boulevard
Hollywood 46, California
Phone: Hollywood 9-5873
Date of Organization: 1951
OFFICERS AND DEPARTMENT HEADS
Edward L. Gershman and C. Moray Foutz, Partners
Arthur Babbitt, Supervising Director
William Lightfield, Production Manager
Services: Motion pictures and animation, both l6mm and 35mm.
Facilities: No data provided.
RECENT PRODUCTIONS AND SPONSORS
TITLES UNKNOWN but sponsor references provided include General Electric Company; McGraw Hill Book Co.; J. Walter Thompson Co.; Champion Spark Plug; and Pan American Airways.
Animation fans reading this don’t need to be told about Art Babbitt. Ed Gershman had been selling shoes after being fired at Disney before being picked up by UPA’s predecessor, Industrial Film and Poster Service, in 1942. He was business manager for UPA in 1951 when he was fired by company boss Steve Bosustow.
Public notices began appearing in the press in July 1951 announcing Foutz and Gershman were forming Academy Productions. However, the company was already in operation in 1949 as Billboard reported on Dec. 24 that year that Academy had begun shooting a $30,000 film for General Electric involving a diesel promotion, and that Foutz was the company president.
To add to the confusion, there were other companies with the same name; one distributed foreign films. Then on March 31, 1954, the Hollywood Reporter reported Academy was expanding to New York City, where the operation would be called Academy Pictures. (Gershman died in Nov. 1956 after a heart attack on a New York street).
How long Academy carried on isn’t clear. Broadcast Advertising of Oct. 23, 1961 mentioned Foutz was a production manager for Era Productions in Hollywood, which also employed former Disney and Lantz cartoon writer Milt Schaffer. Foutz ended his film career with Pacific Title Digital.
A film for General Electric is mentioned above. This is the short that contains the reference to Foutz. It is mostly live action, narrated by Marvin Miller (who had his own UPA connection), and is a plea to reduce traffic clogs by improving public transit. The kind that runs on electricity, no doubt. The film seems to have been a failure. Cities tore up streetcar lines. Traffic snarls are worse today. If you like early 1950s cars (like bullet-nosed Studebakers), you may like this film. Anything with Marvin Miller is worth listening to.
P.S. This will likely be the last Tralfaz Sunday Theatre post. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but the title was stolen from British Sunday Theatre, where aged English films were used to burn off time on KVOS-TV in Bellingham when I was a kid. I finally found the theme for the show. It was “Knightsbridge March” by Eric Coates.
I'm sure "Abe's Sea Food" refers to Abe Liss, a creative director at UPA and, later, at Tempo, Transfilm and Elektra (which he owned). Tempo folded very suddenly in 1954 when Walter Winchell accused co-founders David Hilberman and William Pomerance of being communists, and the company immediately lost every single one of its clients. Academy opened its New York studio in the space that Tempo had vacated.
ReplyDeleteTo his credit, Liss made a point of hiring blacklisted writers, like Maurice Rapf and Sam Moore, when no one else would. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in 1963 at the age of 47.
That would make sense. Was he employed at Academy on the west coast before New York?
DeleteI always am on the lookout for inside gags, and I am pretty sure of this one. In
ReplyDeleteAll a Bir-r-r-d, when you see mail in the background, I am pretty sure that one of the envelopes is being mailed from Chuck Jones to Friz Freleng.