Of Mice and Magic - A History of Amercan Animated Cartoons

By Leonard Maltin

Plume, 1980

7½" x 9¼", 470 pages

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Well, I picked this book with the intension of reading it at leisure times during the whole summer. It was to be my summer book. However, the minute I started to read it, I got hooked. This book reads like a novel. I really enjoyed it and I'm even a little sad I'm finished with it.

This is not a book about animation techniques so it is a much easier read because there are nothing to try to figure and learn there. This book is about the animation studios, their story, how they were created and who created them, how they got their contracts, how the studio evolved through the years, who worked there, who directed which animated shorts and features, a glimpse of the atmosphere in the studios, the management style, the leaders and their vision (or lack of vision), how the characters and series were created and how they evolved or how they were dropped, etc.

The studios covered are: Walt Disney, Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Terrytoons, Walter Lantz, Ub Iwerks, Van Beuren, Columbia (Charles Mintz and Screen Gems), Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount / Famous Studios, UPA, Hanna - Barbera. In addition, there are descriptions of who worked there, when they came in and when they quit. It is interesting to see how some directors and animators traveled from studios to studios and what motivated their moves. A name that gets mentioned in almost every studio history is Shamus Culhane so it is not surprising that Shamus Culhane's books are so full of strong insights and advises.

Even though there are no animation techniques in this book, there are sufficient insights as to what made some studios, some directors, some characters and some series successfull, that there is still a form of educative brain picking to be gained there.

It is interesting to observe that Disney as well as UPA were lead by a cartoon visionary. Both Walt Disney and Steve Bosustow had a vision of what cartoon should be and made no compromises as to how to achieve their vision. The result was consistent quality, constant evolution and numerous recognition and awards as well as commercial successes.

At the other end of the "visionary" spectrum, we get to observe Paul Terry and Ub Iwerks, who each maintaned a studio without a vision. The result is that those studios survived by doing the same thing over and over without ever improving and they barely survived until their customers pulled the plug for lack of interests and incapacity to improve and adapt.

In between those two extremes, studios like Warner Brothers and MGM were lead by producers who totally lacked any cartoon culture and humour but the cohesions within the animation teams were so strong and being in a management environment that basically gave them freedom to do almost whatever they imagined, they managed to evolve and improve themselves to the point where their cartoons are remembered and praised even today, some 50 to 60 years after they were released.

A pattern emerged while reading this book, it is that one of the main factors that made some characters and series so succesfull is the team spirit and stong bond or the "esprit de corps" that some team had created. It is the result of a stange mix of managemant style and talent. It is remarkable, for instance, that both MGM and Warner Brothers had management who knew little if nothing about cartoons and had no sense of humour. Because of that, the true direction was lead by the animators and story directors since the management didn't understand the business. Those were part of very large film studios and the animation department was managed by a board nominated producer.

Contrast that with the small studios where the producer was the owner and the director. The artists working there were simply workers and they didn't feel that esprit de corps. When the owner was a true visionaire, then the studio prospered but when the owner lacked vision, the studio stagnated and quickly dried out.

Disney Studio had everything for itself. The owner was also the producer and acted as the grand director and he had a strong evolving vision that he tried hard to communicate. And in addition to that, he still managed to create strong cohesive teams within the company.

Another interesting aspect I noticed is that in the early days of animation, it was believed that a character, by itself, could bring the cartoon success. So there were a lot of search for the succesfull character. A lot of characters were created and modified/evolved through the years, to make them cuter, more likeable, in search for the succesfull character.

While Disney was the first to recognize that a character design by its own will not guarantee success but it also needs a well defined personality and a strong story, the other studios kept on trying to design the perfect character but they also kept on repeating animations that were based on the same gag patterns over and over. They could not see that the audience got tired of the characters not because of their design but because they got tired of seeing the same old gag patterns over and over.

It seems that it was strongly believed, in those times, that the stories were just some sort of containers in which one would place a winner character. The story was a recipe. Once a studio had a recipe that seemed to work, they tended to repeat that same story pattern over and over. They would try different characters in the same story patterns over and over.

There was, and there still is, a strong tendency, by the studios, to try to repeat ad nauseam, a story pattern when one have proven succesfull. The production schedules have obviously something to do with that. It is very hard to come up with new story ideas when a cartoon must be produced every week or every two weeks. So eventually, a formula is devised and is followed for several animations. Oftentime, a character was created based on a given gag. And then, several variations on the same gag were used for different cartoons with the same character.

Making cartoons is not easy. Making consistently funny and interesting cartoons is even less easier. One could argue that what killed the cartoon studio business, was the requirement to produce one cartoon every two weeks. That is a lot of pressure on a creative team and is a sure way to wear out creativity. Unfortunately, it is not possible, for an animator, to survive economically without satisfying such a production schedule.

After the studios area died, there have been a resurgence of independently produced cartoons. Those are one shot cartoons produced and directed by independent artists, collectives or even studios but those cartoons were not tied to any series. Their outlet were animation festivals and TV commercials. Not being tied to a serie production schedule ensures that the talent and imagination is kept alive and fresh but the revenue will not support the artist unless it is for doing TV commercials.

I'm old enough that as a kid, I got to watch cartoons on TV in the late 50's and 60's. I was not aware that the cartoons I was watching then, had actually been created 20 to 30 years earlier. In those days, the cartoon were not made specifically for kids. They were produced for showing on the cinema screen prior to the feature film and there were a lot of adult related themes in them. Some of those cartoons would not be viewable on TV today because not suitable for kids. Then, in the 70's, after the stock of old cartoons was depleted, new studios started producing cartoons specifically for TV and for the Kids audience.

One conclusion in the book is that TV killed the cartoon studios. Apart from the huge pressure of the TV production schedule, one of the biggest impact of TV for the studios is that the studios had lost their feedback from the viewers. When the animation were relased for theater projections, they had immediate feedback because the animators could go and sit in a theater and check the audience react and also because when an animation was popular, the cinema owners would keep on renting the same animation for months. With animation for TV, there are no such feedback. Cartoons are not rerun based on their popularity and the TV ratings gives very little indication on the popularity of each individual cartoon.

Internet may change that as an artist can immediately see the popularity of a cartoon. We'll see how it develops.