Emery Hawkins

Many of the great names of theatrical animation parked themselves at one studio, and then stayed there for years. They left when the studio died.

Then there’s Emery Hawkins.

Animators love Hawkins’ work. But you can’t associate him with any studio because Hawkins never stayed in one place for too many years before he’d move on. That’s just the way he was.

Hawkins was born in Jerome, Arizona on April 30, 1912 to Charles T. and Francis Bruce Hawkins (a young brother, Elmer Iman Hawkins, died in infancy 1914). He died in Taos, New Mexico on June 1, 1989. Between those dates, Hawkins ended up working at seemingly every major cartoon studio in Los Angeles, even directing cartoons for Walter Lantz, then moved into commercial animation at John Sutherland (where he met his second wife Odette) and Storyboard (where he animated Maypo commercials). He continued to work after moving to Taos in 1963. He received universal praise for his work on Greedy in Richard Williams’ “Raggedy Anne and Andy.”

Incidentally, Hawkins’ babysitter when the family lived in Kingman, Arizona was Andy Devine, according to Lovell Norman, who credited Hawkins with getting him into animation at Lantz in 1934.

The local weekly paper didn’t publish an obituary for some reason. Hawkins had been stricken with Alzheimer’s; a benefit at the International Tournees of Animation at the Nuart in West Los Angeles was staged for him in September 1988. But the paper did print this feature story about Hawkins on January 7, 1982.

Taos cartoonist animates life
By MAX McELWAIN
Emery Hawkins shuffles quickly through a sketchpad of drawings. It is the only way he can bring to life the dozens of successive drawings—each different of a withered witch with a hairpin for a wand.
“It’s hard to show what I do just by looking at this,” mumbles Hawkins in his Taos workshop.
Anybody who wants to learn what Hawkins does needs only to flip on the television and see Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck or Woody Woodpecker.
Emory Hawkins, whose career in animated cartoons has spanned almost a half-century, was drawing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck before television was born.
And, after the television was introduced, Hawkins commenced a career in commercials that found him drawing cartoons to accommodate voices belonging to a couple of characters named Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
TODAY, Hawkins, who has lived in Taos for 18 years, is well into a third stage of his career: he is working on a feature-length, animated film called “The Cobbler and the Thief.” (Hawkins’ first feature, “Raggedy Ann,” played at the Plaza Theater in 1977.)
By working in Taos, Hawkins is proving that an animator can make a living away from the bright (and sometimes distracting lights) of Hollywood.
Hawkins has been at the forefront of the animation world ever since he went to work for Walt Lantz in Hollywood back in the Depression.
He started drawing cartoons when he was eight years old, growing up in Los Angeles. By the time he was 14, Hawkins had been published in the cartoon section of the Los Angeles Times.
His first job was with Walt Lantz. “I was made an animator when I shouldn’t have been,” Hawkins recalls. “I never had an apprenticeship today, animators come in trained, and they don’t skip steps like I did.
“But Walt Lantz had to get rid of me. I was changing their animation, so they canned me and I went to work at the Mintz Studios.”
THUS BEGAN a leap-frog career that found Hawkins working for just about every Hollywood studio that produced cartoon shorts.
He did Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam at Warner Brothers; Woody Woodpecker at Walt Lance [sic] and five stints with Walt Disney.
“Disney’s was a great organization, but I wasn’t a company man. I was a loner, and I worked better by myself. But I’d take my work to Walt, and he’d later use some of it.”
Hawkins, who says he also “worked in the crummy studios, where it was more fun because you could experiment more”, quickly learned what most of the studios wanted.
“They wanted footage, not Rembrandt drawings. They wanted quantity, not quality,” says Hawkins. “In fact, at Warner Brothers we made one six-and-one-half minute short a week; the other studios made maybe ten a year. Warner Brothers told us: ‘we don't want chicken salad, we want chicken s—.’ Disney and Harmonizing [sic] were the two studios that made quality pictures.”
In 1950, Hawkins, like the rest of the world, discovered television. For Hawkins, who had made $18 a week during the Depression in Hollywood (“that was a good salary then,”) TV was a creative and financial gold mine.
“I was tired of drawing Bugs Bunny running up and down the road, getting hit on the head,” recalls Emory. “When TV started in 1950, I started with it. Commercials gave me the opportunity to go my own way, to be creative. As corny as a lot of animated commercials were, they were something fresh.”
So, from 1950 until 1963, when he moved to Taos, Hawkins juggled his work between Hollywood and New York, where he drew television commercials.
“When you did commercials, all the characters were different. In the movies, there were models you always had to follow, like for Bugs Bunny,” recalls Hawkins.
There was a successful commercial for Lucky Strikes, and one for Jack’s Beer, which Hawkins drew for seven years.
“Then the beer went to bubbles, and that was that.”
IN 1963, Hawkins and his wife moved to Taos after passing through town on their honeymoon.
In 1975, Hawkins’ career changed direction —for a third time. He started working on a feature film titled “Raggedy Ann,” which was released in 1977 (it played in Taos) and is “the most enjoyable project” Hawkins has worked on.
“It was released, but not with a big bang,” he says. “The trouble was that it was a musical, and kids don’t care for sophisticated musicals. Also, I don’t think people cared for it because it wasn't ‘modern.’”
For the past four years, Hawkins has been working in Taos—and in Taos only—on “The Cobbler and the Thief.” The film’s director is Richard Williams, who has a studio in Hollywood as well as London.
“He’s kind of a fantastic guy,” says Hawkins. “The only person I’ve known as creative as he was John Hubley, whom I worked for in Hollywood. Hubley was the guy who led the revolt against the Disney-style studio, and one of the most talented people I’ve known.
“Animation is really a very talented business. There’s a certain modesty in the field, because most animators would rather draw cartoons than anything.”

There's a post-script to Hawkins’ death, published in the local paper in the issue of June 5-11, 2003.

Human leg bone puzzles authorities
By R. Scott Gerdes
The Taos News
The human femur bone resting inside one pant leg discovered Thursday (May 22) morning by groundskeepers pruning bushes at the Sierra Vista Cemetery on State Road 64 in El Prado is perplexing authorities.
The thigh bone and the pant leg have been sent to the Office of the Medical Examiner (OME) in Albuquerque, said Taos Police Investigator Barry Holfelder. The size of the bone indicates it is that of an adult. Blood stains were also found on the pant leg.
The pant leg might give Holfelder some of the best clues, he said. “I think the pants might be Native American because of the uniqueness,” Holfelder explained.
The pant leg appears to have the crotch cut out, similar to leggings worn by some Native Americans.
According to Holfelder, OME has looked at the pant leg and reported that the material is polyester. Also, the name E.O. Hawkins was printed on a pocket.
Holfelder said he searched the cemetery Wednesday (May 28). One hundred feet away from where the leg bone was found, he discovered the undisturbed graves of Emery and Odette Hawkins. Emery Hawkins was buried in 1989 and his wife in 2000.
“I’m stumped,” Holfelder said. To compound the mystery, Holfelder said there are no missing persons reports for anyone from the area.
One thing Holfelder is fairly certain of is the Albuquerque Journal’s report that stated he believed prairie dogs could be responsible is untrue.
“I noticed some holes around some of the grave sites in the cemetery and one comment led to another,” Holfelder said.
“Prairie dogs are not suspects. I don't know how they'd even get into a coffin.”
He added that exhuming Emery Hawkins’ grave was an idea “being thrown around” but, it's unlikely that will happen due to the “thousands of dollars” it costs for an incident he doesn’t feel warrants such an extravagant move.
“At this time I don't feel like I have any crime,” he said.

Want some examples of Hawkins’ animation? Who better to compile it than Thad Komorowski, who also transcribed John Canemaker’s interview with Hawkins that you can find HERE.

Mutts About Backgrounds

“Mutts About Racing” was directed by Mike Lah, designed by Ed Benedict, with backgrounds by Fernando Montealegre. All three would later work at the Hanna-Barbera studio making the first season of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Pixie and Dixie. And there’s some of that influence in this cartoon.

Here are some of Monty’s backgrounds. The cartoon was in Cinemascope, and the drawings reflect that. The first one isn’t a complete background, just enough to give you an idea. I’d guess the rocks and tree in the second one are on an overlay. The tree reminds me of the kind Art Lozzi drew in the first season Yogi cartoons at H-B.




And a few more. The first one has a simple box for a house, much like the school house in “Little Bird Mouse,” a very early Pixie and Dixie cartoon designed by Benedict. The billboard in the second has a sharp-nosed guy that Benedict liked drawing. The speed limit sign on the last one is on an overlay.









A theatre in Winnipeg was showing this as early as March 13, 1958. By then, the MGM cartoon studio had been closed for almost a year, and Benedict, Lah and Monty had finished a season of TV cartoons.

Bulldog in a Box

At first, it looks like Tex Avery has a continuity error in “Bad Luck Blackie” (1947). But Tex was so meticulous with each frame, I suspect what’s happened is he wanted a gag to register so he backed up a bit in time.

The little kitty hesitantly opens the jack-in-a-box and the head sticks out. But then Tex cuts to a long shot and the head hasn’t stuck out yet.





The kitten watches the bulldog pop up for ten drawings, then the take. Note the anticipation first. The fourth drawing is on one frame, the other kittens are held for two, but the bulldog moves like, well, a jack-in-the-box would.







Louie Schmitt designed the characters and gets an animation credit, along with Preston Blair, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

Fred Allen Sees Oblivion

Fred Allen’s radio show came to an end on June 26, 1949 and it was probably a relief for all concerned. Allen was tired and doctors ordered a rest. His ratings were down. Network radio was dying; network television was taking off. And despite NBC probably being fed up with Allen’s on-air putdowns of broadcast entertainment in general and the network in particular, they knew he had star power and kept him under contract during his sabbatical.

Allen didn’t have a weekly platform for his views on radio and television any more, so he took his opinions to the press. In interviews, Allen wasn’t always satiric, he was bitter, bordering on morose at times. We’re going to post two of them, one today and one next week. They were published about five weeks apart, written by different columnists on opposite sides of the U.S.

John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune syndicate knew he could fill space just by asking Allen about the shape of radio and nascent TV. So he did. This was published December 6, 1949. See if anything has changed.

Radio In Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Unemployed Actor
HAD lunch with Fred Allen the other day to find out how it feels to be an unemployed actor. “I feel like God on the seventh day.” He was chomping his customary lettuce leaf at his customary table at the Plaza. Allen has just had a bout of illness which left him 20 pounds lighter.
On him, it looks good. (I ought to point out this unemployment is voluntary. Fred, at the insistence of his doctors, is taking a year off.)
“It’s wonderful, this freedom. You can live on the money you save on aspirin,” he remarked cheerfully.
"The only trouble is I keep thinking of jokes and I don’t know what to do with them. I thought of one the other day. ‘These days the price of coffee will keep you awake.’ Well, that joke has been keeping me awake. I don't know what to do with it. I wish you’d take it off my hands.”
HE NODDED pleasantly at a lady who had smiled at him from across the room.
“I have to be very careful. My public has shrunk to such an extent that I have to be polite to all of them. I say hello to people in sewers. You know, I went off the air once before—back in 1944. We got three letters deploring it.
“This time we’re way ahead of that. I think we got fifteen. Man spends seventeen years in this business trying to build it up, and he goes off the air and who cares? People still write me for tickets. They think I’m still on the air. I think they have me confused with Red Skelton. It makes a man bitter.”
He chomped some more lettuce, reflectively.
“I had 17 years. You don’t even do that to land. You wouldn’t plow the same land for seventeen years without giving it a rest. But radio does it to comedians.
“ANYHOW, I’LL be ready for the welfare state when it arrives — not working. Most of you working people will be terribly ill at ease for awhile but I’ll be used to it.”
In spite of all this talk about retirement, Allen has a contract with NBC which will restore him either to radio or put him on television next Fall. He doesn’t know which yet but he thinks there’s no point in thinking about radio any more.
“They’re cutting the budgets way down. With a small budget you can’t put a show like mine on the air without reducing the standards you set for yourself.”
Allen is one of the most rabid as well as one of the most critical of television fans. We turned to that.
“You can make more money in bed than you can in television. They ought to turn the cameras on the stagehands. They make more money than the actors.
“WHEN YOU SEE Kukla, Fran and Ollie come alive on that little screen, you realize you don’t need great big things as we had in radio. They ought to get one of these African fellows over here to shrink all the actors. We’re all too big for this medium.
“What gets me is why they haven’t sold the Dave Garroway show. Whoever does that show is turning out real television: he's creating something for television.
Berle isn’t doing anything for television. He's photographing a vaudeville act. That’s what they’re all doing.
“Even ‘The Goldbergs’, which has been so well received, gets tiresome after you see it four or five times. You know what the uncle is going to do and you know what the kids are going to do.
“THE TROUBLE with television is it’s too graphic. In radio, even a moron could visualize things his way: an intelligent man, his way. It was a custom-made suit. Television is a ready-made suit. Everyone has to wear the same one.
“Everything is for the eye these days—‘Life,’ ‘Look,’ the picture business. Nothing is for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as canteloupes and no brain at all.”
Allen has been trotting around sampling opinion on television in some effort to find out what people like.
“I talked to the oysterman at Grand Central the other day,” he remarked morosely. “He likes everything on television. Even Maurey Amsterdam looks good after staring at oysters all day long.
“That’s one of the reasons you don’t have color television. You’d catch all the actors blushing at the things they have to say. One thing I can’t understand—all this advertising of television sets on television. If you see the ad, you already own a television set.
“WE ALL HAVE a great problem—Benny, Hope, all of us. We don’t know how to duplicate our success in radio. We found out how to cope with radio and, after 17 years, you know pretty well what effect you’re achieving.
“But those things won't work in television. Jack Benny’s sound effects, Fibber’s closet — they won’t be funny in television. We don’t know what will be funny or even whether our looks are acceptable.
He nodded at another fan across the room.
“Middle-aged,” he commented. “I notice all the people who come up to me are middle-aged. No kids. I’ve played to three generations on radio and in show business. Now I've got to grapple with a fourth.”

Two Long Pigs

The story’s a little ill-conceived in spots, but there’s some nice work in “Alley to Bali,” a 1954 Woody Woodpecker cartoon directed by Don Patterson. Some effective layouts, good use of colour and Clarence Wheeler’s arrangements (or whoever was arranging for him) are highlights. And some of the animation’s pretty good, too. Herman Cohen, Ray Abrams and Ken Southworth aren’t known for being A-listers, but Cohen and Abrams were animating in the ‘30s and Southworth worked at Disney (in 1940, he was an office clerk for a wholesale grocer in Chicago).

There’s a really interesting speed/outline effect in this cartoon. I couldn’t tell you who drew it. Woody and Buzz Buzzard are sailors—deemed edible “long pigs” to some echoing volcano god in Indonesia. They’re lured to the volcano by the god’s female servant (using her femininity as bait).



Buzz rushes over top of Woody to get to the woman, but he consists of mutliple outlines.



Then Woody stretches back and he becomes a multiple outlines as races after Buzz.




The effect is used later when Homer Brightman’s story suddenly, and misguidedly, plays the dramatic climax for laughs. Somehow a frying pan is conjured up, Woody and Buzz land in it, there’s a salt-and-pepper-shaker gag, a temporary-transformation-into-sausage gag, then both become multiple outlines as they make a dash for it.





Yeah, that’s the creative way they get out of their predicament. They just run away. Nice going, Homer.

Patterson got bumped back into animating when producer Walter Lantz hired Tex Avery, then when Avery left, he wasn’t rehired to direct; Lantz brought in Alex Lovy from one of the commercial houses. Nothing against Lovy, but it’s too bad Patterson didn’t get a second shot.

Snafuperman Snafu

In cartoons, arms, hands, legs or bodies sometimes disappear, and it’s not because an anvil has been dropped on someone. It’s because someone screwed up and the animation checker didn’t notice.

You know how it works. Part of a character may remain still for a few drawings while other parts move. The other parts are on separate cels. Occasionally, one of them is forgotten when the scene is photographed and no one spots it.

That happened in the military cartoon “Snafuperman,” animated by the Freleng unit at Warners. For two frames, part of Snafuperman is missing.






This hit military screens in February 1944, so Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez and Dick Bickenbach were probably in the unit at the time. Paul Julian drew the backgrounds.

Fleischer Cartoon Ads, 1935

The Fleischer studio had the best-looking and funniest cartoons out of New York. When the 1930s began, the Fleischers presented the world with some of the oddest-looking characters in stories that were interrupted by little routines (some of which had little to do with what was going on screen) or took a sudden left turn into strangeness. As the decade wore on, the cartoons mellowed. Experts blame the Production Code of 1934, a strike, a move to Florida and a case of D.C.D. (Disney Cutsey Disorder), not necessarily in that order.

Here are some full-page ads from The Film Daily from 1935. The designs in the Color Classics ad look like the great goggle-eyed characters of the early ‘30s. The Popeye two-reeler didn’t come out until late 1936 (and “Sinbad” inherited an extra “d” in his name). I’m of the vintage who first saw the cartoon on TV in the black-and-white days but it’s truly spectacular in full colour. And I can only presume that Betty Boop was saddled with newspaper comic strip characters in an attempt to make lightning strike twice in the same studio. The Fleischers successfully adapted Elzie Segar’s Popeye to the screen after a try-out on a Boop cartoon. Henry, the Kaztenjammer Kids (who later bombed at MGM) and the Little King (who had an earlier appearance at Van Beuren) failed. Someone could have sued for false advertising for gluing the moniker “the Funniest Living American” on Henry. Only the last word appears to be correct.

How to Write a TV Show

The variety show hosts of radio’s great days in the 1940s didn’t stand in front of a microphone and make up a half-hour show on the spot every week. There were highly-paid writers, though some stars had a reputation of treating them like crap and leaving the impression they were the fount of all comedy creativity on their shows.

Some of the stars got involved in the writing process. Jack Benny was one, though he didn’t sit there and come up with the jokes. And just as Benny let his cast get the funny lines, he generally let his writers do the writing. No wonder his writers stuck with him all those years.

The San Mateo Times TV columnist put together a how-they-write-the-Benny-show story on March 16, 1957. Jack’s radio show was off the air by then, but his radio writers were still with him and adapted some of their radio routines for Benny’s television show. It was a little difficult, partly because radio is not a visual medium, and partly because some of Benny’s radio cast didn’t move with him to TV, or appeared only occasionally. But the method of writing the TV show was exactly the same as it was for the radio show in the mid-to-late ‘40s. And the writers still had the one main cog of the Benny radio show—Benny himself. His radio persona was so well defined, moving it to another medium was simple. And now his fans could see him stand there and react to all the things that used to happened to him on radio. The laughs poured out. It sure made writing easy.

Comedy Is A Real Science: Writers
By BOB FOSTER
For Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Al Gordon and Hall Goldman [sic], the talk about the high mortality rate among comedy writers is just so much talk. They know nothing about such things.
The talented, and lucky, men are the four who pick each other’s brains each week to come up with eomedy material for Jack Benny on his twice monthly show. Perrin and Balzer have been pounding a typewriter in the Benny outfit for fourteen years, while Gordon and Goldman have been around, happily, for seven years or so.
Most comedy writers last about two years with a comedian. They, used up, drift into another show with another star and a different format—or sometimes wind up as difficult producers and directors.
THESE FOUR GUYS think they have the formula for longevity. This week they told the secret. In case any budding young writers might be looking over my shoulder, here’s part of the secret.
The first ingredient necessary for the concoction of this humorous pies [sic] is of course the basic idea. The idea may come from Jack, anyone of the four writers, members of the cast or even an actual event that may have occurred to any of them.
FIRST OF ALL, the four work as two teams. Perrin and Balzer work as one team, while Gordon and Goldman work together. Most of the time they split a show in half. One team will work on the monologue and that tag that comes at the end, the other team writing a skit that comprises the body of the show.
Occasionally they all pitch in and work a show together for its entire length.
Being funny is hard serious work, they all claim. Perrin says, “We work in our shirt sleeves” and he added, “we quite frequently are exhausted by the time a show is put on.”
TO THESE FOUR, comedy writing is an exact science. “All of us have studied comedy writing, we hope we know what makes people laugh and what makes them cry,” one of the men said.
A Benny show starts with a story conference during which the basic ideas is placed before the writers. Then begins the grim business of turning a basic idea into a side-splitting 30-minute television show.
One of the writers might begin by saying “all right fellows, here is the situation. Jack decides he’s getting too fat and has to go on a diet.”
From this moment on, all the writers start throwing fat man gags and the dietetic situations, all tailored to the Benny style of comedy. This conference may last for an hour, maybe all day, but when the writers split into teams they have the show on its way.
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER the boys get back together with Jack who listens to the rough script and makes suggestions. Occasionally he and his writers disagree. In most cases however, Jack defers to their judgement, proven by many years Jack has had one of the nation’s top comedy show.
A few days later they all get together again for a first read through with the cast. Another day or two of rehearsal during which gags that didn’t quite come off are changed. The script is polished and the show is soon on the air.
During the actual broadcast the four writers sit in the control room. They laugh at some of their own jokes, and grimace at others. If the audience reaction is good they go away feeling good. If not they are depressed. After a few comments about the show, a hand shake from Jack, they immediately start a new show. It’s a vicious circle, but it pays off.

Snoppyquop and Animated Cartoons

Winsor McCay invented the animated cartoon character. At least he did in a syndicated newspaper story, first published March 22, 1924.

This unbylined feature story gives a capsule version of the making of cartoons (silent in those days, of course) and opens with a couple of historical notes.

The story is one of the componants of a children’s page (complete with its own masthead) offered to newspapers by some syndicate. There are stories (some historical or instructional), jokes and a comic strip. Also included is a panel titled “Snoppyquop.” It has a relationship to the story below. The artist is Feg Murray, a sports cartoonist known in later decades for “Seein’ Stars,” a newspaper feature with caricatures of people in Hollywood, accompanied with a biographical caption.

The drawing with the fake film strip is signed “Wm. Roberts.” I wonder if he’s Bill Roberts who animated and directed at Disney. He had been an animator at the Carlson studio in New York in 1919.



HOW FIRST ANIMATED CARTOONS WERE MADE
Animated cartoons do not move! Of course, they appear to move, but that is only an illusion. The action in an animated comic is produced because the cameraman shows still pictures of the different stages of a certain movement in such rapid succession that you think you see the movement itself.
Gertie, a dinosaur, had the distinction of being the first animated cartoon heroine. Windsor McCay [sic], an artist, about fifteen years ago hit upon the idea of making moving cartoons, so he worked out the story of Gertie, a prehistoric animal, who walked along a bank, only to be hit on the head by a cocoanut which a monkey in a tree threw at him. Mr. McCay went to about ten times as much work as was necessary in making this cartoon series, for each picture he made was a separate drawing with a background sketched in. He also attempted to figure out the action by mathematics. Said he: “If the monkey pitches the cocoanut when the dinosaur begins to walk forward, where will the dinosaur be when the cocoanut strikes him?” It was just like a problem in arithmetic and took a great deal of figuring to get the answer.
The animated cartoonist today would work the action backward. He would first make the sketch of the cocoanut hitting, then draw the picture just before it hit, then the one previous to that, till he had worked back to the first one, where the cocoanut started to fly through the air. And the pictures today of the action would be drawn on celluloid and each photographed over one single picture of the setting which was drawn on paper. Moreover, only the part of the picture which, moved would be redrawn each time. If the head moved, the same body would be kept for all the head movements.
Wallace Carlson had an animated cartoon which created a sensation in 1914 during the time the Boston Braves played the Philadelphia Athletics for the World Series title. He showed moving cartoons of the games as they were played each day within twenty-four hours alter they took place. Such a great deal of work is involved in the making of an animated cartoon that people marvelled how this stunt was done. The truth of the matter is that the drawings had been made weeks ahead with two endings for each picture. If the Braves won, the other ending was thrown away. Any unusual plays that were made on a certain day were quickly drawn up and inserted.
In an ordinary movie a foot of reel is shown per second. There are sixteen pictures to the foot, so you can figure out the number it would take to make a story lasting ten minutes on the screen. In animated pictures, however, each drawing is photographed twice, so that the artist makes eight pictures for a foot of reel. Animateds can be a little more jerky than ordinary pictures and it only makes them funnier. If one person by himself made the entire drawings for one of the weekly animated animal stories you see on the screen, it would take all his time for about ten weeks. But the artists who produce these have helpers. With a dozen workers and by using the present celluloid method, the cartoonist is able to turn out an animated funny for each week’s theatre audience.
----
Now you know how animated cartoons are really made. The artist is a Snoppyquop, consisting mainly of a bottle of ink. Ideas come into his head out of an old jug, and he draws with his finger, which is a pen. When he draws one “frame” on the movie film before him, he turns the crank and up moves another. He draws the next one a little different, and then cranks her up again. That's what’s the matter with the movies, they’re run by cranks. His nose throws a little light on the subject of his work, but doesn’t if he sneezes, for then he blows his fuse out. He can’t go on turning put work forever, either, for he's limited in ideas, ink and film.

Springtime For Thomas Backgrounds

It’s a shame the background artists were never credited in the Tom and Jerry cartoons through the ‘40s. As far as I know, Bob Gentle was the background artist in the Hanna-Barbera unit and would have painted these in “Springtime for Thomas” (1946).








Gentle goes for muted colours for the most part, but turns to darker ones for the scene where an alley cat is in a rundown back lane.