Layout by Tom Oreb

Archive.org is an excellent source for public domain films of all kinds. Among them are a handful of well designed 1950s shorts produced by John Sutherland Productions. Sutherland was one of the busiest producers of animated industrials during the 1950s and his studio’s work is discussed in greater depth in my book. I’ve never found a good filmography of exactly how many films Sutherland produced, but from what I’ve been able to gather, he produced well over one hundred corporate/educational animated shorts between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, which was his studio’s ‘golden age’ period. The working conditions at Sutherland were ideal for artists: he paid top dollar so he always attracted A-list designers and animators, and he was very hands-off when it came to the visuals, so artists were free to do as they pleased. These four films at Archive.org offer a good sense of the type of films Sutherland produced, though they are only the tip of the iceberg.

IT’S EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS (1954): Featuring Maurice Noble in one of his rare forays outside of Warner Bros. during the 1950s. Dynamic layouts and beautiful color styling can be found throughout this film. Noble worked again for Sutherland in the late-1950s on RHAPSODY OF STEEL, but that film’s designer was Eyvind Earle, and the end results are much more noticeably Earle than Noble.

DESTINATION EARTH (1956): Jointly designed by Tom Oreb and Victor Haboush, this is among at least two films that I know Oreb designed at Sutherland. The other film is THE LITTLEST GIANT, which is not available online. Oreb likely did others too, but I haven’t been able to track them down. One thing that DESTINATION EARTH proves is that Oreb was equally adept at designing backgrounds as he was designing characters. Vic Haboush also provided great layouts in this film. I think Vic did mostly the Mars layouts, and Oreb dealt with the Earth scenes. (The image at the top of this post is a character layout by Oreb from DESTINATION EARTH.)

YOUR SAFETY FIRST (1956): This film has the weakest design of the four films here. The character designs are really poor, and though the layouts are much better, they’re nothing extraordinary. The film was designed by Gerald Nevius (a veteran who had also worked on DUMBO and FANTASIA) and Charles McElmurry, a designer who did plenty of excellent TV commercial design at Storyboard and Quartet in the mid-1950s.

WORKING DOLLARS (1957): The characters in this film have really nice appealing shapes. They were designed by Bernie Gruver, who also worked as a designer at other commercial studios including John Wilson’s Fine Arts Films and Playhouse Pictures. There’s a great Gruver model sheet in my book for Friskies Dog Food, a series of commercials that he designed for Playhouse in the late 1950s.