Hollywood Cartoons – American Animation in its Golden Age

By Michael Barrier

Oxford University Press, 1999

6½" x 9½", 650 pages

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Another cartoon history book. A huge 650 pages, written by a scholar who spent several years studying the development of the cartoon industry in its golden age, that is from 1911 to 1966. Although written by a scholar, this is a much casual read than "7 Minutes" by Norman Klein. It actually reads like a novel. This book is different from the other cartoon history book in that the author is interested in the individuals and teams who built that industry and who developped the techniques and tools as well as the circumstances in which those techniques and tools were developped. As such, it is a good complement with other cartoon history books such as "Of Mice and Magic" which is more interested in the studios, their owners and the films they produced, and "7 Minutes" which is more interested in the social, economics and cultural environment that shaped the way authors and animators of animated cartoon shaped their stories and characters. The research that lead to writing Hollywood Cartoons is mainly based on several interviews of the peoples who worked in the industry during those golden years.

Like every history book, this one starts with a chapter about the beginning of the cartoons by pioneers such as Emile Cohl and Windsor McKay and then the people who created and worked at the early Raoul Barré Studios, John Randolf Bray studios, the beginning of Max Fleischer as an animator there, how he later created the Fleischer Studio and how Koko the clown was developped, Pat Sullivan's Felix the Cat studio that was actually directed by Otto Mesmer, and other such small studios. The chapter ends with the very beginnings of Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Arman and Rudy Ising in the animation business, the creation of Walt Disney studios and how Disney envisioned cartoons up to the production of Steamboat Willie and Skeleton Dance. It is interesting, in this first chapter, to see who was who, how they moved from one studio to another studio, in which circumstances and what they brought to the other studios.

In the early days, all animation studios were located in New-York. Only Walt Disney studio was, later created in Hollywood. This created a great culture difference between the east-coast studios and the west-coast studios. Throughout the book, it is most interesting to observe how that culture difference clashed as west-coast animators moved to east-coast studios and as east-coast animators moved to west-coast studios. The culture difference was so great that people moving from one coast to the other had great difficulties adapting. They generally couldn't last for very long.

The east-coast studios produced formula cartoons where the authoring was sketchy at best and the animation was done ad lib by each animator. No story or animation quality control was in place whatsoever. Whatever the animator produced was what was put on film and the main constraint imposed on each animator was that he met a quota of animated film footage per day. Budget allocated to each film was low.

The west-coast studio (Disney) was mainly driven by Walt Disney evolving vision of what cartoons should be. Stories as well as animation was strictly controled and approved by Walt Disney himself and every output had to meet Walt standard of quality. To this end, Walt had installed a production structure where story and animation could be verified at every point of production and if necessary, corrected or even redone. Money was generally no object. Disney studios even put in place drawing classes with renowned teachers free for the employees.

The general pattern for people moving from west to east was that they tried to bring the "quality" culture to studios who just didn't believe in those quality concept and the expenses that were necessary to control that quality. The typical east-coast artist did not have any art formation and generally believed that art formation was bad for the artist. In the east-cost studios, the west-coast artist quickly met resistance and rejection and became ostracized until they left.

The general patttern for people moving from east to west was that they came along with an engrammed baggage of bad drawing habits and animation tricks that did not fit with Disney's view of animation quality. Disney wanted his studio to evolve toward a film and acting quality and he already had quite a difficulty prying his studio toward that goal. East-coast artist who could't adapt were promptly layed-off by Walt Disney. This culture clach became so bad that at some point, Disney decided to never hire any east-coast artist anymore and instead started hiring young artists who came directly from west-coast art schools.

Almost half of the book is spent on showing how the Disney's vision evolved in the studio and how the studio evolved to meet that vision. Disney had a grand vision and took the actions necessary for meeting it. That included hiring the proper set of artists, recognizing their talents and putting them in a position where they could serve Disney's vision the best. Walt Disney was a poor communicator, though, and it is mainly through a lot of trials and errors from the animators that he could finally pry the studio toward his goal. He could recognize when an animator was going in the right direction and promote him in a position where he could have an influence on the others.

One chapter is entirely devoted to the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the evolution of the studio culture and techniques for producing this film. But before Snow White could even be thinkable, the studio and the artist working there had to reach an animation quality. At this point, Disney studios were producing shorts for theater showing just like all the other studios. But Disney wanted to move to features. So more an more of the shorts were designed so the artist could develop how to show personalities in their animation. The problem was that nobody knew how to do that. This turned out to be a long process of progressive refinement which l;asted for several years with a few quantum leaps here and there. Each of those quantum leaps corresponded to the discovery of one of the 12 principles of animation. The highest point, in the book, was when Norm Fergusson, a former accountant, animated Pluto with so much personality that this was considered a breakthrough by the studio. Attempts to replicate that feat in later shorts proved to be illusory though, because, even though Fergusson could animate Pluto with a lot of lersonality, nobody knew how he did it and Fergusson himself could not explain it either. It took several more years, for the Disney animators to truely integrate what this all meant.

It is truely fascinating to read how the culture evolved and built itself in the Disney studio. How the individuals contributed, how the teams were formed and how they worked to achieve their feats. How the individuals were moved from department to department as Disney recognized their particular talents. How the studio had difficulties in understanding the fundamentals of their most striking evolutionary leaps and how they struggled in trying to understand and replicate them, oftentime showing gross misunderstanding before getting it right a second time. And this lasted for years. Actually, still today, studying Disney's movies and applying the 12 principles of animation still do not guaranty an animated feature success.

The other half of the book is dedicated to the other studios: Fleischer studios, Terrytoon, Warner Brothers, MGM, UPA and other studios of which Warner Brothers takes a large place and MGM comes second. I must say, however, that 300 pages into the book was a long ride. At this point, I had difficulties keeping my interests at the same level as when I read the first half of the book.

The MGM story is interesting but short. The most striking event is the arrival of Tex Avery in the studio and how it changed the whole studio culture through the years. Tex Avery was mainly a loner though. Although he had to work with a team, and a very good team packed with very talented artists, he was truely the author and the imaginator. Still, it is interesting to see how the different member of his team could contribute. Tex was the main responsible for the stories, although he worked with authors, and the main responsible for the antics in his cartoons. But his team could innovate on the style front and the individual who contributed their own talent and vision are few but significative.

The Warner Brothers story is much more developped than the MGM story but much less developped than the Disney story. Still 3 chapters are dedicated to Warner Brothers. The Warner Brothers studio was an interesting place to work at. Leon Schlesinger was the boss there but he was not involved at all in the artistic aspect of the business. He watched that the teams met their budget restrictions and that each cartoon made profit but that was all. Basically, each team had carte-blanche about the subjects and the stories they chose, the characters and styles they developped. three directors made their mark there: Tex Avery, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones. Animators at Warner Brothers were picked from the other studios when the studio was created.

Tex Avery came in very early as a director and he had, in his team, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. Friz Freleng was already a director. The Avery team was moved into their own building and they started producing very noticeable cartoons. Frank Tashlin came in too to become a directlr. While working in Tex Avery unit, Chuck Jones moved out of the unit to decome a director, replacing Frank Tashlin. Eventually, Tex Avery got into an argument with Schlesinger and quit to eventually find a director's position at MGM. Bob Clampett took his place and his team produced some of the most memorable cartoons. As can be seen for anyone knowing a little bit the animation worlkd, those are all big names.

What I found interesting about the Warner Brothers story is how different cultures developped inside the same organization between Freleng Unit and Jones unit. Chuck Jones started an art study program and life model sketching at night. This created a culture clash between the two units, Clampett team member consideriong Jones unit members snobish, even though Jones unit members did not feel any difference with their coworkers from the other unit. The same perception distortion that hampered west-coast animators vs east-coast animators, this time in the same studio.

Talent developped quite remarkably in the Jones unit. Jones was leaving a lot a leaway to his team members, in particular when he could recognize the talent. Because of that, Jones cartoon could survive confortably during the days of changes in taste from spectators who demanded more modern cartoon à la UPA. In fact Jones cartoon were constantly innovative from both the story point of view as from the design of the characters, animations and backgrounds.

Really, the books tells, in details, how the individuals worked together, their relationships, their symbiosis, their strengths, how they completed each other, on which matter they fought, how the individuals talents were put to best use and how they developped, etc. A fascinating story. This is an aspect of the book that I found impossible to satisfactorily write about in this review because it is constituted from a ton of almost day to day anecdotes and so many people were involved.

It is quite revealing to read, in that book, how factors such as money and budget allocation, vision (or lack of), management style, internal politics, power fights, etc, modeled the interactions between the individuals that were in this industry and how it transformed the studios and the industry. Even though this was called the golden age of animation, and all this happened more than one half century ago, the waves of the relationships caused the best peoples to move from one studio to another and even caused some of them to abandon the crasf and move to do something else. Those who truely survived until the end are the ones with a strange combination of thick-skin, talent and well timed opportunities and work conditions. This looks very much like today. In general, work conditions were tougher in those days than today, especially while there were no unions. Still the most creative individuals managed to create some stunning cartoons that are still remarkable today and put their names on the map for way longer than their own life duration.

This is a great book for those who want to follow the pioneer people who created this industry and see what was the environment they struggled with and how they discovered and perfected the skills that defined their art. This is not a how-to book at all but a great history book.