thedrifter
12-21-06, 07:38 AM
Joe Barbera, RIP
The last cartoon emperor of the Golden Age.
BY JOHN CANEMAKER
Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The death on Monday of Joe Barbera at age 95 attests to the longevity of an earlier breed of animators. Many "Golden Age" Hollywood studio animators of the 1930s and '40s lived (and a few are still living) long lives, often well into their 80s and beyond.
Ollie Johnston, the last of Walt Disney's legendary corps of animators known as the Nine Old Men, turned 94 last October. Joe Grant, a major creative hand behind "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "Fantasia" (1940) and "Dumbo" (1941), died last year at his drawing board while still working for the Disney studio at age 97. Chuck Jones (Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote) was 89 when he succumbed in 2002. And Grim Natwick, Betty Boop's original designer/animator in 1930 and a top "Snow White" animator, actually reached the century mark before his death in 1990.
I like to think that the reason for the durability of old animators is comparable to that of veteran music conductors like Leopold Stokowski (who lived to be 95) and Arturo Toscanini (90). I believe it has something to do with the blood's circulation--all that moving around of batons or pencils with vigor and purpose somehow magically captures and holds the very tempo and vitality of life.
Joe Barbera was, by all accounts, a vital, dynamic man who loved to draw--and a determined survivor who never ceased moving forward to new opportunities. In doing so, he profoundly affected the direction of the animation industry in the late 1950s and, in turn, was a major influence on American popular culture.
He began as a street-wise Italian charmer raised in Brooklyn, a Depression-era bootstrapper who sold gag cartoons to Collier's magazine while going to art school and working as a bank clerk.
Barbera broke into animation in 1932 at the bottom rung--painting cells, for a brief time, at Max Fleischer's studio (home of Betty Boop, Ko-Ko the Clown and Popeye)--and learned the rudiments of animation at two of New York's lowest-quality cartoon factories: the Van Buren Studio and Terrytoons Studio.
He worked at the latter for only a year before jumping at an offer from MGM's tony animation studio (with its high production values) in Los Angeles, where in 1939 he met William Hanna. The ambitious, energetic young men formed a team that for nearly two decades wrote, produced and directed the popular "Tom and Jerry" series.
True, their cat-and-mouse-chase series was filled with the kind of hurt gags so well-parodied by Itchy and Scratchy's show-within-a-show on "The Simpsons."
But not all the films were broad slapstick violence, and Tom and Jerry were fully animated, defined personalities who could turn on the charm. In 1945, for example, Hanna and Barbera took on the difficult assignment of having Jerry the Mouse dance with a live-action Gene Kelly in "Anchors Away," and in that one irresistible sequence can be found more pure charm than exists in the whole of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (198 .
"Tom and Jerry" earned 13 Oscar nominations and won seven gold statuettes, but in 1957 Hanna and Barbera lost their jobs when MGM unceremoniously closed the cartoon studio. The film industry was in a panic over diminishing audiences lost to the thrall of television; but, in classic lemons-into-lemonade style, Hanna and Barbera decided to embrace the new medium. They formed their own company and within a year began turning out series of cartoons made especially for the TV format.
The huge amount of film footage and tight deadlines required for television would not permit the type of full animation used in theatrical cartoons, and the budgets were a fraction of what they had been accustomed to at MGM.
Barbera and Hanna systematically streamlined the production system. The drawing style was simplified and frill-free; movement was minimal and motion cycles were reused over and over again. It was a type of "limited" or "planned" animation in which dialogue, not action, carried the day. Chuck Jones derisively called it "illustrated radio."
Yet this drastically reduced aesthetic has arguably had as great an impact on the animation industry as any of Disney's innovations. Hanna-Barbera's shows and characters were popular from the start. The growing television audience liked the characters and their deliberately paced shows, with sitcom sight gags, one-liners and catch phrases ("I hate those meeces to pieces!" "Smarter than the average bear!" "Yabba-dabba-doo!").
I remember that my younger brother and I insisted on eating our Swanson's TV Dinners off trays in front of the Motorola, so we wouldn't miss H-B's Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Pixie and Dixie, Snagglepuss, Augie Doggy and Doggie Daddy, and later the Flintstones and the Jetsons, among other favorite characters. So did millions of other youngsters.
Barbera and his partner soon built an empire that encompassed and exploited all areas of popular entertainment, from television and movies to stage shows and merchandising. They pioneered new markets for animation, leading the way for the current diversity of formats, styles, shows and characters that populate the new media outlets of cable, interactive games, iPods and futuristic gadgets yet unborn.
The Hanna-Barbera studio was an entry point into the industry for many a young animator, often leading to years of employment there. But Joe Barbera also found positions for many of his former colleagues--older animators who were not as fortunate as the boy from Flatbush who became as rich as a cartoon Croesus and the last of the Golden Era artist/producer/studio-owner cartoon emperors.
Mr. Canemaker's film "The Moon and the Son," which won an Academy Award this year as Best Animated Short, is available on iTunes.
Ellie
The last cartoon emperor of the Golden Age.
BY JOHN CANEMAKER
Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The death on Monday of Joe Barbera at age 95 attests to the longevity of an earlier breed of animators. Many "Golden Age" Hollywood studio animators of the 1930s and '40s lived (and a few are still living) long lives, often well into their 80s and beyond.
Ollie Johnston, the last of Walt Disney's legendary corps of animators known as the Nine Old Men, turned 94 last October. Joe Grant, a major creative hand behind "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "Fantasia" (1940) and "Dumbo" (1941), died last year at his drawing board while still working for the Disney studio at age 97. Chuck Jones (Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote) was 89 when he succumbed in 2002. And Grim Natwick, Betty Boop's original designer/animator in 1930 and a top "Snow White" animator, actually reached the century mark before his death in 1990.
I like to think that the reason for the durability of old animators is comparable to that of veteran music conductors like Leopold Stokowski (who lived to be 95) and Arturo Toscanini (90). I believe it has something to do with the blood's circulation--all that moving around of batons or pencils with vigor and purpose somehow magically captures and holds the very tempo and vitality of life.
Joe Barbera was, by all accounts, a vital, dynamic man who loved to draw--and a determined survivor who never ceased moving forward to new opportunities. In doing so, he profoundly affected the direction of the animation industry in the late 1950s and, in turn, was a major influence on American popular culture.
He began as a street-wise Italian charmer raised in Brooklyn, a Depression-era bootstrapper who sold gag cartoons to Collier's magazine while going to art school and working as a bank clerk.
Barbera broke into animation in 1932 at the bottom rung--painting cells, for a brief time, at Max Fleischer's studio (home of Betty Boop, Ko-Ko the Clown and Popeye)--and learned the rudiments of animation at two of New York's lowest-quality cartoon factories: the Van Buren Studio and Terrytoons Studio.
He worked at the latter for only a year before jumping at an offer from MGM's tony animation studio (with its high production values) in Los Angeles, where in 1939 he met William Hanna. The ambitious, energetic young men formed a team that for nearly two decades wrote, produced and directed the popular "Tom and Jerry" series.
True, their cat-and-mouse-chase series was filled with the kind of hurt gags so well-parodied by Itchy and Scratchy's show-within-a-show on "The Simpsons."
But not all the films were broad slapstick violence, and Tom and Jerry were fully animated, defined personalities who could turn on the charm. In 1945, for example, Hanna and Barbera took on the difficult assignment of having Jerry the Mouse dance with a live-action Gene Kelly in "Anchors Away," and in that one irresistible sequence can be found more pure charm than exists in the whole of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (198 .
"Tom and Jerry" earned 13 Oscar nominations and won seven gold statuettes, but in 1957 Hanna and Barbera lost their jobs when MGM unceremoniously closed the cartoon studio. The film industry was in a panic over diminishing audiences lost to the thrall of television; but, in classic lemons-into-lemonade style, Hanna and Barbera decided to embrace the new medium. They formed their own company and within a year began turning out series of cartoons made especially for the TV format.
The huge amount of film footage and tight deadlines required for television would not permit the type of full animation used in theatrical cartoons, and the budgets were a fraction of what they had been accustomed to at MGM.
Barbera and Hanna systematically streamlined the production system. The drawing style was simplified and frill-free; movement was minimal and motion cycles were reused over and over again. It was a type of "limited" or "planned" animation in which dialogue, not action, carried the day. Chuck Jones derisively called it "illustrated radio."
Yet this drastically reduced aesthetic has arguably had as great an impact on the animation industry as any of Disney's innovations. Hanna-Barbera's shows and characters were popular from the start. The growing television audience liked the characters and their deliberately paced shows, with sitcom sight gags, one-liners and catch phrases ("I hate those meeces to pieces!" "Smarter than the average bear!" "Yabba-dabba-doo!").
I remember that my younger brother and I insisted on eating our Swanson's TV Dinners off trays in front of the Motorola, so we wouldn't miss H-B's Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Pixie and Dixie, Snagglepuss, Augie Doggy and Doggie Daddy, and later the Flintstones and the Jetsons, among other favorite characters. So did millions of other youngsters.
Barbera and his partner soon built an empire that encompassed and exploited all areas of popular entertainment, from television and movies to stage shows and merchandising. They pioneered new markets for animation, leading the way for the current diversity of formats, styles, shows and characters that populate the new media outlets of cable, interactive games, iPods and futuristic gadgets yet unborn.
The Hanna-Barbera studio was an entry point into the industry for many a young animator, often leading to years of employment there. But Joe Barbera also found positions for many of his former colleagues--older animators who were not as fortunate as the boy from Flatbush who became as rich as a cartoon Croesus and the last of the Golden Era artist/producer/studio-owner cartoon emperors.
Mr. Canemaker's film "The Moon and the Son," which won an Academy Award this year as Best Animated Short, is available on iTunes.
Ellie