Art Davis and His Real People

Art Davis gets a thumbs-up from me as a director at Warner Bros.

What Makes Daffy Duck? is a great cartoon by any standard; I really enjoy his unit’s boisterous, lippy version of Daffy. Porky Pig is great fun in his hands, especially in Bye Bye Bluebeard. He gave us the Goofy Gophers (vs. the Shakespearean dog). And though his one Bugs Bunny short, Bowery Bugs, has a different feel to it than Bugs cartoons from the other units, it’s a nice little comedy.

I won’t go into a long dissertation about Davis’ directorial work at Warners. Others have done it. And for the ultimate profile of Davis, Devon Baxter has accomplished that in this Cartoon Research piece. This post is prompted solely because I stumbled across a clipping about him in the Saturday, Feb. 8, 1930 edition of the Yonkers Herald. I’m not sure if it’s been re-printed anywhere, so I’ll do it here. I don’t know how old the picture of Davis is; I don’t think he had a lot of hair in 1930.

LOCAL CARTOONIST OFF FOR HOLLYWOOD
Arthur Davis, a native this city, who formerly resided at 155 Hawthorne Avenue, is leaving on Monday [Feb. 10] For Hollywood, Calif., where he will continue drawing animated cartoons for the screen. His present series of "Krazy Kat” cartoon are well-known to movie, audiences throughout the country. Previously Mr. Davis has animated "Mutt and Jeff,” "Out of the Inkwell," and “Song Cartoons," which have been extremely popular.
Mr. Davis left his studies at the Yonkers High School to enter the animated cartoon profession, and during his nine years' affiliation with the industry has been very successful. A brother, Emanuel Davis, is also an animated cartoonist, now with "Aesop's Fables" studio. Mr. Davis is the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. S. Davis, of 199 Hawthorne Avenue, this city. In 1928 he married Miss Ray Kessler at New York City, and they have one child, Herbert. His wife and child will accompany him to the coast where they will make their home.

Art was a 15-year-old honours student at Yonkers High School when this art of his was published in the Herald on January 28, 1921. He won $10 for this drawing and $4 for another drawing he submitted. Davis was musically inclined, with the Herald mentioning that year he was a first violinist in the school's orchestra. Besides finding his way into the animation business, Davis was the official artist of the Chester Club of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, drawing caricatures of members in the group’s programmes as well as “novelty placards.” He showed one of his animated cartoons at a 1928 club banquet.

We'll have more about his animation career below, but let us mention Davis was let go at the former Mintz studio when management found Bob Wickersham would direct for less than what Art was being paid. After a few months, he took a job animating at Warners in 1942 for $70 a week; he had been making between $300 and $400 at Columbia.

The Warner Club News of June 1945 mentioned Davis had taken over the Clampett unit, with George Hill and Hubie Karp writing for him, and their first cartoon was Bacall to Arms; it had been started by Clampett. Karp never got screen credit at Warners. The January 1946 Club News reveals Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner were now writing for Davis.

Davis was the last director hired so when Ed Selzer decided to go to three units from four, Davis’ unit was disbanded. Davis was picked up as an animator by Friz Freleng; the two had worked together in New York. He stayed until 1960 when he was asked to be let out of his contract because he felt the studio broke a promise to let him head a commercial unit. Warren Foster got him in at Hanna-Barbera, where he animated some cartoons, including El Kabong, Jr., then became a story director. His last cartoon short made directly for Warner Bros. was Quackodile Tears (1962), on a freelance basis for Friz.

When animation historians sprouted up with revolutionary research that’s now considered basic by cartoon fans who weren’t alive back then, the public press picked up on it, and pretty soon the papers had feature interviews with Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett. But what of poor Art Davis, the director of the most dispensable unit at Warner Bros.?
It turns out one paper did interview him. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Sunday entertainment section on July 3, 1994 published this article.

Golden animator director gave character to cartoons
“What brings you here laughing boy?” Daffy Duck to murderous wolf in 1948 "What Makes Daffy Duck"
By Martin Renzhofer
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
At the time, Art Davis wasn't aware he was doing anything more than smacking America's funny bone.
"The object was to make them funny," the 90-year-old animator said. "So we devised all sorts of ways to do that."
What Davis did was contribute to the golden age of cartoons. Although not as well known as his contemporaries—Bob McKimson, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery or Chuck Jones—Davis was an important cog in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes machine.
From 1935 to 1955, directors and animators crafted hundreds of cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and others.
The animators fleshed out their characters, giving them lasting influence around the world.
Bugs Bunny is "any wise guy from Brooklyn, while Daffy is a take-charge guy who doesn't know what's going on—and it doesn't matter. Characters were taken from certain types of people," Davis said. "Personalities had a lot to do with it. Despite the screwball things we had them do, they were real people."
Through the years, Davis directed 22 Warner cartoon shorts and as an animator contributed to many others, including the 1958 Academy Award-winner for short subject, "Knighty Knight Bugs."
Davis' "real people" still inhabit Saturday-morning and weekday-afternoon TV.
While he was creating the characters, it never dawned on Davis that he would be part of animation history. "You don't think of those things when you're doing it,” Davis said in his Salt Lake home. “It was like any other job—you have to pay the rent.
“I always liked the idea of being an animator. It’s been my life, ever since I was a kid."
Davis doesn't exaggerate. He began his career in the silent-film era and concluded it in glorious sound and color with the Pink Panther.
Born in Yonkers, N.Y., Davis, at 16, began his career as an errand boy for the Jefferson Film Corp. His older brother Mannie already worked for Jefferson, producer of "Mutt & Jeff" silent shorts.
Davis quickly became involved in the creative side of production, erasing pencil lines from inked drawings. Artists drew the cartoon and inkers added tone and shade.
"In those days," Davis said, "no celluloid [large clear plastic frames used in filmmaking] was used. We photographed the drawings."
Once he moved to the Fleischer studio in the early 1920s, Davis' career as an animator officially began. Max and Dave Fleischer were responsible for "Koko the Clown'' and "Out of the Inkwell," including the sing-along silent cartoon shorts with a bouncing ball.
Davis was the bouncing ball.
"The bouncing ball was a round thumbtack on a black stick," he said. "These were shot live action. I used to bounce the ball and keep time, singing with a ukulele."
During these early days, Davis met another struggling animator—Walt Disney. He has few regrets in life, but one is not accepting Disney's offer of work.
“Three times he asked me," said Davis. "But I was under contract to someone else. They would always give me more money. Most of us didn't have the foresight that Disney had."
As a 22-year-old, Davis was doing well, earning $85 a week.
"My friends thought I was a rich man, considering that married men were making $20 a week, which was good money in those days."
In 1928, Davis joined the Charles Mintz Studio, and for the next decade was a one-man crew: story man, layout artist, animator and director.
Davis’ style began to emerge. The pace of his cartoons became fast and furious with characters that barely stay in control.
"Some of those old cartoons look primitive," Davis said. "We sent through periods where we struggled to make them better."
He concentrated on improving the depth of field in cartoons, striving for a three-dimensional look rather than having characters merely move from left to right on the screen.
Davis became a perfectionist.
"I like to wind things up correctly so that everything has a conclusion," he said. "Everything has a reason. It concludes itself in a logical manner so it doesn't leave the audience hanging."
During his time with Mintz, Davis ran into a bit of trouble with the Hays Office, an organization created in the 1930s to keep film entertainment "wholesome."
A Davis creation, a cartoon titled "Babes at Sea," had naked babies.
"King Neptune frolicks with naked babies swimming in schools," said Davis. "The Hays Office said we had to put pants on them. How do you do that?"
So Davis erased the belly buttons and drew a line around their waists for pants.
Davis also created "The Early Bird and the Worm," "The Foolish Bunny," "Mr Elephant Goes to Town" and "The Way of All Pests."
Cutbacks eventually cost Davis his job at Mintz, which was purchased by Columbia in the mid-1930s.
So Davis tried his hand at business. He purchased a liquor store with his brother Phil, who died six months later.
"I didn't do well," he said. "I was never a businessman and I didn't like what I got into after I got into it. I took a beating when I sold it. You had to be a crook to be a good businessman, and I just couldn't take it."
Davis went to work as an animator for Warner Bros. in 1941. It wasn't a completely happy experience. Davis was hired to replace top Warner Bros. animator Bob Clampett as a unit director and never got over the feeling of being the odd man out.
But Davis was part of the world’s largest cartoon industry, which included four directors and hundreds of layout artists and animators. The characters they created still have a lasting effect. Among Davis titles are "Bowery Bugs," "The Goofy Gophers," “Mexican Joyride," “Quackodile Tears" featuring Daffy Duck and "Odor of the Day" featuring Pepe le Pew.
Eventually, his unit was disbanded, but he continued as an animator until leaving in the early 1950s. The production company was thinking of expanding into television and reactivating Davis' crew.
But the plan fell through.
“They were against TV," Davis said. "They were afraid of it. They didn't know how it was going to work out."
Ironically, it is television that has kept two generations of cartoon-watchers laughing. And Davis continued contributing to that by working with DePatie-Freleng and then Hanna-Barbera, giving the same attention to Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the Pink Panther that he gave Bugs Daffy and Porky.
These days, Davis admires the new computer-generated animation. He loves the new Disney animated films and can't stand the thought of MTV's "Beavis and Butt-head."
“It's a monstrosity," he said, adding that some of today's TV cartoonists are setting back the art form of animation instead of taking it forward.
"We were trying to improve animation. We made a career of our own desires to make entertainment.”

Davis died at the age of 94.

While he wasn’t one of Warners’ major directors, he did his best work there. It’s a shame financial constraints killed his unit as we can only guess how much more he had to offer.

Darkness Visible

Director Wilfred Jackson goes for dark-light visuals in a shoot-em-up scene in the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Klondike Kid (1932).

Here’s an example from when Pete opens fire in a saloon.



Next scene.



Wait a minute!



Mickey and beer?! Yeah, that wouldn't fly today. Think of the children.

Hide Me, Too! It's Not Fair!

Bugs and Thugs (1954) has a wonderful routine where Bugs hides the thugs inside a stove and pretends the police are coming—then the whole thing happens again when the real police show up.

Bugs Bunny gets Rocky to crawl inside, then Muggsy comes into the scene, crying and demanding to be saved from the cops, too. Here are some random frames. The animator has to take Muggsy’s small feet and girth into account to make him move.



There's a cut to Bugs looking at us and remarking: "I must be dreaming. It couldn't be THIS easy."



Bugs gets some help to hide Muggsy. Note the quickness is enhanced by brushwork and multiples in the second frame.



Ken Champin, Art Davis, Virgil Ross and Manny Perez are the animators for this Friz Freleng cartoon, copyrighted in the shutdown year of 1953.

A Year at the Top Wasn't Tops

When Late Night With David Letterman premiered in 1982, the only one on the show I didn’t know was Letterman. I never saw his daytime show. I knew Bill Wendell’s voice from the Garry Moore version of To Tell the Truth.

Paul Shaffer I recognised from one of those sitcoms that I swear no one else watched. It was called A Year at the Top and co-starred Greg Evigan, and featured Nedra Volz as a stereotypical feisty old lady.

“You know, Yowp,” I said to myself. “You haven’t written about that show here. Why don’t you find a couple of old clippings about it?” “That I will,” I answered to myself.

The first clipping is an Associated Press story that appeared in newspapers starting in late December 1976.

Two old 'kids' reunited in 'A Year at the Top'
By BOB THOMAS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The indefatigable Norman Lear has gone to the devil for his latest television comedy, reworking the Faustian legend in today's pop music field.
The half-hour is called "A Year at the Top," and that's what a trio of old-time entertainers sell their souls for. They are Vivian Blaine, Robert Alda and Phil Leeds. Their diabolical deal allows them to transform into a now young singing group that swiftly ascends to the top of the charts.
"A Year at the Top" evolved from a partnership of Lear's T.A.T. Communications Co. and Don Kirschner Productions. Music man Kirschner created the series with Woody Kling and supplies the music. Lear is executive producer; Darryl Hickman, producer.
The show debuts on CBS Jan. 19, and the first tapings are going on at the Lear compound in Metromedia Square. All of his series, from "All in the Family" to "Maude," headquarter at the local KTTV studio, owned and operated by Metromedia.
The star of "A Year at the Top" is Mickey Rooney, also an old-time entertainer, but one who decides against making the youthful comeback. The other day he was rehearsing a scene with his customary verve, playing with his "converted" partners, Greg Evigan, Paul Shaffer and Judith Cohen, who portray the young singing sensations.
“The format is terrific," said Alda, who was observing the rehearsal. "It has appeal to both the young and the middle aged. The young will get their kind of music from the three kids, and Mickey, Vivian, Phil and I will supply the music from our era. Plus some very funny situations.
"My only concern about doing the series was that I didn't appear opposite my son Alan on ‘M*A*S*H.’ But we're both on CBS, so that's no problem."
After the scene concluded, Rooney returned to his dressing room for a conference on how to punch up the comedy. He is wearing the stubble of a beard that he grew for "Pete's Dragon" at Disney. He conferred with a producer who looked familiar behind his own black beard.
"Imagine me working with Darryl Hickman after all these years!" Mickey said. "Why, we were kids together in 'Boys Town' back in 1940. Make it 1938."
"And I was reminded of 'Boys Town' the other day," said Hickman, a onetime child actor. "Mickey did a scene with the three young people in our show, and when he finished I noticed that all of them had tears running down their cheeks. I remembered watching Mickey do a scene in 'Boys Town' when I was 9 years old, and I was crying myself."
"Isn't this great, me and Darryl being back together?" Rooney said. "We've hardly seen each other since. I was busy getting married, and he was learning to be an executive."
"A Year at the Top" is Rooney's first TV series since the ill-fated "Mickey" of 15 years ago.
"It was on and off the air before you knew it," he said. "I pleaded with Selig Seligman of ABC not to call it 'Mickey' and not to give me three children, a Filipino houseboy and have me running a motel. I want to play a character who had had three or four wives and was in alimony trouble. You know, like Mickey Rooney. It's a great device to kid yourself, like Jack Benny always did.
"Then they scheduled the show opposite Jackie Gleason in his first season with 'The Honeymooners.’ Bombsville.”

When I read this story, I was confused. I realise I haven’t seen the show in almost a half century, but didn’t remember any of this. Robert Alda? Phil Leeds?

Well, here’s what happened. The show was taken off the schedule before it even got on the air.

Val Adams of the New York Daily News reported on Jan. 11, 1977 that, a week earlier, CBS said the premiere had been postponed a week, then announced the previous day that the show would be replaced. Lear was quoted in a network news release: “We have asked the CBS television network to allow ‘A Year at the Top’ to be shut down . . . for repairs and they have graciously granted us permission to do so. After alterations are made, we will be back in production in March for possible airing in the fall on CBS.”

Adams noted this was the second go-around for the concept. Lear had produced a pilot called Hereafter, which aired on NBC on November 27, 1975 (Thanksgiving). Josh Mostel played Nathan, the devil's youngest son, who agreed to transform three over-the-hill singers, played by Leeds, John J. Fox and Robert Donley, into a young rock group in exchange for their souls after a year of success. Blaine, Shaffer and Evigan were in this version, as well as Antonio Fargas, Don Scardino and guest star Ed McMahon.

If the reason for Lear’s sudden decision to re-work the show is known, I haven’t been able to find it. However, let’s look at the “Eye on TV” column from the Newark Star-Ledger of Aug, 5, 1977, the day the show premiered.

The waiting ends for 'A Year at the Top'
By JERRY KRUPNICK
What does it take to get a new television series on the air? Well, along with the usual ingredients—money, talent and guts—add in a heaping spoonful of patience and perseverance.
For nearly three years now, Norman Lear and Don Kirshner have been trying to get air time for a musical situation comedy straight out of "Faust" which they were calling "Second Chance."
At first, it was "penciled in" for the NBC lineup, only to be scratched at the last minute. Undaunted, they changed the premise slightly, changed the title to "A Year at the Top" and changed the network to CBS.
They were all set to go again this January. Air time was announced, the promotion hoopla was going full speed, everything was falling into place, when. . .
Kirshner and Lear sat down in a screening room and decided a week or so before opening night that what they had wrought was really all for naught. So they voluntarily yanked the series before it could be unreeled.
They have spent all spring and half a summer making changes in their godchild. This time out, they have gotten rid of more than half the cast and gotten rid of the original premise—a group of aging musicians trade their souls to the devil so that they can come back for a year as kid rock superstars. What they kept was the title, along with veteran Mickey Rooney and a pair of talented youngsters named Greg Evigan and Paul Shaffer.
Greg and Paul who?
Evigan, described by Kirshner as a combination Tom Jones-John Travolta, is a young New Jersey singer-musician from Englishtown who walked into Don's office, three years ago to audition and has been labeled for stardom ever since. Shaffer, whom Kirshner enthusiastically casts in the Elton John-Paul Simon mold, was the musical conductor of "Saturday Night Live" before joining the Kirshner-Lear camp.
The series has now been entirely restructured around them—it will make it or fail on their talents, their charisma, their luck. And they get their first crack at "A Year at the Top" tonight at 8 p.m. on Channel 2. This time, Kirshner and Lear feel that they've kept on trying and finally have gotten it right.
Apparently CBS feels that way too. Even though "A Year at the Top" is arriving nominally as a five-week summer replacement series, it is being kicked off with a one-hour opener, instead of its usual 30-minute format, and the word is that if the Nielsen numbers are big enough, the series could hang around for the fall.
The opener certainly has enough pluses going for it. Kirshner and Lear are right about their two new stars—Evigan in particular is destined to make it big, if not in this show, then somewhere else. He's got enough boyish charm and handsome looks to drive the teenyboppers gaga. Greg's a winner . . . and his partner Paul could also score in an oddball sort of a way.
Rooney, of course, is an old pro fr[o]m the word go. He makes it all look so easy.
Gabe Dell is another veteran in the cast who knows what character acting is all about. Unfortunately, his approach to the role of the devil's son disguised as a talent agent is a little too fey for our liking. It's a far cry from “The Dead End Kids.”
Priscilla Lopez, who was nominated for a Tony Award when she sang "What I Did For Love" in "A Chorus Line," shows up in the opener as Greg's girlfriend and she's absolutely lovely in a sad-eyed, Piaf-Garland way.
And Nedra Volz (she was grandpa's girlfriend in "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” is delightful in a continuing role as the boys' grandmother, who keeps an eye on their budding careers.
Oh yes, the plot. Gabe, as the son of the devil, has promised his old man two more souls. Mickey, meanwhile, arrives with the boys and Priscilla in tow. It seems they have written a musical which he wants to present on Broadway. Can Gabe put up the dough?
Gabe figures he's better off grabbing the two boys for the Hell of it and makes them a career offer they can't refuse. At the end of the first hour, they are on their way to big time stuff. Mickey and Priscilla, meanwhile, are giving their regards to Broadway after conning Gabe out of the front money for the show.
So much for the pluses. On the negative side, Priscilla Lopez is absolutely wasted in tonight's first installment. She's allowed to sing a few bars of harmony in one of the songs and that's about it. Her appearance is listed as that of a guest star and she probably won't be back for the rest of the initial series.
The same is true with Mickey. He is guesting also and won't continue as a regular, which is a pity. He and Gabe Dell play so well off each other and provide all of this musical sitcom's comedy. Kirshner and Lear, however, have opted for the youth market. An album by Greg and Paul is already in the works. Look out for fan clubs and lots and lots of hypo. If "A Year at the Top" is to get its chance, they reason, it will, be because their two young unknowns have caught the public's fancy.
If CBS doesn't buy the show, in fact, the producers are prepared to package it a la “MH2” and peddle it to independent stations. They feel their patience and perseverance is about to pay off. And they want it to last for more than “A Year at the Top."

A Year at the Top didn’t last a year. It barely lasted a month, and nowhere near the top. CBS jettisoned the show after five episodes.

1977 wasn’t the best year for Evigan. Lear must have liked him, as he was cast earlier that year in Lear’s soap opera/gender role satire All That Glitters, which vanished from syndication after about two months. He soon had more success, spending a couple of seasons starring opposite a chimp in B.J. and the Bear.

As mentioned, Shaffer went on to a side-kicking career reacting to Letterman, though one night on the show, Chris Elliott did an incredibly funny, not-too-exaggerated impersonation of Shaffer (similarly, Elliott’s father Bob, of Bob and Ray, did an equally cutting and accurate Arthur Godfrey) which was more like Shaffer than Shaffer. That wasn’t all. Shaffer proved himself to be a very fine musician and band-leader.

It turns out both Evigan and Shaffer had more than a year at the top. It just took a little time.

I'm an Indian, Too. And a Tennis Player. And a...

A quick series of costume changes makes up part of Magical Maestro.

Below are pairs of consecutive frames. There are no transitions. It’s one outfit in one frame, and a different one in the next.

10 frames in a tux.



48 frames as an Indian.



44 frames as a tennis player.



32 frames as a prisoner.



98 frames as a football player.



Tex times the action on ones and twos, except for a 13-frame hold when Poochini looks at the football he's holding.

Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton animated this short, with Rich Hogan providing the story. If any cartoon is to be seen on a theatre screen, it is this one. The perspective is different (and, I think, better) than watching it on a TV or computer.

The cartoon was released on February 9, 1952 but Thad Komorowski has found Avery had begun work on it by September 1949.

Hooch and a Camel

Van Beuren cartoons had unexplainable gags that came out of nowhere. And so did their predecessors, the silent shorts from the Amedee Van Beuren-owned Fables studio.

The start of Red Hot Sands, released on August 14, 1927, has Milton Mouse and Henry Cat (Movie Age of the day calls him "Tom Cat") riding a camel in the Egyptian desert. For absolutely no reason, the camel splits in half, Henry pulls a bottle of Prohibition-era hootch from inside the camel and starts drinking from it.



The camel is not impressed.



The camel’s head retreats through the front half of its body, grabs the bottle, and puts it back. Henry pulls the camel together again and the journey continues.



You may be thinking “Wait! What? Why?” Don’t bother. I figure one of the animators pulled a bottle out of a desk drawer during a story/drinking session and that inspired this gag.

As a bonus, this Fable has rolling-skating long-horned steers. Just like in Aesop's day.

Paul Terry was given screen credit, but one expert on-line says this is a Mannie Davis scene.

Thanks to Craig Davison for enabling screen grabs of this cartoon.