A Little More on Grant Simmons

Disney, Screen Gems, MGM with Tex Avery, Grantray-Lawrence with Ray Patterson, DePatie-Freleng. Grant Simmons has that on his list of animation accomplishments.

We profiled him in this post. In leafing through clippings, but there’s one we missed. We’ll give you some other tidbits, too.

A family history at Ancestry.com says Grant Alden Simmons was born Nov. 11, 1912 at Pima, Arizona and his early schooling was in Miami, Ariz. It claims the family moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from high school—at the age of 12! (June 25, 1924), though a 1943 article transcribed in the previous post says he attended high school in Glendale, which seems more likely. He attended Brigham Young University for two years, studying art.

But the history is missing something. Besides his third birthday party reported in the Graham (Ariz.) Guardian (games and refreshments). This story is from the weekly Lordsburg Liberal of Lordsburg, New Mexico, May 31, 1935.

JACK KERR TELLS OF THE MICKEY MOUSE CARTOON
Our own Jack Kerr, voted the most popular boy on the campus of Modesto College in California, published an article in the Modesto Collegian on the production of the famous Mickey Mouse cartoons, the production being so good that it was broadcast over the radio. Jack's very interesting article follows:
In the minds of the audiences who have seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon, the prevalent reaction is one of mere entertainment. But in the minds of the 250 skilled artists who make these cartoons is the thought of one and a half months of long, hard work, according to Grant Simmons, MJC student.
Simmons has attended several noted art schools, including the Otis Art in Institute at Los Angeles, and was at one time employed by Walt Disney in the making of one of his famous cartoons.
The studio is run on the same scale a large motion picture corporation, according to Simmons. If the artist is good enough he is given a three months' course in apprenticeship, which is held on the studio lot. The artist who has possibilities is given a contract for six months as an "in betweener," and from here he works up the ladder.
The animater plays the most important part in the making of a cartoon. He draws every first and fifth movement. The drawings are then sent to the "thirders," who draw every third movement, and from there the drawings continue on to the "in betweeners," who draw all other motions between the first, third, and fifth drawings.
From these rough sketches a trial picture is made, and if satisfactory the drawings are then sent to the inking department, where "inkers" trace all drawings on celluloid. These celluloid copies are then shown on a stationary background.
All of the songs heard in the cartoons are composed at the Disney studio.
It takes approximately 150,000 drawings to make a single Mickey Mouse moving picture cartoon.
Simmons, who is taking art under Jean Williams at MJC, is practising animation and plans to have a try-out with Disney this summer.

After working on Fantasia (1941), Simmons accepted an offer from Dave Fleischer to work for Screen Gems. The Film Daily’s review on Nov. 9, 1942 of The Dumbconscious Mind, a Phantasy cartoon, says “Reel is amusing and skillfully animated by Grant Simmons.”

The Hollywood correspondent on the Deseret News of Salt Lake City wrote on June 2, 1943:

Grant Simmons, animator at Columbia Cartoon Studios, gets screen credit on Columbia’s current cartoon “Something About A Soldier.” It’s good fun. Grant is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Simmons, formerly of Salt Lake. When I asked Grant if his three-year-old daughter Arlene is also an artist, he said: “She’d better not be.”

Simmons stayed at Screen Gems until it closed in November 1946 (cartoons with his name were put on hold then released over the next two years). His first credit at MGM in the Tex Avery unit was Li’l Tinker. Model sheets for the cartoon are dated June 5, 1946 and the short was released May 15, 1948.

During the ‘40s, he was also active in the Screen Cartoonists, Local 852 as a trustee.

MGM disbanded the Avery unit in March 1953. Variety of June 16, 1953 reported that two weeks earlier, Simmons and Ray Patterson, who bounced between the Hanna-Barbera unit and Avery’s crew, had been hired by Walter Lantz. While two Lantz cartoons bear their names, they did not stay long. On July 21, 1954, Variety said the two, and New York producer Robert Lawrence, had set up Grantray Animation, Inc., later Grantray-Lawrence. The intention was to make commercials, industrial films and theatricals. For a time, their creative supervisor was Gene Hazleton.

Simmons and Patterson’s company did some sub-contract work for television, notably on the debut episode of The Jetsons (1962). It also turned in footage for the features Gay Purree (1962) and Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964). Then came a big break. Broadcasting revealed in its Jan. 24, 1966 issue:

Comics on TV ● Producers Robert Lawrence and Stephen Krantz have acquired TV animation rights from Marvel Comics group for two of its comic characters, Spider-Man and Captain America. Production of a half-hour pilot film is now under way at Grantray-Lawrence Productions, Hollywood.

A million-dollar contract between Krantz Films and RKO General Broadcasting to put the Captain America half hours—three segments including Sub-Mariner, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and Iron Man—on five of its stations was announced in the Mar. 26, 1966 issue of Back Stage. By April 11, sales reached two million for 18 cities, according to Broadcasting magazine. Simmons was one of the directors.

As for Spider-Man, ABC decided by January 19, 1967 to add the half hour to its fall Saturday morning schedule (source, The Hollywood Reporter). There were expanded studios and staff. There were more TV commercials. It was all too much. Grantray-Lawrence closed in (I understand) 1968. Spidey was now animated in New York, though Simmons got a credit.

Simmons’ name appears in Daily Variety a final time on June 1, 1970. He was hired, along with familiar names Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Hawley Pratt, Gerry Chiniquy and Lars Calonius, to direct the Doctor Dolittle cartoon series for DePatie-Freleng.

Cancer claimed Simmons died on October 31, 1970 at age 57.

Screen Gems Spelled Backwards is "Lousy"

“Hey,” Cal Howard said to Dave Monahan, “Remember at Schlesinger’s when there was that gag with Daffy looking at billboards with parodies of advertising slogans? “Sure,” replied Dave. “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur. I got the story credit.” “Well, let’s use the same gag in this cartoon,” Cal suggested.

And so they did.

The cartoon was Topsy Turkey, released by Columbia/Screen Gems on Feb. 5, 1948.

The above conversation likely never took place, but it makes more sense than some of the stuff in this woebegone short.

The slogans are:



Old Gold cigarettes.



Lucky Strike cigarettes.



Pond's Cold Cream.



Serutan. Spelled backward, it's "Natures."

Cut to the titular turkey singing a send-up of the radio jingle penned for Pepsi by Alan Bradley Kent and Austen Herbert Croom Croom-Johnson. Some random frames.



Animator unknown.

Lucky Strike had another slogan, one that hung in the wall of American Tobacco president George W. Hill’s office that was incorporated into the advertising: “Quality of product is essential to continuing success.”

The Screen Gems studio should have listened to Mr. Hill. It was not a success because quality of product was hit-and-miss at best. The studio was closed by the time this short, with its wacky-ending-for-the-sake-of-a-wacky ending, went into release.

Jack Mather is the voice of the hunter, Dave Barry pulled out his underwater voice for the turkey, and my guess is Cal Howard is doing the moose, uh, mooses, uh, moose.

Blackboard Revue

Stick figures dancing on a blackboard are one of the highlights of Teacher’s Pests, a 1932 Water Lantz cartoon. Among the crew was Tex Avery.

Avery included stick figures in Porky’s Preview (1941), but another cartoon was based around them a year earlier.

Blackboard Revue was produced by Ub Iwerks for release by Columbia in 1940. The story itself is an old chestnut. Inanimate characters come to life at night, sing and dance, then when dawn breaks, they rush to become inanimate again.

The school teacher in the cartoon is an imitation of Tizzy Lish, who was a female impersonator on the Al Pearce radio show.



Some of the "students." And a dopey student.



A late student comes in and tells the teacher a tale of being stopped by Indians. Teacher: "Indians?! Were they Blackfeet?" Student: "How should I know? They were wearing shoes."



He jumped into an eagle's next, then tangled with the eagle.



He landed in front of a cave, and out stepped an enormous black bear. Teacher: "A cinammon bear?" Student: "How should I know what flavour?" (The Cinammon Bear was a kids radio show).



The student escapes from the bear by hoisting himself using the chalk numbers and letters on the blackboard.



The teacher believes none of it, and asks what he expects to be when he grows up. Now the cartoon switches gears and the student launches into a song, with the Rhythmettes singing behind Blanc. He wants to be an engineer. A girl student wants to be a movie star. Caricaturist Ben Shenkman gives us another approximation of Clark Gable. A hand-on-hip nancy boy wants to be a fireman.



"Well, shut my mouth!" This chalk drawing taps just like Bojangles Robinson.



The dullard student wants to lead a band. Everybody dances!



A bird on a tree outside sounds reveille. The drawings rush back to where they came from. The camera pulls away from the blackboard and the scene dissolves to outside the schoolhouse, which is how things started.

Ub Iwerks is the only artist credited, with both Eddie Kilfeather (music) and Joe De Nat (musical direction) getting credits. Among the staff at Cartoon Films in 1940 were Ed Benedict, Tom McKimson and Paul Fennell.

Rhapsody in Cement

Friz Freleng’s Rhapsody in Rivets (1941) was one of a number of cartoons to synchronise Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 to animated action on screen. It was nominated for an Oscar, but the cartoon based on the same music which won the award was the Tom and Jerry short The Cat Concerto (1947).

Mike Maltese (at least he received the rotating story credit) and Freleng must have worked closely to match gags to the timing of the music. I can’t explain it, but the humour is something that would come out a Freleng unit cartoon.

One routine involves a cement mixer acting as a cocktail shaker. After the “drink” is poured out, an arm appears from behind the mixer and plops a garnish on top. I cannot picture Chuck Jones (even with Maltese writing) using this kind of gag.



Correct me I’m wrong, but I believe the first cartoon to employ this piece of music was in 1929 in The Opry House, a Mickey Mouse short. You can also hear it (besides in the aforementioned cartoons) in various lengths in Fire Bugs (Fleischer, 1930), Bars and Stripes (Mintz/Columbia, 1931), The Candy House (Lantz, 1934), A Car-Tune Portrait (Fleischer, 1937), Farmyard Symphony (Disney, 1938), Dipsy Gypsy (George Pal/Paramount, 1941), Rhapsody Rabbit (Warners, 1946), Back Alley Oproar (Warners, 1948), The Magic Fluke (UPA/Columbia, 1949) and Convict Concerto (Lantz, 1954). I must be missing some.

(Yes, I know, The Simpsons, Roger Rabbit. I’m talking about theatrical animated shorts).

It was originally released Dec. 6, 1941; the Warners’ theatre in Fresno screened it that day. Spake an exhibitor to the Motion Picture Herald:

You might call this a partial burlesque of Fantasia. No matter what you call it, it is a very, very clever cartoon showing the building of a skyscraper to the Second Hungarian Rhapsody music. My audience laughed a great deal and praised it afterward.

Gil Turner received the rotating animator credit, chopped off when the cartoon was re-released in 1947. The backgrounds appear to be the work of Leonard Kester.

Wacky Stripper

Warner Bros. had cartoons titled Wacky Blackouts, Wacky Wild Life and The Wacky Worm, so why not a “wacky” cartoon at Screen Gems?

Wacky Wigwams (1942) has something else in common with Merrie Melodies. Besides being a spot-gag cartoon like Wacky Wild Life by Tex Avery, a variation on Avery’s stripper gag from Cross Country Detours (1940) found its way into the short.

“Back in the days of the covered wagon,” intones the narrator, “the territory which is now called the state of Oklahoma was known as the Cherokee Strip.” The panning camera stops on a helpful sign.



The camera resumes panning. Why look! It’s a stripping Cherokee!



The gag in Cross Country Detours ends with a card over the stripper’s body so we can’t see her naked. In Wacky Wigwams, guess what?



Even a better-looking print can't save this one.

Columbia put out another “wacky” cartoon—Wacky Quacky (1947) which featured a duck resembling Daffy engaging in Warners-type gags with a dumpy, bald hunter.

Cohwumbia Wabbit

Columbia/Screen Gems did pretty obvious knock-offs of Warner Bros. characters. There’s the Columbia version of Daffy Duck (Wacky Quacky), Sylvester (Up ‘n’ Atom) and you might include Tweety (Flippy the canary cartoons).

But that isn’t what we get in Mysto Fox (1946). The fox, cast as a magician in this cartoon, needs a rabbit to pull out of a hat. The crow decides to take the job by disguising himself as a rabbit. And who better to emulate to convince the fox he’s a rabbit than Bugs Bunny.

The door opens and the barely-disguised crow is seen munching a carrot and, in his usual voice, says “Uh, whadda know, Doc?”



He takes another bite out of the carrot.



Crows aren’t known for their appetite for carrots, so after chewing, he looks around to see if he’s being watched, and spits out the carrot off-camera (to the sound of a cowbell).



Publicity stories were already circulating at this time that Mel Blanc “was allergic” to carrots and spit them out at recording sessions. That was made-up. Blanc finally confessed he didn’t like the taste of them.

Of course, Blanc isn’t heard in this cartoon. The fox and crow are portrayed by Frank Graham (who also did voice work at Warners).

Screen Gems shorts can have bizarre endings that make no sense. This one has a bizarre ending that makes sense. The fox uses magic to turn the crow into an actual rabbit, then fires at him with a cannon as he hops into the distance to end the cartoon.



The fox deserves to win once in a while and he does in this cartoon.

The story was by Sid Marcus, who left for Warner Bros. when Columbia closed and wrote for the real Bugs Bunny. Chick Otterstrom and Ben Lloyd are the credited animators for director Bob Wickersham, with the score by Eddie Kilfeather.

The short was originally released Aug. 29, 1946.

A black-and-white print is the only one circulating on the internet. Considering how it was originally made in colour and re-released several years later, you’d think someone has a 35mm Technicolor print.