Cartoon Modern

Below is a never-before-published concept of the stepsisters from CINDERELLA (1950) with incredibly fun and inventive character shapes. Perhaps the design wasn’t appropriate for a traditional Disney feature like CINDERELLA but it’s too bad they couldn’t figure out a way to use these type of designs in the Disney shorts. This piece was actually in my book until a couple weeks ago when we realized that some of the sections had been sequenced wrong and I had to remove eight double-page spreads to bring the book back down to 200 pages. But that’s why there’s this blog.

I’ve been doing this blog for nearly four months now and no mention of Mary Blair (1911-1978). Well, that’s going to change. This week is going to be “Mary Blair Week” and I’ll be posting a piece of her artwork everyday for the entire week. There isn’t much Mary Blair in my book, but then again, there isn’t much Mary Blair in the Fifties Disney films either. Whereas artists like Tom Oreb and Eyvind Earle were able to get their work faithfully onto the screen, Blair’s work was usually relegated to being ‘inspirational’ and was too often interpreted (and watered down) by other artists. Her presence is strongly felt in some of the 1950s features, like ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but more often than not, Blair has a subdued presence in the Disney films. This is in no way a criticism of her work, but the realities of the Disney studio were that she really didn’t get the opportunity to control the look of a film in the way that production designers like Tom Oreb, Eyvind Earle and Walt Peregoy did. If you’re looking for more Blair, look no further than John Canemaker’s excellent book THE ART AND FLAIR OF MARY BLAIR which covers her life and work in depth.

This first Blair image is a concept for THE LITTLE HOUSE (1952) and actually appears on page 65 of Canemaker’s book. The colors are off in the printing of that book though, and I think you’ll agree that the piece gains a lot when shown with accurate colors.

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GERALD MCBOING BOING (1951) is one of my “desert island” films. It is damn near perfect on every level—an incredible marriage of design and animation, with gorgeous layouts and cinematic composition throughout, spare yet thoughtful color styling and a perfectly appropriate modern film score. The talent on this film was unbelievable in every department: Bobe Cannon (direction), Bill Hurtz (design, with Cannon), Bill Scott and Phil Eastman (story), Jules Engel and Herb Klynn (color styling), Bill Melendez, Willis Pyle, Frank Smith, Pat Matthews and Rudy Larriva (animation). More importantly, the whole crew was on the same page. The animators interpreted the designs beautifully, the background artists created colors that enhanced the mood and story, all the elements in this film weave in and out of each other with an effortless grace. The reason I bring up the film is because Clarke Snyder has generously posted dozens of frame grabs at the Inspiration Grab-Bag. If you’ve already seen the film, these sequential grabs are a great alternative way of studying it. Every element of this film is carefully considered and worked out; for example, note how after Gerald’s father yells at him, all the shots are planned on tense diagonals, until Gerald gets discovered by the radio station and everything become happy again. There’s just so much to learn from this film. It can be purchaesd on DVD, along with the three other Gerald theatricals produced by UPA, at Amazon.com.

Here are some of the cars that Tom Oreb designed for the same Hudson car commercial mentioned below.

Things have been crazy busy around here. There’s a lot of amazing updates planned, but until I get to those, here’s a drawing of Alice by Tom Oreb. It’s for a Hudson car commercial produced at Disney ca. 1955. Too much of flat animation design and illustration nowadays is exactly that—flat—which is a misinterpretation of what artists like Tom Oreb were doing. This Alice drawing is a perfect example. It looks flat at first glance, but there’s a lot of sophisticated drawing beneath the surface, with the careful placement of shapes on different planes to create a sense of form and volume. (As usual, click on on image to enlarge.)

Boris Gorelick (1912-1984) is another artist, like Ernie Nordli mentioned below, who wasn’t a primary figure in Fifties animation design, but made valuable contributions in his own way. Here’s a short bio I found about him online:

Boris Gorelick was born in southern Russia. His parents immigrated to the United States when he was an infant. Gorelick attended the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, and Columbia University. He worked as a fine artist, a teacher, a mural designer, and an industrial designer. During the Depression he joined the New York City WPA’s graphics division. He went to Phoenix for the WPA to set up the Phoenix School of Art and Design, a WPA school for the public. He was also an activist and helped found the Artists’ Union, which fought for the economic survival of artists.

There’s also a lengthy, but fascinating, 1964 interview with Gorelick posted HERE, which sheds light on his early (non-animation) artistic career. Gorelick’s animation career, in fact, still remains somewhat mysterious. I’ve never figured out exactly where he worked for most of the 1940s and 1950s. I do know he was at UPA on and off from the time the studio started, and his UPA credits include background painting on THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN (1946), MAN ALIVE! (1952) and the Magoo feature 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS (1959). He also painted backgrounds on seven Friz Freleng shorts at Warner Bros. in 1957-58, and the combination of Hawley Pratt-layouts and Gorelick-painted bgs produced some really handsome cartoons. It’s a shame Gorelick didn’t do more work there. Gorelick continued working in animation in the 1960s and 1970s, at studios including Jack Kinney Productions, Format Films, Playhouse Pictures and Filmation. The photo of him above is from Format Films in the early-1960s when he was painting backgrounds on THE ALVIN SHOW.

Here are four examples of Gorelick’s lithographs from the mid-1930s. Though Gorelick worked primarily as a background painter in animation, these lithos show that he had a lot of range as both designer and draftsman. If you like this type of art, there’s a book called AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM: ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 1920-1950 by Bram Dijkstra, which has a lot of excellent work in it it. Gorelick is also mentioned in the book along with an example of his artwork.

While Ernest “Ernie” Nordli (1912-1968) wasn’t one of the major animation designers of the 1950s, he was a talented artist whose work had an appealing modern sensibility. He started at Disney in 1936 and served as an art director/layout artist on DUMBO and FANTASIA, and worked on many of the studio’s shorts through the mid-1940s. He left Disney (and apparently, animation) in the late-1940s, and doesn’t show up in any studio credits until the mid-1950s, when he became the layout artist for Chuck Jones, in the absence of Maurice Noble. He was the layout man on eight Jones shorts, including some memorable films like BROOM-STICK BUNNY and ROCKET-BYE BABY (both 1956). I asked Tod Polson if he recalled any conversations with Maurice about Nordli’s work, and here’s what Tod remembered discussing with Noble:

Maurice said he really liked Nordli’s work. “Very solid design and drawing” and “very imaginative, but sometimes Nordli goes overboard, and he isn’t consistent! His design style will change from scene to scene; he is saying ‘look what I can do.’” When I mentioned I really loved the styling of BROOMSTICK BUNNY and ROCKET SQUAD, Maurice simply reminded me “I did it first. In BROOMSTICK BUNNY, Ernie was just continuing what I had started. Half the layouts from ROCKET SQUAD are from DUCK DODGERS.”

Tod points out that Maurice was never really egotistical about his work, though he was protective about what he’d created and wanted to make clear that Nordli was basically taking inspiration from his earlier pictures. Noble’s view is quite correct, in my opinion. I personally think Nordli’s designs for shorts like BROOM-STICK BUNNY and the Roadrunner short GEE WHIZ-Z-Z strongly follow the earlier design styles that Noble had established for those series. It’s understandable that Nordli, as the new guy, didn’t want to rock the boat too much, and focused on delivering a style that he knew Chuck would like. It would have been interesting though to see what Nordli could have done if he’d settled into the role and had a chance to really experiment with his own styles.

After his short stint with Jones, Nordli returned to Disney where he worked on SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE SAGA OF WINDWAGON SMITH, and most notably, 101 DALMATIANS, on which he was a layout stylist. He played an important role in designing the background drawing style on DALMATIANS, which is something I discuss in the book. Artists who worked with Nordli during this period, like Ray Aragon and Walt Peregoy, speak highly of his talents. Nordli continued working through the 1960s until his death. His later credits include THE ALVIN SHOW (1961), GAY PURR-EE (1962), HEY THERE, IT’S YOGI BEAR (1964), THE MAN FROM BUTTON WILLOW (1965) and even JOHNNY CYPHER (1966). (If you’ve ever seen JOHNNY CYPHER, then you’ll understand why I preface it with the word “even”). There’s a webpage HERE by his wife that has a few more details about his life.

Below are layouts from a couple cartoons that Nordli designed for Jones. Backgrounds were painted by Phil DeGuard. Click on images for larger versions.

BROOM-STICK BUNNY (1956)

GEE WHIZ-Z-Z-Z (1956)

Nordli also did a lot of comic covers for Dell in the early-1950s. This SITE calls him “the best of the Dell Comic book cover artists”. Here are a couple examples of his covers:

How cool is this! I’ve been running across some drawings on blogs lately where artists have mentioned being inspired by the work posted on Cartoon Modern. Below are three drawings that, according to the artists, have been inspired in some small way by the work posted here.

Andrea Spada

David Kantro

Brandon Scott

Here’s the punchline to last week’s featured cartoon PINK AND BLUE BLUES. Some observant viewers may have noticed that in the cartoon Magoo wears a fez. It is the only theatrical short in which Magoo ever wore one, and there’s a reason for that. Below is a letter from Columbia Pictures brass explaining to UPA why their short, PINK AND BLUE BLUES, was banned in Egypt in 1953. Click on the letter to make it legible.

Michael Sporn has posted a great 1952 LIFE MAGAZINE article about the UPA educational film MAN ALIVE!, produced for the American Cancer Society. There are fifteen stills in the article, and though the images are tinted and don’t reflect the actual colors of the film, the character design and layout are terrific and well worth studying. But the best part of all this is that you can actually see a beautiful 35mm print of MAN ALIVE!, on the bigscreen, on March 26 at the Egyptian Theatre in LA. That’s the evening of the UPA tribute, which is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. If you’re in LA or anywhere within a couple hundred miles, you’ll want to be at the Egyptian. Not only will you be able to see classic UPA films up on the bigscreen—the way they can best be appreciated, but there’s going to be an incredible group of UPA artists attending the event including Willis Pyle, Alan Zaslove, Bill Melendez, Sam Clayberger, Fred Crippen, Bob McIntosh, and others. Imagine, watching GERALD MCBOING BOING and then hearing from two of the film’s lead animators—Melendez and Pyle. It’s going to be a special evening. Check out the program HERE.

Finally, here’s a few film stills from MAN ALIVE! that give a sense of how the film’s actual colors look. Also is a still that lists the film’s credits. The director was Bill Hurtz.

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Here are stills from the finished film with backgrounds painted by Bob McIntosh. These were scanned from an old 35mm print and unfortunately some of the colors are faded and, even with some tweaking, are not as accurate as they should be.

Continuing this week’s theme of focusing on one cartoon—1952’s PINK AND BLUE BLUES—here are two layout drawings from the film. Whereas I have some questions as to whether the model sheets I posted yesterday are actually Ted Parmelee’s work, these drawings definitely look like his artwork, as he had an easily recognizable manner of drawing noses, eyes and eyebrows that comes through in these sketches.

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This week I thought I’d do something a bit different and focus on the artwork of a single animated short, starting with the two model sheets below. The short is PINK AND BLUE BLUES, a 1952 Mister Magoo effort that was nominated for an Oscar. The film was directed by Pete Burness, designed and laid out by Ted Parmelee, and backgrounds painted by Bob McIntosh, who’s been discussed here before.

Most people recognize Parmelee as the director of UPA’s THE TELL-TALE HEART, but visually that film was almost entirely Paul Julian’s work. Parmelee himself was a solid designer who had a distinctive drawing style. Unfortunately, Parmelee was another of those artists who passed away far too young, from a heart attack in the mid-1960s, and information about his life is difficult to find. The lengthiest writing about him can be found in the bio printed in Keith Scott’s THE MOOSE THAT ROARED. There’s also a number of his TV commercial designs for Ray Patin Productions printed in my book CARTOON MODERN. To the best of my knowledge, the two PINK AND BLUE BLUES model sheets below are his work as well.

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