Ted and His Colour Snowman

Ted Eshbaugh had huge hopes for his experiments in colour cartoons. Instead, he’s pretty much a footnote in animation history, likely best-known for The Sunshine Makers.

His work trying to perfect a colour system was profiled in several places in 1931-32, with talk about his Goofy Goat cartoon and his effort to bring an animated The Wizard of Oz in bright hues to movie screens.

In between the two, he and his staff crafted The Snowman. He hoped to produce a series called “Musicolor Fantasies” (Boston Globe, Nov. 2, 1932).

Some familiar names are on the credits. The music was written by Carl Stalling, pre-Schlesinger. Frank Tipper and Bill Mason both animated for Walter Lantz into the early 1940s. Co-producer Howard C. Bonsall was a land developer who opened up large areas near Malibu for residential development. His son was Shull Bonsall, who gained a somewhat infamous reputation when he forced Alex Anderson and Jay Ward out of a Crusader Rabbit revival on television in the mid-‘50s. This is the only foray into animation by Howard Bonsall that I have found.

Here’s an article on The Snowman from the Los Angeles Daily News of September 7, 1933.

FANTASY CARTOON IN COLORS HELD BEAUTIFUL WORK
By IRENE CAVANAUGH
“Extra! Snow-man ‘Frankenstein’ runs wild over north pole, tears down igloos and menaces lives of Arctic denizens. Eskimo hero saves the day by turning on the aurora borealis and melts icy villain.” No, this is not the latest news flash from Iceland, but the original and comically entertaining plot of Ted Eshbaugh’s latest musicolor fantasy cartoon, “The Snow Man,” which is having its western premier showing with “The Masquerader” at Tally’s Criterion this week.
Audiences which have already viewed the new Eshbaugh cartoon have been amazed by the clarity and beauty of his color treatment, which greatly enhances the fast moving melodrama of animal land in the far north. Two of his scenes in the picture, are considered by critics and artists to be the most beautiful color cartoon work reproduced on the screen.
BEAUTIFUL COLOR WORK
One of the scenes shows four little deer drinking from an azure blue pool in the snow, with their brown reflections actually animated in the rippling water. The other is the spectacular climax where the little Eskimo turns on the aurora borealis, which appears in a maze of radiating color schemes vividly animated behind the grotesque figure of Snow Man.
There is a reason for Ted Eshbaugh’s leadership in the field of color cartoons. Through his years of research in translating color to the screen in natural shades, he was able to blaze the trail for animated cartoons in color. The Los Angeles museum recently honored Eshbaugh in recognition of his service as the creator of the first successful full-length cartoon in sound and color by placing a print of his initial color production, "Goofy Goat, on permanent exhibition. This picture was released more than two years ago, before any other animated cartoon company had been able to accomplish the feat. Coming to Hollywood about 10 years ago after winning awards for his art work in the Boston and Chicago art institutes, Eshbaugh carved a niche for himself in the motion picture industry by virtue of his original ideas and creative genius. Today, at 27, he is one of the youngest film producers in Hollywood and is well on the road to success.
PICTURESQUE BACKGROUND
The young artist’s naive sense of humor is well represented in "The Snow Man. The locale is the north pole, and Ted has surrounded the story with a background of picturesque blue and blue-green shades blended into the snowy atmosphere. The little Eskimo and his animal friends are seen building a snow man, and as they caper about, it suddenly comes to life and runs rampant as they scatter in terror. In his path is an ice cathedral in which a walrus choirmaster is leading the chorus of penguin choir boys, singing the “Little Church in the Wildwood.” The monster chases them away and does a hilarious Jimmy Durante at the organ. Continuing his rampage, he finally corners the animals on the edge of an ice precipice just as the Eskimo reaches the north pole power plant and switches on the aurora to save the day. This was reproduced in the cinecolor process.
Ted Eshbaugh is also the creator of the first color cartoon of the famous "Wizard of Oz stories, and has already produced his initial version of those popular adventures of little Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin-Woodman and the Wizard. This cartoon feature, produced in technicolor, will soon follow “The Snow Man,” which has its eastern premiere in one of New York's biggest showhouses this week.

In 1934, Eshbaugh left the West Coast for the Van Beuren studio in New York. When it closed, he continued to produce industrial/commercial cartoons. Among them, according to his obituary in Variety, were “The Dale Carnegie Story,” “The Frank Bettger Story,” several colour spectaculars for the Radio City Music Hall, and sequences for “Around the World With Mike Todd.”

Ted Edgar Eshbaugh was born in Des Moines on Feb. 5, 1906. He died in New York City on July 4, 1969.

Here are some shots from The Snowman. These are consecutive frames. The evil snowbeing somehow is missing a hat.



Here’s where the Eskimo boy runs into the weather control centre to turn up the heat and melt the evil snowman. Eshbaugh shows a good sense of using colour. At first the frames alternate in a lighter blue colour. Then the Eskimo jacks up the temperature more and you can see how the frame flashes red. Finally, the heat is maximised into the danger zone and the snowman melts.



Interestingly, the short has the same end gag Tex Avery employed years later in Bad Luck Blackie. The snowman has an evil, Billy Bletcher-like laugh through the cartoon. At the end, the fish he swallowed is saved when he melts. The fish adopts the evil laugh as the iris closes. In the Avery cartoon, it makes sense for the tormented kitten to laugh as it has become the tormenter. Here the laugh seems random and forced, but maybe that’s me.

In November 2013, both this blog and Jerry Beck’s had posts about Eshbaugh. Read them here and here.

From the Tralfaz Blog...

Thanks for reading and for your comments.

Celebrity Toys For Little Boy

Columbia tried pulling heart strings in its lavishly-animated 1937 holiday season short The Little Match Girl. But before that, it tugged a little in Gifts From the Air, released January 1, 1937. (Why a Christmas cartoon would be released in January is something only Columbia could explain).

But besides a poor, ragged boy who lives in a clapboard shack, what do we get? Because it’s a 1930s cartoon from the Mintz studio, it can mean only one thing—celebrity caricatures!

In an ingenious shot, Santa and his bag of toys comes through the round loudspeaker for the radio (yeah, the kid can’t afford an untattered blanket, but he has a radio). And St. Nick brings your favourite stars in toy form.



He’s riding a duck. And he’s selling it! It must be Joe Penner.



The roly-poly toy is Paul Whiteman on one side and Kate Smith on the other. Hello, everybody!



Yowsah! Ben Bernie is speaking into a microphone.



So-oooooe, Graham! It’s Ed Wynn, the fire chief (And a Scrappy book in the background).



One toy claps his balls (ie. hands) together just like Eddie Cantor. He bumps into a Santa-in-the-box. Cantor’s violinist, Dave Rubinoff, pops out of the Russian’s beard. The Santa voice impression isn’t great, but it sounds like the first line is Parkyakarkus (Harry Einstein) and the second line is Bert Gordon (the Mad Russian). Both were on Cantor’s show in late 1936.



Bing Crosby is a goat. He’s run down by Wynn and dies. They sure didn’t like Crosby at Hollywood animation studios, did they?



No Laurel and Hardy or Jack Benny. Maybe next time.

The short was re-issued December 18, 1937 (The Little Match Girl appeared in theatres in November) and again November 25, 1955.

Felix is Here

You know who that is, don’t you? Yes, it’s Felix the Cat. Not that “Bag of Tricks” TV Felix with the Popeye music in the background, but the silent era Felix, where he could morph into anything. He was a real actor displaying all kinds of emotions and, I propose, the first real silent film cartoon star (of those characters made expressly for the screen).

There are a few Felixs in various states of wear and tear on the internet, but now’s your chance to have some almost 100-year-old cartoons starring the cat that sparked blatant imitations at the Fables and Disney studios. Tommy Stathes is finally able to release, through his Cartoon Roots series, a two-disc set with 15 cartoons, including several made by Otto Messmer before he turned to Felix.



The Felix cartoons are from the early ‘20s, before Bill Nolan showed up to make Felix a rounder, easier-to-animate figure.

The Motion Picture News of April 8, 1922 reported:

Miss M. J. Winkler, distributor of the new “ Felix ” cartoon comics the series of which are animated by the Pat Sullivan studios, announces this week the completion of “ Felix Makes Good ” third of the series of twelve subjects, the rights to which she controls for world-wide distribution.
Pat Sullivan completed last week the work of editing, titling and assembling his latest subject, and a sample print of “Felix Makes Good” was rushed to the offices of Miss Winkler for private review.
The picture it is announced, is now available for release on the independent market.

Felix Makes Good sees our hero lose his tail, then battle mice who frame him as he tries to settle into a new home owned by a kind, cat-loving lady. Felix Lends a Hand involves a magic carpet ride to Egypt. Felix Tries for Treasure features fish-puns aplenty, including a real loan shark, as he goes underwater in search of valuable pearls. Those are just some of the shorts on the set.

Cartoon Roots sets are exceptionally well done and this one has the benefit of graceful piano accompaniment by Charlie Judkins. I’m afraid, for me, the Mighty Wurlitzer with umpteen stops and bell and sound generators is a bit much. These cartoons have nice, simple arrangements.

Oh, order you say. Try this link.

NOTE!! This set includes a DVD. REPEAT! It is a DVD set. Don’t mutter “Oh, I don’t have a Blu-Ray player.” There is a DVD, as well as a Blu-Ray.

DVD. Okay, I hope that’s clear.

DVD.

P.S. I have nothing to do with Cartoon Roots and have not been asked to plug this. I do this only as a public service to all Felix fans.

Signing Santa and Hopscotching Hope

Some seasonal satire came from the typewriter of entertainment columnist Erskine Johnson 60 Christmases ago.

Johnson (photo, right) “was known more for concentrating on humorous and anecdotal material in interviews,” as his obit in Variety put it. Perhaps that’s why he never had the fame/notoriety of show biz gossipers like Parsons and Winchell, despite wide circulation of his column and hosting shows on both radio and TV.

He had been a city editor of the Los Angeles Record when he went to work as an assistant to National Enterprise Association columnist Danny Thomas. He took over the column when Thomas left in the late ‘30s and retired about 30 years later. Johnson died in 1984.

Here are two of his holiday columns from December 1960. The first involves a familiar target of 1950s satirists, ad agencies, courtesy of Herb Sargent, the Steve Allen writer known years later for his work on Saturday Night Live. The second is an interview with Bob “Marilyn Maxwell’s Under the Mistletoe” Hope. Like any column about Hope, it’s full of old one-liners as Johnson ties it in to ol’ Ski Nose’s Christmas tour to cheer up the troops.

Jim Dandy Santa Claus Special Prepared by Sargent
By ERSKINE JOHNSON

HOLLYWOOD—(NEA)—Christmas comes but once a year, Herb Sargent was saying, "which means, to television programmers, that it is not a holiday, not a tradition, but a special event. TV loves special events."
Sargent is one of TV's best writers of specials—the last Bing Crosby outing, the next Pat Boone special—but the "special event" of Christmas, he was saying, is a problem "because the obvious star, Santa Claus, is usually unavailable due to a previous commitment that evening."
Were he available, however . . .
WELL, SARGENT THOUGHT, here's how it might be born. The time: April. (You can't start too early. Someone else might get the idea first.)
The place: Conference room. Seated around the conference table are a TV executive, a talent agent, a TV censor, a TV producer and an advertising agency man. Subject: Christmas special.
TV Exec: "Gentlemen this year we may be able to get Santa Claus. The real one."
Adman: "I don't know about Santa Claus. I have several clients for a Christmas special but they want something an audience can believe in. Like Arthur Godfrey."
Agent: "Listen, if you guys don't believe in my boy, what am I doing here?"
TV Exec: "Relax. We all believe in your boy. Now let's figure out who might buy him for: 90 minutes."
ADMAN: "YOU KNOW this limits me. Right away we have to knock out razor blades and electric shaver, unless he'll . . ."
Agent: "No, he WON'T."
Adman: "Okay. The sleigh eliminates the automobile people . . .”
Censor: "The sleigh reminds me. He can't whip those reindeer. You know the FCC and network feeling on violence."
Adman: "Does he smoke?"
Agent: "A pipe."
Adman: "There goes the cigarette account. And I suppose we're stuck with that coming-down-the-chimney routine."
Agent: "That's his act."
Producer: "Even if you do find him a sponsor, what kind of a show can we do? Everybody knows his routine. He won't work any other way. The red suit, the bag of presents, the reindeer, the Ho, ho, ho bit—that's a show?"
Censor: "I think those elves are in poor taste, anyway."
ADMAN: "FELLOWS. I don't know who'd buy him."
Agent: "What's going on? I thought we had a deal."
TV Exec: "Not without a show we don't."
Agent: " 'Person to Person' wants him. I thought I was doing you a favor by giving you first crack at him."
TV Exec: "We appreciate that, but as you can see we have problems. He's too familiar. There's no sponsor identification, no image."
Agent: "Oh, well. That's the business. Now how about a Jingle Bells ballet and the Vienna Boys' Choir . . .?"
Censor: "I don't know about Vienna .... the international situation."
Sargent was sure that's the way it would go.

Traveler Bob Plans Flight to Visit Armed Forces in the Caribbean
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
Newspaper Enterprise Association
Hollywood — One of Uncle Sam's big Air Force planes and that sleigh with its eight reindeer will be airborne about the same time again just before Christmas. Of course, riding that sleigh will be the familiar, pug-nosed, red-suited man. In the plane will be someone almost as familiar — ski-nosed Bob Hope.
In a way, Bob Hope and Santa Claus are in the same business. What Santa means to little children, Hope represents to our uniformed men and women stationed outside the United States.
The comedian celebrates his 20th anniversary as Roving Robert film star with the business card "Have Jokes—Will Travel," by making his ninth annual Christmas entertainment tour. This year his troupe will visit armed forces in the Caribbean.
He has been to the Caribbean before—in 1944—and he has been just about everywhere else during war and peace in 20 go-go years as the serviceman's best friend. He will be telling jet age jokes to lads whose fathers in the service in California in 1941 laughed it up with Hope nine months before Pearl Harbor.
The statistics of his Odysseys are staggering, a mass of dates and remote places around the world. His GI audiences of nearly 12 millions to date can well give “Thanks for the Memories,” Hope's theme music.
He has flown nearly two and a half million miles—10,000 hours aloft—from North Africa, Sicily and Italy in 1943. Alaska to Guadalcanal and Tarawa in 1944. Nice and Bremen and Nurnbere and Munich in 1945 to bloody Bayonet Bowl in Korea. He has given, nearly 2,500 individual shows.
His travels once cued one of his writers, Larry Klein, to tell him:
"You know, Bob, if you had your life to live all over again, you wouldn't have time to do it."

Between hot and cold theaters of war, he has been in and out of U. S. camps and hospitals like a man in a revolving door.
In 1943. Mr. Inexhaustible traveled 1,300 miles in 11 days to appear in 33 different places in England and went on three bombing raids in Algiers, Bizerte and Palermo.
"But I must admit I thought, ‘This is it. I've had it.’"
Yet he was still going strong when he beat the Marines by 20 minutes to the beach at Wonsan. I couldn't believe it until Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond and newsmen met us at the airport. It was a bloodless invasion but we didn't know we were there AHEAD of time.
He was in time to catch jungle rot malady in Biak in 1944. 'It still comes out between my toes on hot humid days."
Bob did not go it alone The GIs have fond memories of Frances Langford and Jerry Colonna, Marilyn Maxwell and Jayne Mansfield and others who traveled with him. World War 2 was just the beginning for Bob. He hopped on the airlift to Berlin on a plane loaded with coal in 1948 for Christmas. His 1957 Christmas trip to the Far East covered 16,201 miles and 77 air hours. En route to Hawaii by plane, he put out a show via radio to the crew of a Coast Guard ship 20,000 feet below.
Men and women in uniform have memories about Hope's chatter:
"Last night I slept in the barracks. You know what barracks are—a crap game with a roof. What a place to meet professional gamblers. I won't say they were loaded, but it’s the first time I ever saw dice leave skid marks.
“A discharge—that’s a little piece of paper that changes a lieutenant's name from 'Sir' to ‘Stinky.’”
Bob Hope's gags are tailored to the problems, gripes of the servicemen overseas—“in Alaska, where guys wished they were in Africa and in Africa, where they wished they were in Alaska. In the South Pacific, where they knew a guy was island happy when he started to look at the men's fashion pages.”
"The greatest years of my life," Bob Hope says today, at 57, as he goes on looking for camps and hospitals he may have missed. "Wouldn't it be a kick to do a show on the moon?"
That wouldn't surprise his wife, Dolores, about whom he has quipped: "She's very sweet about my absences although I notice that the towels in our bathroom are marked Hers and Welcome Traveler."
Thanks for the memories, Bob.

Percy Claus

Percy the cat is skipping along, courtesy of Carlo Vinci, in Cat Happy, a 1950 Terrytoon. He’s carrying a cake. Cut to a close-up of a banana peel. Yeah, he slips, the cake lands on him—and it turns him into Santa Claus, as Phil Scheib plays “Jingle Bells” in the background.



Animator/director Milton Knight points out Santa is by Reuben Timmins.

The cartoon, by the way, may feature Jim Tyer’s wildest animation ever as Percy gets high on catnip.

Christmas Cat

Sylvester is a great character. He’s expressive no matter who the director is.

Here are some frames from Gift Wrapped, probably my favourite Warner Bros. Christmas cartoon. Granny (Bea Benaderet) sees that the cat has eaten Tweety and yells at him. Friz seems to have loved sweat reactions; he has them in all kinds of his cartoons. There are a bunch of ragged-fur Sylvester drawings in this scene, but we’ll only post a couple. There’s a smear for good measure here.



More reactions.



Ken Champin, Manny Perez, Virgil Ross and Art Davis are the animators. Irv Wyner supplies some great background art. And Warren Foster is behind the various gag sequences. The cartoon was released in February 1952 and re-released in November 1960.

Ending a Feud For Christmas

Fans of Phil Harris, outside of the Disney animated features, think of him as the character from the Jack Benny radio show—self-loving, lady-loving, booze-loving, English language not-so-loving.

That’s not how his character started off on the Benny show.

When he replaced Johnny Green at the start of the 1936-37 season, Harris was pictured by the writers to be Jack’s antagonist. But, fortunately, the bickering between the two “officially” ended around Christmastime, 1936. The writers must have decided arguing doesn’t create a lot of laughter and slowly modified Harris over the course of the rest of the season. He became a larger-than-life ham, and the show lost a lot of oomph when he left in 1953.

The syndicated “Backstage with Homer Canfield” column of December 8, 1936 gave a preview and also explained how the Benny show was put together. The last bit of advice, Benny took, but quite unexpectedly. Within a month of the column, he and Fred Allen began their feud, and it was decided a trip to Allen’s base of operations in New York was needed to end it.

Jack Benny
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here—"
Hollywood Dec. 8.—
HERE'S AN INSIDE TIP. THE Jack Benny-Phil Harris feud will end in handshaking Sunday night. Until Christmas peace and quiet will reign throughout the Benny troupe. When Jack gets his Christmas present from Phil . . . wow! watch out.
And don't look for any changes in the cast. No matter what you hear. Jack feels that the present gang is the finest he's ever had. I heard him say that he'll do everything he possibly can to keep them together.
This was Sunday night. I sat through rehearsals; at airtime, watched from the control booth. Although the show dropped below the level of the previous two weeks, Benny was in fine form. The half-hour gave birth to what is destined to become a radio classic.
Benny and Harris had just finished another round:
SOUND—Bell rings.
JACK—I'm so mad my ears are ringing.
MARY—That's the phone you dope.
JACK—Oh!
Outside of the writing surprisingly little time is devoted to the show. Rehearsals start on Saturday night when the cast gets together for a line reading. That lasts for an hour or so. Then Benny, his five gag men and Tom Harrington, the producer, really go to work. They re-write, re-write.
On Sunday afternoon at 12:30 the troupe meets again. They sit around and talk it over. Benny coaches each one in the enact reading of the lines. This takes an hour or more. Cuts are made, the script timed.
Now they're ready to take their place at the mikes. Jack and Mary work on one; the rest of the cast share another.
One more reading to check timing sound effects cues and to give the man at the controls an idea of what to expect. That's all there is. The show is wrapped up right then and there.
The band has been rehearsed the day before. The men never see the program until the first broadcast, which is at 4 o'clock. Easterners listen to this one. The musicians enjoy the show as much as anyone. Haw, haw, haw! Boy, is that funny! And through it all laughs Don Wilson. Sincerely, heartily, constantly. At one time during rehearsal he had to leave the studio. Tears were streaming down his face. Benny to him is the world’s only funny-man and the grandest of guys. And you'll find that all who work for him feel that way.
But while all this hee-hawing is going on, the loudest of laughs come from the script writers. Al Boasberg heads this unit. He sat in the audience, so I can't say about his reaction. But the rest were in the control booth keeping score on the laughs. Notes were made after every line. To serve as reference for future programs, no doubt.
Thirty more programs are left in this series. And all will come from Hollywood. As Benny said, “This is my home. I love California and I'm here to stay.”
Right here I can give Benny a tip. Spend at least one week in New York, Jack. The rest of your cast would like to see the bright lights of Broadway while Jello pays the bills. Nothing like keeping the family happy. You might also lose Phil Harris. Think it over.

Grant Simmons

He worked for Walt Disney, animated for Tex Avery and brought Spider-Man to the small screen.

Yet Grant Simmons is one of the many pretty much unsung people who worked in the Golden Age of theatrical animation. Perhaps it’s because he died in 1970 before animation historians were getting untracked interviewing as many people as they could.

We’ve found one interview with him, comparatively early in his career. The Deseret News of Salt Lake City published a little biography of him on June 15, 1943. Simmons’ Utah connection was his parents were from there and he had gone to Brigham Young University.

The 1930 Census shows Simmons working in a bank, and he was still doing it when he married in January 1937. This story talks about how Simmons moved on from Disney to Columbia/Screen Gems. It is hard to say which cartoon at Columbia was his first; Film Daily mentions him in its review of The Dumbconscious Mind, released October 24, 1942, calling it “amusing and skillfully animated.”

BYU Student Scores As Animator
Grant Simmons Leaves Disney For Screen Gems, Inc.
By Norma Jean Wright
(Deseret News Hollywood Correspondent)
HOLLYWOOD — (Special)— Grant Simmons is an Animator at Columbia's Cartoon Studios called Screen Gems, Inc. . . and is the chap who did (and got screen credit for) the Elephant Ballet in the "Dance of the Hours sequence for Walt Disney's "Fantasia" . . and likewise was screen credited on Disney's "Dumbo" for the clown sequence! But before that he was a red-headed kid who played tough basketball for Manchester L. D. S. Ward when that team offered rough competition for anybody. He used to come around my quarters with the rest of the gang and raid the icebox. And his wit and sense of humor revealed itself then in the dozens of cartoons he made of everybody he knew, and some of them were not very complimentary.
That was the thing that carried him into Disney Studios and cartoon animation. When he finished high school at the John C. Fremont School, Grant went up to the BYU and studied art under the late Professor Eastman. But he had to quit . . because money doesn't grow on trees . . came back to Los Angeles and went to work for the Bank of America. Which was quite out of Grant's line, but he stayed there for three years—spending all his spare time and evenings . . attending art classes and drawing humorous cartoons of everybody at the bank.
Then one day in 1937 he sent some of those cartoons over to Disney Studios—and a few days later he was called in for an interview. That ended Grant's days at the bank—and started his days with Disney. They put him to work on "Snow White" as an apprentice . . and from then on he went up. Soon he became a full-fledged Animator—and worked on dozens of those short bits of entertainment we've all enjoyed. He also wrote a couple of "Pluto" shorts and animated them.
To animate a cartoon film the Animator must draw hundreds of little cartoons (with the action of each just a little different) so that when they are photographed in continuity the character moves. To be able to do this the cartoonist must thoroughly understand the movements and characteristics of the animal or person being animated—or if it be a created character, he must rely on the play of his imagination to get the most amusing performance from the character. Of course all cartoons are highly exaggerated versions of the true subject. So that the imagination of the cartoonist (Animator) is the thing that either makes or fails to make the film amusing. In the matter of imagination Grant Simmons excels! He is capable of making anything funny . . . so that his work in cartooning is highly humorous and charming.
Grant was with Disney for five very successful years. But soon after "Fantasia" was finished (about two years ago) Columbia Studios offered Grant an advanced opportunity in their newly organized cartoon studio Screen Gems, Inc., under the producership of Dave Fleisher—and Grant accepted. There they whip out twelve Technicolor and eighteen black and white shorts a year with newly created characters for each picture. However, the continued pressure of the war has changed things somewhat so that for the duration it looks as thought they will do very little besides training and instruction films for the U. S. Army and Navy. But that won't stop Grant. He'll make those funny too—if they don't watch out.
Grant was born in Pima, Arizona, a little, town in the Gila Valley—a son of Wallace and Wilmarth Hundley Simmons, both formerly of Provo . . . and is the second child of a family of six. When Grant was eight years old, later, in 1920, the family moved to Los Angeles and settled In Manchester Ward—where Grant's father presided as Bishop for a number of years. Grant is married to Bessie Graham, a neighborhood sweetheart, and they have a three-year-old daughter Arlene . . . and live in an apartment in Hollywood.

Columbia closed its Screen Gems studio in November 1946 and a tickle of cartoons was released until 1949. Simmons’ last short for Columbia was Lo, the Poor Buffal, released November 4, 1948.

Meanwhile, at MGM, changes were going on in the Tex Avery unit. In January 1946, Preston Blair was taken out and handed his own unit with Mike Lah. Animator Ray Abrams went with him. This is likely when Simmons was hired. The first cartoon with his name on it was Li’l Tinker, released May 15, 1948; Louis Schmitt’s models for that cartoon (originally called Smellbound) are dated June 5, 1946.

He liked to give characters big teeth. You can see it in a number of shorts, including the scene at the top of this post from Avery’s Garden Gopher (released in 1950).

Simmons worked on every cartoon in the Avery unit (including the period Dick Lundy was directing while Avery had some emotional time off) until it was closed in March 1953. He and Ray Patterson (of MGM’s Hanna-Barbera unit) formed a partnership to produce animated commercials for TV. Then they were also hired in June by Walter Lantz (Variety, June 16, 1953) , who had decided to increase both his commercial and theatrical production. Simmons and Patterson made two shorts with unknown animators for Lantz—Broadway Bow Wow’s (released in 1954) and Dig That Dog (released in 1955). One background in the former plants references to Avery, technical supervisor Bill Garrity, camera technician Mickey Batchelor and “Grantray.”

The pair also worked with animators Mike Lah and Stan Walsh on the half-hour U.S. Information Service cartoon Tom Schuler—Cobbler Statesman. There are conflicting reports as to when this propaganda film was made by Curt Perkins’ Sketchbook Films, but it aired on television on July 26, 1954, so it was either 1953 or ’54.

By that time, Patterson and Simmons hooked up with a New York-based producer who also branched out with a Canadian subsidiary based in Toronto. Variety reported on July 21, 1954:

Robert Lawrence Productions, N.Y. based telepix commercials and industrial producer, has set up its own animation company on the Coast in association with Grant Simmons and Ray Patterson. New company, Grantray Animation Inc., will work in conjunction with Lawrence on the latter's commercials in cases where combined animation and live-action and complete animation are called for. Lawrence said the outfit was formed because of a growing trend toward animated commercials on the part of sponsors and agencies. Equally important for the future, he said, are color commercials, where animation gives a greater degree of color control than live-action tint footage. Move is another indication of a trend among producers to set up their own animation facilities.

By 1957 “Lawrence” was added to the name of the company, with Patterson functioning as president and Simmons as secretary-treasurer (that banking experience came in handy). The same year, the company acquired larger quarters on La Brea Avenue to accommodate live-action production. It also began to win awards. In 1958, the company won top prize in a contest conducted by the Brewers’ Association of American for a spot for Grain Belt Premium beer. Another for Minneapolis Gas won at the First American TV Commercials Festival and Forum in 1960. There were others.

The studio apparently attempted its own series. What appears to be a pilot episode for Planet Patrol was directed by Simmons around 1960 and has been restored. You can read about it here, especially Mike Kazaleh’s expert history.

Grantray-Lawrence was also hired by other cartoon producers. If you see either Patterson’s or Simmons’ name on a cartoon in the early part of the ‘60s, they were subcontracted to make it. Two series were Dick Tracy and Mr. Magoo (both 1960) for UPA. They also worked on part of the debut episode of The Jetsons (1962) and other projects for Hanna-Barbera.

A larger job came in 1966. Variety reported on March 23rd:

Getting in on the swing to kiddie camp, RKO General reports it has bought for $1,000,000 a package of 105 6 1/2-minute color cartoon segments of Marvel Comics cartoon characters from Krantz Films. Already in production at Grantray-Lawrence Studios, Hollywood, the package will be programmed on RKO General's tv stations in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Boston and Memphis. Producer is Robert Lawrence.

Robert J. “Tiger” West, who had been with the pair since 1953, was upped to vice-president, with Sid Marcus and Don Lusk directing with Simmons and Patterson. A long-term lease was signed for new production facilities at Universal City Studios. Then Simmons, Patterson and Lawrence signed another deal with Krantz Films in January 1967 to animate 20 half-hour Spidermans to air on Saturday mornings in September.

But then it suddenly ended. Grantray-Lawrence closed in 1968. Its death doesn’t seem to have been noticed by the trades at the time. Patterson, who lived until 2001 and into the era of interviews by historians, simply said “We trusted the wrong people.”

Simmons banged on Friz Freleng’s door. He was hired in 1969 to direct the TV cartoon series Here Comes the Grump and also piloted a couple of DePatie-Freleng’s theatrical shorts. Simmons also directed some episodes of the Saturday morning Doctor Dolittle animated series that aired on NBC starting in September 1970.

He could do no more. Grant Alden Simmons died in Los Angeles on October 31, 1970 at the age of 57.

Someone loves putting together compilations of classic animators’ work, and has done it with scenes by Simmons. I can’t speak for the veracity of the identification but enjoy some fun animation.

My thanks to Kathy Fuller-Seeley for her great assistance on this post.

Screen Gems Santa

“Certainly here was a friend of the downtrodden!” says narrating dog Ronny, as the camera focuses on a long shot of a Salvation Army-type Santa Claus.



“Gratefully, I thawed my soul with the warmth of his abundant heart,” says the narration. The whole cartoon is based on the juxtaposition of the dialogue and the actions on screen. In this scene, Santa is anything but warm or abundant. He swats Ronny out of the scene with his bell.



Columbia/Screen Gems made some train-wreck cartoons, but this isn’t one of them. Flora (released 1948) is my favourite of the 1940 Columbias.

Gerry Mohr is perfect as the dog/narrator. I can’t recall him being in any cartoons until Hanna-Barbera hired him in the ‘60s for The Fantastic 4. Animation is by Grant Simmons, Paul Sommer, Chick Otterstrom and Jay Sarbry, with Dave Monahan joining Cal Howard on the story. The only disconcerting thing is you keep wondering when Woody Woodpecker will pop up because Darrell Calker scores part of this like a Woody cartoon.