Cartoon Modern

While I try to find some time to work up some longer posts, here are a couple interesting photos that I thought would be fun to share. First, a photo of the three main UPA directors in 1951, after winning the Oscar for GERALD MCBOING BOING. From left to right: Bobe Cannon, John Hubley, studio prez Steve Bosustow, Pete Burness, and (I think) UPA’s publicist Charles Daggett.

And a photo of Magoo director Pete Burness (left) and Steve Bosustow. They are holding a certificate from the Motion Picture Herald, which says that Mister Magoo was one of the top ten money-making short subject series of 1952.

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.

I’d forgotten I had this until I posted the GERALD item below and it’s something I promise you won’t find anywhere else. Below is a two-page UPA inter-office memo dated September 26, 1952 in which UPA president Steve Bosustow discusses how GERALD MCBOING BOING’S SYMPHONY went over budget. It’s well known that the UPA studio had trouble sticking to budgets on its theatrical shorts, and that fact is stated in a number of animation history books including Leonard Maltin’s OF MICE AND MAGIC and Mike Barrier’s HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS. But this document, which breaks down overages by department, sheds a fascinating new light on the studio’s operations and how it was spending money on its films.

The memo also raises some interesting questions. For example, Bosustow speaks of a “constant morale problem” in the animation department. My best guess is that the morale problem stemmed from the Hollywood blacklist which had torn apart the studio earlier in 1952. In another budget analysis for MADELINE, Bosustow again blames the animation overages on the issue of morale: “We believe this was almost wholly a result of studio morale when, for a period of almost two weeks, there was no work done in Bobe’s unit.”

Anyway, hope you folks find this as fascinating as I do. I have a couple more of these overage memos and I’ll post them if anybody’s interested.

(click on images for larger versions)

(click on above image for larger version)

The term mise-en-scène was seemingly invented for director Bobe Cannon. Regardless of which designer he was working with, Cannon’s films are consistently excellent in the areas of background layout and character staging. GERALD MCBOING BOING’S SYMPHONY (1953) is no exception, and as beautiful as the stills are below, it’s even more impressive to watch the actual cartoon. Cannon continually surprises the viewer with the myriad interesting ways he moves the characters through these super-lean, nearly abstract environments. The film was designed by T. Hee, color styled by Jules Engel and Michi Kataoka, and animated by Bill Melendez and Frank Smith.

The short can be viewed online HERE, but beware there’s a major cut near the end of the video. The good news though is that the four original Gerald shorts — which includes this film — are being released onto DVD in January. Also exciting, Tee Bosustow is currently working on a film documentary about Bobe Cannon. I’ve seen some of the archival material he’s gathered for this project and it’s amazing. It’s going to be a great (and long overdue) tribute to Cannon.