George Cannata

One of the crimes of the Golden Age of Animation is a decision by someone at Warner Bros. to shear off the original credits of a cartoon when re-releasing it as a Blue Ribbon (this policy was later changed). Unless original prints or title cards turn up, we don’t know who got animation or story credits. A great example is From Hand to Mouse, where a title card turned up and the credited animator is Ray Patin! As far as anyone knows, it’s the only time he was credited at Warners.

On rare occasion, a pre-Blue Ribbon credit is mentioned in a review in a trade publication. To the right, you see Showman’s Trade Review’s look at The Stupid Cupid in its Dec. 30, 1944 edition. It tells us the animator is George Cannata, whose name doesn’t appear on the Blue Ribbon release of Sept. 1, 1951.¹

Cannata was only credited on one other Warners cartoon (that we know of), and that’s The Swooner Crooner, also released in 1944.

If there’s anyone who is puzzle in the Golden Age of Animation, it’s George Cannata. That’s because his son, George Baldwin Cannata, went into animation and publications also refer to HIM as George Cannata, as well as George Cannata, Jr. So which one is which? That’s the puzzling part.

This post may gum up things even more. I can’t guarantee everything here is correct; I suspect others have looked into this and can provide corrections and insight in the comments section. We’re pretty positive we have the right guy through World War Two.

George Henry Cannata was born in Union City, N.J. on July 8, 1908 to Alexander and Margerite Cannata. His father was an insurance salesman. In 1910, George and his mother lived with her parents in Weehauken then, in 1920, the family resided in Cliffside Park, N.J. In 1926, the Cannatas were in Glens Falls, N.Y.; George was working with his father in the local Met Life office.² That’s also the year he got into animation, as he was in town from New York for the Christmas holidays and would be making “a trip to the movie colony in California to do special film work.”³



John Canemaker’s book on Felix the Cat contains the photo above of the staff of the Pat Sullivan studio, circa 1926. Cannata is the little guy way in the back.



This 1928 photo from the roof of the Sullivan studio gives you a better shot of Cannata. He is second from the left, between Rudy Zamora and Hal Walker (Al Eugster and Tom Byrne are to the right).

Cannata was rooming in a place on West 143rd Street in Manhattan in 1930⁴ and working for Max and Dave Fleischer. Shamus Culhane, in his book Talking Animals and Other People, states that when most of the animators left in May 1930, Cannata and others were suddenly promoted to temporary animators and told they would get permanent jobs depending on how well they did on Swing You Sinners. “Even cocky little George Cannata was subdued,” Culhane observed, and went on to say:

George Cannata was a problem both for me and [Bill] Gilmartin, the production manager. Barely five feet tall, he was like so many short men: feisty and defensive. Apparently he had been somewhat neglected as a child. According to George, his mother had been Woodrow Wilson’s secretary, and it seems she had little time for George during his childhood; at least, that was George’s version of his background.
He always wore a hat while working, because newspaper cartoonists did that, and George thought of himself as a very serious cartoonist. He had snappy drawing style and could easily have created a comic strip except for one thing—George was indolent.
Anyone who was late more than once a week received a little printed card from Max. There was a space for comments from Max, and another area for the reason for lateness. One time, Max sent George a card and wrote in his space, “Slipping?” George’s response was, “No, sleeping.”

Cannata got a screen credit on one Fleischer short, the Screen Song I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, copyright 1930 but released in Feb. 1931. He spent the 1930s back and forth between both coasts. Cannata was hired by Walter Lantz and animated the Pooch the Pub cartoons The Athlete (Aug. 1932), The Butcher Boy (Sept. 1932), The Crowd Snores (Oct. 1932), Cats and Dogs (Dec. 1932) and The Merry Dog (Jan. 1933).⁵

Cannata married M. Dorothy Baldwin in Los Angeles on June 25, 1932.⁶ Daughter Dolores was born in California in 1933, but George Jr. was born in New York City after the family returned there by 1935.



The photo above from the Motion Picture Herald of April 11, 1936 shows the newly-expanded staff of Terry-Toons.⁷ Cannata is in the front, second from the left.⁸

When Cannata returned to the West Coast is unclear. His WW2 Draft card registered on Oct. 16, 1940 says he was employed at the Walt Disney studio in Burbank; the Census that year said he had only completed the first grade of high school. He and Dorothy are found on Voters Lists in the Los Angeles area from 1942 to 1950.

Cannata animated Baggage Buster with Goofy (Apr. 18, 1941), then after his stint at Warners worked on cartoons at Famous Studios in New York—Just Curious (Sept. 1944), Gabriel Church Kitten (Dec. 1944) and Magicalulu (Mar. 1945).⁵

Cannata’s name can be found on the credits of the John Sutherland Productions auto-of-the-future film Your Safety First, the studio’s great oil industry-sponsored outer space cartoon Destination Earth, Working Dollars (all 1956) and The Story of Creative Capital (1957, screen credit to the right).

Things start to get a little murky now. Business Screen Magazine of May 15, 1958 reports:

George Cannata has joined Robert Lawrence Productions as Storyman and Creative Designer. He most recently was employed with Ray Patin Productions in Hollywood and prior to that was with TV Spots. He studied art at the Instatuto Allende in Mexico and graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute in California. His paintings have been exhibited on several occasions at the Los Angeles Art Museum.

Is this Cannata or his son, who would be about 22 at this time? The Lawrence operation was based in New York and, as mentioned above, there’s no indication Cannata ever got past the first grade of high school. The New York Cannata was cited in 1959 at the International Advertising Film Festival at Cannes for designing a Lestoil commercial.⁹ He also co-designed a pilot for a half-hour animated kid series for Lawrence called “Toy Box Time” with animation by Grim Natwick, and voices by Sid Raymond and John Astin.¹⁰ I’m not convinced this is Cannata, Sr.

Back Stage of April 6, 1962, reports George Cannata was an employee of the fairly-new Ed Graham Productions in New York. That’s Jr., as the same trade paper about a year later gives the suffix, stating he was now working for Pelican Films.¹¹ Ed Graham produced the Linus the Lionhearted series, where Jr. was a designer. The younger Cannata had got his start at MGM¹² and he and his wife Agnes ended up at Elektra Film Productions in New York,¹³ where he won an award for the famous animated “Talking Stomach” commercial for Alka Seltzer.¹⁴

Meanwhile, George Cannata is credited on the 1967 Spiderman TV cartoons. These were made at Grantray-Lawrence in Los Angeles. As George Jr. was on the East Coast at the time, it seems this was George, Sr. And in 1974, Cannata is called the head of FilmFair’s Animation department. He designed an Eastern Airlines commercial for Gus Jekel’s company using Disney characters.¹⁵ Jr. was still in New York¹⁶ so this, again, is George, Sr. And his name appears on various series at Hanna-Barbera along with other old-timers who had worked on far better things in years past.

George Henry Cannata died in Los Angeles on February 8, 1978. There was no newspaper obituary.

---

1 The US government's Copyright Catalog for that year only lists director Frank Tashlin, musical director Carl Stalling and writer Warren Foster^↩
2 Glens Falls Post-Star, June 28, 1926^↩
3 Glens Falls Post-Star, Dec. 27, 1926^↩
4 1930 U.S. Government Census^↩
5 The Animated Film Encyclopedia, Graham Webb, 2nd ed., McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011^↩
6 New York records show the marriage license was granted in that state>^↩
7 Paul Terry is wearing glasses, front and centre, between animator Jerry Shields and musical director Phil Scheib^↩
8 This is before Van Beuren closed in June that year, so Carlo Vinci, Dan Gordon, Joe Barbera and others from that studio are not in the photo^↩
9 Television Age, May 16, 1960^↩
10 Variety, July 13, 1960^↩
11 Back Stage, March 29, 1963^↩
12 Back Stage, Dec. 8, 1978^↩
13 Back Stage, Sep. 29, 1967^↩
14 Back Stage, Apr. 12, 1968^↩
15 Back Stage, Jan. 11, 1974^↩
16 Back Stage, Dec. 1, 1973^↩

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Match Your Mood

The ‘60s were, well, the ‘60s.

The times, they are a-changin,’ sang some fellow through his nose. Certainly no one would mistake the pop culture clichés of 1969 with those of 1959. And certainly, ad agency execs who, at one time, liked Ike suddenly had to switch gears and be With It.

It meant advertising reflected kind of an ersatz, watered-down version of the late ‘60s. After all, ad agency salesmen were never really With It.

But that isn’t necessarily a bummer.

Here’s a fun example of something made in the late ‘60s that borrows chunks of the culture to try to appeal to the Flower Power generation.

Match Your Mood is a plotless industrial film made for Westinghouse by Jam Handy out of Detroit. It opens with a model in a mod outfit making her through the woods, flouncing her hair, on her way to feed some Canada geese in a placid lake.

But what does it all mean? What are the geese? Are they geese? Are they representative of America’s neighbours to the north, a placid nation while America is ripped in two by the turmoil of assassinations, student unrest and the Vietnam War?

Yes, reading something profound into nothing was the ‘60s.

Anyway, the film switches to still photos of furniture and decorations around the kitchen and living room. Anyone growing up back then will recognise walnut panelling and rattan furniture.

But around half-way through, we see a pair of scissors. We hear guitars and a Hammond organ. People are groovin’ to cut-out, hip panels that seem to be pasted on refrigerators, cupboards and FAR OUT! There are fireworks and a fold-out Hallowe’en pumpkin and FAR OUT AGAIN! There’s a really bad cut in the soundtrack and it’s New Years’ Eve. Some guy in a green jacket is dancing like Jerry Lewis. Psychedelic!

The camera closes in on a logo. The music ends. A woman’s voice says “Westinghouse. The complete refrigerator. Compare.”

What? This is a refrigerator commercial? What about the teapot? And the Sherlock Holmes hat? And those geese?

And, again, we’re left to ask “What does it all mean?”

Actually, there’s only one reason I’m posting it, and it’s not to make fun of the ‘60s. I was listening to the soundtrack of this short and kept thinking “I know this music.” Then it dawned on me. Spiderman!!

Jam Handy leased Johnny Hawksworth cues from the KPM library that were heard on the last, weird season of the Spiderman cartoons on ABC (1969). There are huge fans of the cartoons and the library that will be able to name every single cue. I can’t, but I know the last one is “The Eyelash.”

Psychedelic Pspider-Man

No cartoon series in the history of television made an abrupt change more than the original adventures of Peter Parker’s alter-ego.

The show debuted September 9, 1967 (9 a.m.) and went from a pretty standard hero-fights-villain-as-supporting-cast-provides-comic-relief cartoon to something disconcerting. The supporting cast vanished, the animation was reused over and over and over (even within the same episode) and the plots seemed pretty warped and other-worldly.

And the most bizarre cartoon of them all was one that’s become a cult favourite: ‘Revolt in the Fifth Dimension’ (1970).

The tabloid tale of events: Grantray-Lawrence in Los Angeles produced the first season of the show and went bankrupt. Steve Krantz and Ralph Bakshi in New York took over for the last two seasons. Both would explore the drug culture in ‘Fritz the Cat’ a few years later, but the two experiment with psychedelia here. Lots of flashes on the screen, nightmarish fast spinning, and a disjointed story line. The fact is the story, drawings, even the voice track was lifted from a cartoon made a couple of years earlier: the ‘Dementia 5’ episode of the most wretched Canadian cartoon series ever made—‘Rocket Robin Hood.’

But the backgrounds are really cool. And they’re by someone who was known for fairly ordinary and unobtrusive work at Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera—Richard H. Thomas. Check out these. Beautiful colours, too.




Dark and foreboding. Who knew Dick Thomas had it in him? Think you’d see this in a Hippety Hopper cartoon? (Although that “giant mouse” is disconcerting in his own way).

Many of the backgrounds in this cartoon weren’t designed for characters to work in front of. They were flashed onto the screen for effect. And, if the whole cartoon hadn’t been undermined by the repetitive, cheap-looking animation, it might have worked.

Thomas worked from layouts by incredibly inventive illustrator Gray Morrow, who died ten years ago when he decided he could live with Parkinson’s Disease no longer.

The other great thing about Spider-Man in the Krantz years was the decision to save money by going with recorded background music from England featuring some of the greatest library composers of the 1960s. It’s instantly recognisable to any Spidey fan. I don’t know whether this will work, but try to play these two tunes by Johnny Hawksworth. (Late note: Sorry, the links don’t work any more).


THE EYELASH


BEAT TO BEGIN

‘Revolt in the Fifth Dimension’ may still be up on the internet. It’s worth watching just to see how odd a cartoon it really is.