Thanks to doing this book, I’ve probably had the opportunity to see more commercial/industrial animation from the 1950s than just about anybody else. But even so, I know that I’ve seen only a fraction of the work produced during that period. The sad fact is that most of the commercial animation from that era is inaccessible. Who knows where it is. Perhaps locked away in corporate storage, perhaps at a film archive, perhaps in some animator’s garage or in some collector’s basement. I know it’s out there, it’s just a matter of finding it. Below are some cartoons I learned about while writing the book which I still haven’t seen. These were written up in BUSINESS SCREEN magazine, a trade publication from the 1950s that dealt with industrial film production. (Click on the images for larger versions.)

After designer/director Abe Liss left UPA-NY as its creative director, he worked at Transfilm before starting up his own studio, Elektra, in 1956. Below is one of the Transfilm theatrical commercials he directed for a welfare organization. It was designed by Cliff Roberts.

Jack Zander, who had been a Tom & Jerry animator and who I believe is still alive, had a successful East Coast commercial animation studio called Pelican Films. This is a theatrical commercial for Pepsi that his studio produced.

Here’s another Pelican production, a 12-minute film for the US Army Reserve. No idea who the designer was, but it was produced in 1954.