The Los Angeles commercial studio Playhouse Pictures is well represented in the CARTOON MODERN book, but I ended up with many more Playhouse commercial stills and model sheets than I could fit into the book. Here’s the first of a few posts in which I’ll share some of the Playhouse art. The studio’s spots generally had simple and spare character designs (mostly done by Sterling Sturtevant), and the animation of these characters was usually top-notch. Playhouse’s animation director during the 1950s was Bill Melendez, and he brought aboard a who’s who of A-list animators who understood how to draw both funny and with a sense of stylized movement. Animators who worked at the studio during the ’50s include Emery Hawkins, Bobe Cannon, Bill Littlejohn, Rod Scribner, Frank Smith, Phil Duncan, Jim Hiltz and Herman Cohen. As a sidenote, I screened a reel of Rod Scribner-animated Playhouse spots at the Projector Festival in Scotland last month and these spots garnered some of the strongest and most positive reactions of the entire program. It’s nice to see the commercials still hold up fifty years later.

(click on the images below for larger versions)

Ford Falcon

Lanvin Arpege Perfume

Tennessee Ernie Ford tv show opening

Drewry’s Beer

MJB Coffee

Falstaff Beer