Playhouse's Ford Dog

Some of the cleverest and best-looking animation in the 1950s was on TV commercials.

There were top-flight small houses on both coasts where a number of animators, layout artists and background painters took refuge from the major theatrical cartoon studios.

The commercials were hits, and well known to TV viewers of that era.

Here’s one example that was profiled in the June 1959 edition of American Cinematographer. It’s a shame the photos are low resolution, but they’re the first time I can recall seeing pictures of Chris Jenkyns (ex Sutherland, later of Jay Ward), Sterling Sturtevant (ex-UPA) and Bill Higgins (ex-MGM and Sutherland).

Note: Mike Kazaleh points out that Sterling Sturtevant is not in the second picture. It's actually Ade Woolery, who owned the studio.

THE TELEVISION COMMERCIAL EVERYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
...and how it was produced
By GEORGE W. WOOLERY

It started as a gag, according to Bill Melendez, director for Playhouse Pictures, producers of television film commercials in Hollywood. “When Tom de Paolo of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency asked us for some new ideas for the TV spot campaign of the Ford Dealers of Southern California, we worked up one or two story boards to submit to the agency. Then, in somewhat of a brain-storming fashion, we hit upon our ‘Thinking Dog’ as a gag. We liked it, sketched it out, and sent it to de Paolo along with the others for a chuckle.”

Two days later, Playhouse Pictures received the word that the choice had been made. It was the “Dog.” And that was the beginning of the one television commercial everybody is talking about.

Playhouse has created and produced commercials for the Ford Motor Company for the past five years, ever since the popular “IT’S a FORD!” commercial—probably the only other spot that has created as much comment for the company. But aside from the fact that the “Dog” was the most talked about commercial locally, it was not destined for greater exposure until the news of its success spread to other branches of the J. Walter Thompson agency that represent local Ford Dealers associations. In this manner, it caught on exactly like its predecessor of five years ago, and has zoomed to national prominence.

Within two weeks after its debut, the agency was besieged with requests for prints for use in San Francisco, Salt Lake, Seattle, Boston, Pittsburgh and other cities. It was shown nationally on the Ford Show, NBC-TV, and is being considered by the New York office of J. Walter Thompson for showing on an expanded schedule.

The success of this 20-second spot led immediately to its characterization in other media. The Dog has appeared in direct mail circulars, radio spot announcements, newspaper ads, posters for Ford Dealers’ show rooms, and 35mm prints have been made of the spot for showing in Drive-In theaters in the San Jose-San Francisco area. Doggy banks have been ordered by Ford Dealers as a give-away item for the kiddies. In fact, the commercial sparked a whole new campaign which will feature the Dog character in subsequent spots.

For those who may not have seen the commercial, it opens with a dog dusting a Ford and being queried by an off-stage voice. John Hiestand is the announcer; Hugh Douglas the voice of the Dog. The dialogue goes like this:

Announcer: “Ah, you there. What are you doing?”
Dog: “I’m dusting a Ford.”
Announcer: “Oh, are you a Ford owner?”
Dog: “No. I’m a dog.”
Announcer: “Do you think everyone should be a dog?”
Dog: “Well, that’s something everyone should decide for themselves . . . but I do think everyone should be a Ford owner, don’t you?”
The dog then enters the car and drives off.

Much of the credit for the commercial’s success is due to the J. Walter Thompson agency and to the agency’s Tom de Paolo who sold the idea to the Ford Dealers. For they had faith enough in the spot to purchase a saturation campaign in prime time to exploit the commercial.

The artis[t]ic and creative credit goes to Playhouse Pictures’ director Bill Melendez; Sterling Sturtevant, for layout and design; and to Chris Jenkyns and Ed Levitt, story and story sketch.

Including time for story development, planning and final approval, it took eight weeks to produce the 20-second spot. A variety of production problems arose during its animation and shooting. The first 300 drawings that went to make up the commercial were discarded after the pencil test, because the dog looked more like a porcupine than the canine that was desired. More drawings ensued, and eventually a character was conceived that animated more readily and looked more like the shaggy dog the production staff had in mind.

After it was animated, Melendez decided that the picture had to be entirely reanimated to develop more subtle and funny movements for the dog to better fit the voice on the sound track. So, another 300 drawings were discarded; and with air time already purchased for the commercial and the date drawing dangerously near, a new technique was tried to save valuable production time.

This time the dog was animated with pencil directly on frosted cels, thereby saving the time that would be required for inking in the conventional animation method. However, the dog had to be painted on the reverse side of the cels in order to appear as a solid figure against the Ford in the background, so this stage could not be skipped.

After the third set of 300 cels were checked and arranged in sequence by the scene checker, cameraman Allan Childs took about six hours to shoot the finished production, not counting eight hours of pre-production camerawork for pencil takes and changes. The production schedule had been met, and 16mm prints were ordered and delivered on March 21st for the air date deadline of March 23rd.

Perhaps the most difficult problem of all in the production of the commercial, was the search for the Dog’s voice. It had been earlier decided that the Dog’s voice had to be different, yet not irritating or rasping, and not imitating numerous voices of other cartoon dogs —rather, a welcome visitor to the family living room for its client, Ford.

Over sixteen well known character-voice actors were interviewed and auditioned. Hugh Douglas, CBS staff announcer, was chosen to give voice to the dog. This has led to casting him in a number of other commercials, and as the voice of a dog in an upcoming motion picture feature by Hal Wallis. John “Bud” Hiestand was cast as the offstage announcer who queries the dog. A cartoon character has since been developed for him that is being used in the sequel spots that are to follow the original “Thinking Dog” commercial.

The Ford Dog has skyrocketed Playhouse Pictures into national prominence. The studio, which was founded in 1952 by Adrian Woolery, a former partner at UPA, is now ranked one of the top five producers of animated commercials for television. But “Ade” Woolery is the first to point with pride to his talented staff. Almost all of them received their training in major studio cartoon departments. Sterling Sturtevant, layout and design for the dog, did the same work for the Oscar-winning animated cartoon “The Day Magoo Flew” at UPA. Chris Jenkyns was the story originator of the “John and Marsha” Snowdrift commercial. And Bill Melendez was nominated in 1958 for the highest award bestowed by the National Society of Art Directors.

All have worked on the many award-winning commercials Playhouse has turned out in the past, including the Gold Medal winner at this year’s Los Angeles Art Directors Club Exhibit, “Energetically Yours,” a color industrial film designed by Ronald Searle, which was produced for Transfilm and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. In all. Playhouse has been the recipient of six gold medals for its commercials, ten other first place awards, and over 40 certificates of merit or honorable mention prizes during its six years of operation. The studio has produced over 2,000 animated television commercials, business and entertainment films, since its founding.

Has the Ford Dog spot established a trend? In satirization perhaps, but more important, it has increased the value and prestige of the production studio as a story consultant for television commercials. Rare indeed are the times when a studio has the opportunity to lend an assist in a large campaign such as this. But it is in the field of story and story ideas that more studios are specializing in creating television commercials and utilizing the drawing wealth of experienced talent in the Hollywood entertainment field.

TV viewers throughout the country will he seeing more of the Ford Dog. A 20-second animated sequel now being televised in Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, features for the first time an animated cartoon character along with the shaggy mutt. The dialogue in the sequel runs like this:

Man: “Sit Up! ... Roll Over! . . . Speak!”
Dog: “Ford, Ford, FORD.”
Man: “No . . . say. Bow, Wow, Wow!”
Dog: “Oh . . . Ford, Ford, FORD.”
Man: “Look . . . Why can’t you say, Bow, Wow, Wow! like other dogs?”
Dog: “My mother came from Detroit.”
Man: (Resigned) “See your Ford, Ford, FORD dealer, today.”

Judging by its reception, this spot, too, will probably be seen nationally in the footsteps of its predecessor, for it generates a whole new series of gags, speculating on the exact ancestry of the popular Ford “Thinking Dog.” ■

Scrambled Aches Backgrounds

The mid-1950s saw a change in art styles at pretty well all of the cartoon studios, adopting a more stylised approach to characters and backgrounds.

Settings in the Roadrunner cartoons became increasingly representational. Here are some examples from Scrambled Aches, released by Warners in 1957. Maurice Noble laid out the cartoon, with Phil De Guard painting the backgrounds.



This is the most stylised art in the whole cartoon.



An attempt to identify the music over the opening credits has ended in failure. It may be a Milt Franklyn original.

A Cab Ride With Tex

Droopy warns the escaped con wolf not to move. Of course, we know what’s going to happen.

He gets in a cab that makes a wild perspective 180-degree turn. Here are some of the frames.



The cartoon is Dumb-Hounded (1944) by Tex Avery. No animators are credited, but we know Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams worked on this, with Johnny Johnsen painting the backgrounds, Heck Allen helping with gags, and Frank Graham and Bill Thompson providing voices.

Toreador, That Allen's Not a Bore

Fred Allen was known for his clever observations on various things, especially those he saw as inane, such as the bulk of show business. But he joined with writer Nat Hiken to come up with parodies of all sorts, from the musical Oklahoma to the operetta HMCS Pinafore to husband-and-wife morning radio shows. Several were re-used with some modifications; writing this kind of material would be impossible for 39 episodes a season.

Allen took aim at the radio advertising industry when he found the chance, but he didn’t leave it at doing a phoney commercial. On one show, he worked his puncturing of cigarette ads on the air into a version of the opera Carmen. His guest star that evening was Shirley Booth, whom we don’t exactly think of as a singer.

The broadcast was reviewed in the New York World-Telegram by Harriet Van Horne. We’re transcribed some of her reviews before. She seemed very sour on radio and television. In this review, though, she lauds Allen and Booth for their work.

Unfortunately, this story from the Allen scrapbook in the Boston Library has no date other than “1945” on the picture taken of it. After poring through old newspapers, it would appear the show was from February 9, 1947. Booth also guest-appeared with Allen on October 12, 1947 but the Daily Worker reported they starred in a parody of “Brigadoon” called “Broken Doon.” Allen brought her back on January 11, 1948 for a send-up of “Finian’s Rainbow.”

Allen Hits Top Form When Spoofing Radio
By HARRIET VAN HORNE
When Fred Allen sets his mind to parody, satire or burlesque, he is touched by moonbeams from a distinctly superior lunacy. At no time is his cutting edge keener than when he takes for a target the radio business itself.
Last night Fred took careful aim at the cigaret commercials. It was, in the opinion of many in the trade, the best score of the season. The oratory and balderdash of radio’s most objectionable tobacco plugs were lampooned in an operetta that made use of the melodies from “Carmen,” with lyrics from a pen dipped in vitriol, blended with Allen’s special brand of spoofing powder.
Singing the role of Carmen was Shirley Booth, whose razor-edged soprano will take anything—and frequently did in the early days of Duffy’s Tavern, when she played Miss Duffy. Her version of Carmen had a Brooklyn accent and a brazen way of sliding over and under the key.
Fred was Dr. Allen, the eminent cigaret authority, commissioned by the makers of Puffos to improve their product. Only thing wrong, he discovered, was that the cigaret contained nothing but tobacco. No treat, no treatment, no vapor-rub, no formaldehyde. “Gentlemen, you’re 50 years behind the times,” he told them. To the strains of the Habanera, Fred noted that “Raleigh cigarets were up a tree, ‘till I invented ‘whoosh,’ nine-o-three.”
“American Tobacco paid me a pretty penny,” he carolled, “for a Lucky that would sell in spite of Benny.”
To give the operetta some semblance of plot, Dr. Allen had a secret formula, which Carmen (last name Houlahan) is suspected of stealing. She denies this, and protests her love for Dr. Allen. “I fell in love with your pitcher . . . it was in the Medical Journal. You was doin’ somethin’ to a guinea pig.”
Somewhere along here, Carmen sings the Gypsy Song. In this case the words proclaim her the Queen of Nicotine. As a special fillip at the end, she quavers, “I don’t mean drene, or kerosene, just nicotine!”
To Dr. Allen’s accusations that she has designs on his new formula, Shirley confesses, “I came here, sent by my father dear, to snoop and pry and peer.” Her father, it turns out, is Mr. F.E. Boone of Lexington, Ky., the auctioneer on Jack Benny’s program.
But love for Dr. Allen is greater than duty, Carmen decides. She returns the formula (pronounced formerla) to Dr. Allen. Then a second complication arises with the appearance of Dick Riggs. He (Allen) would have you believe he is the father of Speed Riggs, Benny’s other tobacco auctioneer. He seizes the formerla and flees to the latakia drying room. He bars the door, a natural song cue. But this time the music is the Toreador Song. Fred brought the house down by bellowing, “Richard, I implore! Open the door!”
But there is no need for Richard to open the door. Carmen has given him the wrong paper. The Allen formula is safe; the new Puffo is saved. It is a miracle of blends—dried seaweed wrapped in oil-skin with a sponge tip. To this one of Dr. Allen’s colleagues asks meaningfully, as if he hardly dared hope, “You mean—?” “Yes,” said Fred. “It’s the only cigarette you can smoke under water.”
* * *
There aren’t many occasions when radio rises to the hopes its pioneers had for it. But Mr. Allen, when is good, comes closer to the ideal in radio entertainment than any other performer. His operatic satires are witty, sharp and wonderfully contrived. Wisely, he uses melodies familiar to all and keeps his lyrics simple. In the field of radio humor, and its [sic] an uneven field with foolish, dilapidated scarecrows marking the ruts—Mr. Allen is, it seems to me, our finest artist. I hope he never retires.
* * *
A special accolade is in order for Shirley Booth. She should be on the Fred Allen show every week, and if there’s ever a good-sized vacancy in Allen’s Alley, I hope Fred sees fit to give her a lease. If you listen to Shirley with a script in hand, you realize the fine creative artistry of her humor. She can make the most prosaic, pass-me-the-salt kind of line outrageously funny.
The dialog leading up to “Carmen” last night had some deft Allen touches. Shirley gave Fred a brief sketch of her operatic background. Besides being chanteuse on the Weehawken Ferry, she told of spending two seasons with Phil Spitalny.
Fred: You sang with Spitalny?
Shirley: No, I was in charge of the girls who played the ‘cellos.
Fred: You coached the ‘cello players?
Shirley: No, after each program, I helped pull their legs back into shape.
When Phil began calling his show The Hour of Charm, Shirley quit. “I didn’t wanna make a liar outa Phil,” she explained.

CBS signed Booth in early 1948 and hoped to develop a sitcom for her. It did. The show was about a Brooklynese school teacher. It was called Our Miss Brooks. As Variety put it in its April 21st edition: “CBS and the comedienne couldn’t see eye to eye and board chairman William S. Paley...was unhappy over the original audition record that was cut, and troubles and temperaments apparently piled up at the second auditioning last week.”

Booth went back to Broadway and collected three Tonys, as well as an Oscar before knocking on the Baxters’ door in 1961, getting hired as Hazel and winning two Emmys in the process. Allen continued to be praised in the press even after his death in 1956.

The Show Must Go On

Fire is destroying Andy Panda’s piano but he is determined to finish Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu Opus 66.



Woody and effects animator Sid Pillet are a little late, but they put out the fire. It's a musical triumph!



La Verne Harding and Les Kline are the credited animators in Musical Moments from Chopin, released in February 1947. Ben Hardaway and Milt Schaffer provided the story, with Ted Saidenberg and Ed Rebner providing the piano music under the direction of Darrell Calker.

Only six Miniatures were made before Walter Lantz temporarily suspended operations. They all have something to enjoy; this one has the drunken horse on the barn rafters.

Octopopeye

An octopus becomes a weapon as Popeye and Bluto fight over an immobile treasure chest under water in Dizzy Divers (1935).

In maybe the most imaginative gag in the cartoon, which takes half a reel just to get to the treasure, Popeye punches the octopus (while muttering “puss” a lot) into a pinwheel, which rolls and picks up Bluto before crashing into a sunken a ship.



The octopus collapses in a heap and ends its acting career.



Willard Bowsky and Harold Walker are the credited animators in this ho-hum effort. Wimpy is wasted with very little to do. There are few real off-the-wall gags you expect from the Fleischers and there is reused punching animation.

Looking Forward — Except for Dinner

You can’t be bright and cheery all the time.

Jack Benny wasn’t.

He was reaching close to 80 in the early 1970s and seems to have been doing an awful lot of travelling. It had to have taken a toll. Witness this feature story from the Palm Beach Post of May 11, 1972. Jack has flown in for a convention appearance in Florida, and then had to fly to New York City for another performance. He seems particularly cranky—tired of “cheap” jokes, dismissive of his 23-year career on radio, basically telling Irving Fein to get lost when (and I would bet this wasn’t the first time) trying to get some food into him.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, Jack told reporters he didn’t want to think about what he did in radio. In this case it’s odd, considering a PBS special aired the same night as this story where he, George Burns, Edgar Bergen and others were interviewed about what made them successes on radio. But he went on the record saying he looked forward, not backward, in his career. Radio was backward in time.

It's Vintage Jack Benny
By SUSAN HIXON
Post Staff Writer
The invitations stated "black tie only'' and there stood Jack Benny wearing a navy blazer and a red-striped tie.
"It's my fault," the public relations man for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores convention said. "I forgot to tell you."
"If it's your fault, then I won't go change." Benny said. "I'll just make a joke about it when I go on tonight."
He walked in front of a full-length mirror at the Breakers Hotel.
"I don't look so bad." he said, turning around. "I know a joke," his manager said. "Tell them that if you had known it was formal you would have rented a tuxedo."
Benny didn't laugh. "Or you could tell them you couldn't afford one," someone else suggested.
Jack Benny had heard his own jokes before, and wasn't particularly amused.
"Actually, I have two tuxedos with me," he said, "but when I eat I always get food all over myself."
Benny was performing last night at the convention in Palm Beach, before flying to New York for a Friar's Club testimonial dinner for himself and comedian George Burns.
"George and I have been friends for 50 years," he said. "A dinner for both of us should be exciting."
It is hard to imagine Benny is 78. Only his hands showed his age.
"I've been in show business more than 60 years," he said. "And I think humor today is the same as yesterday and yesteryesterday and yester-yesteryesterday. What I've been doing the past 60 years has been the same thing, only I've gotten a little better about it."
He wasn't interested in the "nostalgia" theme of last night's entertainment or reminiscences about his old days in radio.
"If anyone tells me how good I used to be. I say thank you, but I don't care. What I'm interested in is my next special or my next show and how good that will be."
He started off into space. "Nostalgia," he snorted, "those were the days, my eye. Those were the days only when we were living them. These are the days."
"But that doesn't mean," he shrugged, "that I'm going to undress or be in a pornographic movie. I still don't believe in those things."
Benny's manager, worried about the time, said. "Mr. Benny, your meal is ready."
"I'm not hungry," Benny said, "I'd rather talk."
His manager retreated, but looked reproving.
"It just happens that I'm not hungry." Benny ("Now everyone call me Jack") repeated.
He talked about things that aren't funny, as well as those that are.
"There are certain things I won't joke about, " he said. “I don't like political jokes. Oh, I do a few, but I don't deprecate anyone."
He looked at his small audience of reporters to see if they were agreeing with him.
"What I think about politics has nothing to do with what the country thinks," he said.
He laughed. "I did do one joke about the primaries: I said all the money the candidates are spending is like spending money on a girl who hasn't said yes yet. His manager approached again. "You've got to get something to eat before you go on."
Benny shrugged his Benny shrug. "All right, but I'm not hungry."
A photographer stopped him. "Before you leave, could I have one of those classic Jack Benny poses?"
"What's a classic Jack Benny pose?" Jack Benny asked. And then he folded his arms and tilted his head and everyone said "That's it." "So that's a classic Benny," he smiled.

The McKimsons Go North

Golden Age directors and animators never got residuals for the cartoons they made, any more than 1940s newsreel narrators, trombonists in musical shorts, or uncredited supporting actors in the ten-minute Joe McDoakes comedies.

But a few of them lived long enough to make a bit of money when the limited-edition cel business took off in the late ‘80s. Some were hired to draw them, then travelled around the continent, meeting fans, talking with reporters and promoting their wares.

Tom and Chuck McKimson were among them. Their more well-known brother Bob didn’t have the chance; he died in 1977. (In the photo, the order is Bob, Tom, Chuck). Among the stops were the two major cities in Alberta.

The Calgary Herald interviewed them for its edition of October 23, 1994, where there was a bit of reminiscing.

Animators Draw on Rich Talent
By FRED HAESEKER
Animator Tom McKimson won't reveal his exact age, but he began his career as a trainee at the Disney studios in 1928.
“I'm over 39,” is all he'll say. “Older than you think.”
In Calgary over the weekend with his brother Charles -- also an animator -- to promote their limited-edition cels and drawings at a local gallery, McKimson looks back fondly to the golden age of movie cartoons.
There were three talented McKimson brothers, and Tom was hired by Disney along with his late brother Bob. They worked there for two years before moving on to a new cartoon studio founded by Romer Grey, the son of western novelist Zane Grey.
Around 1930 the Disney studios were producing the Silly Symphony cartoon series, in which the action on the screen was made to match the rhythm of a pre-recorded music track, reversing what had until then been the customary production sequence.
Disney was also pioneering the use of color in animation.
“Color was new then,” McKimson said.
“Disney at that time had an exclusive on the three-strip Technicolor process. Warner Bros., and the others weren't able to use it till later.”
Walt Disney is known in Hollywood history as a hard taskmaster, but McKimson just says he was “real great” to work for.
“I played polo with Walt later on,” he said.
Bob and Tom eventually moved from the Romer Grey studios to Warner Bros., where they were joined in 1937 by their younger brother Charles.
Warner Bros., was the studio that spawned the most distinctive cartoon characters of the '40s and '50s, among them Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner and Daffy Duck. The McKimsons personally were responsible for the bombastic rooster Foghorn J. Leghorn, the manic Mexican mouse Speedy Gonzales, the slobbering Tasmanian Devil and Tweety, the baby-voiced canary perpetually pursued by the slow-witted puddy tat Sylvester.
“At the storyboard sessions we'd all pitch in” said McKimson. “The whole studio was divided into several animation units. Each unit would consist of a director, four or five animators, four or five assistant animators and four or five ‘in-betweeners.’ Then came the painting and the inking.”
The actual story was created on the storyboards.
“We'd make rough sketches of the action till we got a good setup,” McKimson said.
The dialogue was pre-recorded, and the sound man would mark the animation sheets so that the animators could synchronize the speech, music and sound effects with their drawings.
In the 1930s, when the McKimsons began working there, the Warner Bros., studio was still located in the heart of Hollywood.
“It took up most of two or three blocks along Sunset Boulevard,” McKimson said. “The Hollywood Freeway now cuts through there.”
The animation units were housed in an old two-storey wooden building in a corner of Warner's live-action lot -- a building that became known as “Termite Terrace” when it was discovered to be infested with the insects.
Tom McKimson worked at Warner Bros., from 1932 to 1939 and again from 1942 to 1947 after putting in a stint producing training films for the U.S. armed forces. He took an “indefinitive [sic] leave of absence” in 1947 -- a leave that turned into a career of more than 30 years at Western Printing and Lithographing. There McKimson supervised a staff of more than 100 illustrating comic books, comic strips and coloring books that featured characters from Disney, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as Warner Bros.,' Looney Tunes.
Comic books featuring such live-action movie heroes as Tarzan, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were also produced, with each being assigned to a specialist, McKimson said.
In recent years, Tom and Charles have been working on a book about the careers of all three McKimson brothers, but catering to a booming market in animation art has kept them very busy.
“We're travelling all the time,” said McKimson. “Last year we made 15 personal appearances, in New York, Denver, North Carolina, Seattle -- all over the place.”

Tom McKimson was a little more forthright to one of the Edmonton papers covering his visit. This was published two days earlier.

Cartoon Creators Still Laugh About Their Characters
By HELEN METELLA
Journal Entertainment Writer
Is there anyone raised on Saturday morning cartoons who doesn't break into a grin at the sound of Tweety's immortal line, “I tot I taw a puddy cat?”
Tom and Charles McKimson do, but for reasons different than yours or mine. The two brothers were animators at Warner Brothers studios during the golden age of cartoons.
In fact, Tom created the character of an adorable baby bird who mercilessly teases arch-enemy Sylvester the cat.
“But when Tom did the original model she [sic] was a pink, naked little bird,” chuckles his younger brother Charles.
“The censors wouldn't allow us to show a naked bird, so that's why they gave him feathers and colored him yellow.”
Despite being 87 and 85 years of age respectively, Tom and Charles McKimson clearly remember such anecdotal details of the cartoon era, an era whose artistic details have been largely lost to the junkyard.
Each second of a classic cartoon required the sketching and painting of 24 separate acetate cels, all meticulously done by hand. For a feature-length animated movie such as Snow White, that meant 300,000 individual cels.
The McKimsons personally produced thousands of cels to animate dozens of characters, many of which (Tasmanian Devil, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester Jr.) were created by their late brother Robert, who died in 1977.
However major studios such as Warners and Disney destroyed 95 per cent of these cels in the first 50 years of film animation's history. They didn't regard them as valuable original art and during the war years, they also needed to recycle the petroleum-based celluloid on which the images were painted, said Christina Van Dam, co-owner of the Edmonton gallery called The Art of Animation.
“It makes me just sick,” said Charles McKimson, who with his brothers, managed to save a great number of original drawings and cels.
Parts of that private collection will be on sale Sunday, when Charles and Tom appear at the gallery to sign Warner Brothers cels owned by local art connoisseurs.
The current boom in animation art began in 1984, when a former Disney animator named John Basmajian took 400 cels he'd preserved, to Christie's Auction House in New York City. The resulting excitement from buyers convinced both the studios and other private collectors that the curiosities they owned were worth big bucks.
Van Dam and her husband Christopher Reeves were in-the-know even earlier. The Edmonton natives began collecting cels in 1982, while they were living in Southern California, running a computer business. When they sold it a few years later, they began investing in earnest.
In 1992, the duo opened their first animation art gallery, here in Edmonton. Since then they've expanded to Calgary and Vancouver, with locations in Victoria, Kelowna and Winnipeg opening before the end of the year.
Annual sales are now over $4 million and the duo has ambitious plans for a 25-store franchise by the end of 1996.
An original production cel from a movie appreciates an average of 51 per cent a year, says Clay Stam, assistant manager at The Art of Animation.
“Two or three years ago you could have bought Der Fuhrer's Face (from the cartoon Donald Duck in Nutzi Land) for $4,200. Now it's $10,000.”
The world's most expensive cel -- a black and white Mickey Mouse -- recently sold at auction for an unbelievable $1.2 million.
There's nothing that pricey in the Edmonton gallery, but vintage cels (from the '30s, '40s and '50s) have tags of $15,000 and up and many are sold. Last week someone paid $29,000 for a cel of Snow White, which is possibly a bargain, considering less than 130 cels exist from that movie.
Stam says novice collectors should remember these guidelines when buying animation art:
* Original production cels were created for and used in the actual cartoon. They were hand-drawn by a team of animators (usually four or five) working to an individual director's interpretation of a character (which is why Bugs Bunny looks a bit different in cartoons directed by different people.) OPCs were then hand-painted by another set of technicians, usually on both sides of the cel. These are the most expensive cels to collect.
* Limited edition series cels were created by the studios after 1984. Using the original animator's drawings, they authorized another 200 to 500 pieces to be hand-painted, numbered and authenticated.
* Series cells are computer-generated reproductions produced by the studios after 1989. They are not hand-painted, although they are limited in number. They're the least expensive cels.
* The most valuable cels feature major cartoon characters (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny). They should show full bodies, centred in the frame and with eyes open. Signatures of the directors and animators increase the value.

People still collect animation cels (real and reproduced) and drawings, though they’re perhaps not as hot as they were at one time. And, fortunately, a book on the McKimsons did come out in 2012 authored by Bob’s son Bob, Jr. By then, all the senior McKimsons were gone. Tom passed away in 1998, Chuck in 1999.

Willie's Jungle Mate

Hmmm. Yes, they’re there.



They’re there even in poorly drawn in-betweens.



Willie Whopper’s jungle princess has breasts. The lei doesn’t cover her up, like they do in most of that Betty Boop cartoon about Hawaii. Of course, a Betty-like designed seemed to be used for all the heroines in the Willie series.



The National Board of Review magazine rated this cartoon “family.” Maybe it’s for the Stepin Fetchit stand-in, the Kingfish dialect from Amos ‘n’ Andy, or the dice and Ubangi jokes. One theatre manager in South Carolina simply put it to the Motion Picture Herald: “A very poor cartoon,” though one in North Carolina cheered it as “a good comedy that pleased all who saw it.”

Bob Stokes and Norm Blackburn, two former Harman-Ising artists, are credited with animating this Iwerks short, Jungle Jitters, with Carl Stalling handling the score. Harman-Ising would soon be taking over the MGM release from the Iwerks studio on September 1, 1934. This cartoon was still in production on June 4th, according to the Hollywood Reporter, and released July 28th.

Dixieland Droopy Opening

Tex Avery loved opening a cartoon with a pan of a background with an overlay on top of it to give it a 3D effect. He did it at Warner Bros. (In A Wild Hare, he also has Elmer Fudd animated between the overlay and the background) and he carried on doing it at MGM. He did it in Dixieland Droopy, a 1954 release.

We can’t show you the effect in still photos because the background moves at a different speed as the foreground overlay, but this will give you an idea of how the cartoon opened, and the style of art employed. The fence and wrecks are on the overlay. Avery then moves the camera in on the background and dissolves into a painting of the home of our hero, John Pettybone (played by Droopy).



I really love the stylised backgrounds in this short. They’re by Joe Montell, who later went to John Sutherland, then Hanna-Barbara and then Jay Ward. He later wrote a somewhat autobiographical book on being a gay artist.

I suspect Ed Benedict drew the layouts, but he only got a credit on Avery’s last two MGM cartoons. Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the credited animators. Uncredited is the narrator, Pee Wee Runt, played by blacklisted actor John Brown. His character’s name is a parody of Pee Wee Hunt, a Dixieland trombonist. Brown died three years after this cartoon was released at age 57.