Cartoon Modern

There’s no denying that many of the later Mister Magoo shorts are feeble, especially when compared to UPA’s early Magoo films, but some cool artwork can still be found in the late-period Magoos. Below are a couple eye-catching backgrounds from Scoutmaster Magoo (1958), which was one of only a couple Magoos directed by Bobe Cannon. Background credit on the film goes to Jules Engel and Ervin Kaplan though I’m unsure which of them did these particular paintings. Be sure to click on the top one to get a big view of the opening pan from the short.

Following up on the post about Engel’s background keys for 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS, Steve Worth at ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Archive has posted a nice collection of Jules Engel color keys from THE ALVIN SHOW (1961). There’s also an Engel color key from the ALVIN SHOW printed in my book. The caption for that image would be appropriate to reprint here:

Animation modernists like Engel attempted to maintain the spirit of 1950s design in the early years of TV series animation, but by the mid-1960s, meager budgets and harried production schedules had wiped out most opportunities for thoughtful design in TV animation.

And just for fun, here’s a pic of Jules Engel at Format Films around the time he was working on the ALVIN SHOW. From left to right: studio founder Herb Klynn, unidentified, Jules Engel, Ed Friedman (standing in the back), and Herb Klynn’s brother (whose name I don’t know):

I wouldn’t go so far as to call UPA’s feature 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS a good film, but there is a lot of nice artwork in it. By the late-50s, UPA had squandered its reputation as a progressive modern animation studio, and the dumbed down storytelling and general immaturity of this film proved to be the final nail in its coffin. After production on this film, nearly all of the studio’s top artists departed, including their three primary background painters—Jules Engel, Bob Dranko and Bob McIntosh. In this post are some of Engel’s thumbnail color scripts for one of the film’s scenes. (As usual, click on them for larger versions.) There’s also an earlier post I did HERE with more concept art from the film. The final image in this post is a still from the finished film to give an idea of how the final bgs were executed. Which color styling do you like better—Engel’s color scripts or the finished backgrounds? There’s no right answer, I’m just curious to hear your thoughts.

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.

Wilbert Plijnaar wrote to let me know that FILM SCORE MONTHLY has released a cd that contains two complete film scores by George Duning: one score is for the live-action comedy BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE (1958) and the other is for UPA’s first animated feature 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS (1959), which featured Mister Magoo. Their WEBSITE has full track samples and ordering info. Here’s the description of the ARABIAN NIGHTS score:

Duning enlisted several “ethnic” musicians to depict the Middle Eastern locale, incorporating them into a traditional symphonic setting. Despite the fact that it was written for animation, the album (presenting the film’s lengthier cues and musical setpieces) has little “mickey mousing” and sounds like it could be the score to a live-action fantasy film.

More importantly, this gives me the opportunity to post this late-1950s magazine article I’d found that features some development art from 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS. It looks like the paintings are done by Jules Engel, though I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of the pieces are by Bob McIntosh. I’m not sure what magazine this is from, or if there was more to the article, but at least you can enjoy these two pages.

(click on image for larger version)

(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.

The Deep Archives, the gallery selling the Ed Benedict artwork that I wrote about earlier, also has images of the following UPA backgrounds, which have already been sold:

Though these backgrounds certainly look like something from the 1950s, they are actually from a 1945 US Navy training film called THE ROVER BOYS, directed by John Hubley. The background designers on the film were Jules Engel and Herb Klynn, though I don’t know which of them designed and painted these particular backgrounds. During the mid-1940s, most of the American animation industry was still firmly entrenched in an illustrative and realistically rendered approach to background painting. Only a small group of artists — perhaps two dozen at most — were consciously pushing for stylized design at this time, and a good number of them worked at the upstart cartoon studio UPA. I spend some time in the introduction of my book tracing the roots of 1950s animation design and looking at the pioneering animation designers of the 1940s. To get a sense of how radical the ROVER BOYS backgrounds were in comparison to what was happening elsewhere, check out this painting from Disney’s SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946).

Both approaches have their value so the intent here isn’t to say that a stylized background is somehow more valid or better than an illustrative background. But the ROVER BOYS bgs serve as an example of how far artists like Engel and Klynn had drifted apart from their contemporaries during the mid-1940s. Not only are the film’s backgrounds revolutionary in their wholly unrealistic use of color, but they’re also impressive for their restrained use of color. Notice that a lot of the negative space in the backgrounds is created from white areas that have been simply left unpainted, and in the top background, the unpainted white even creates part of the positive space in the form of the hangar roofs. Leaving so much of the background “unfinished” at another studio like Warners or MGM would have surely gotten Engel and Klynn fired, but at UPA, the use of color as a prominent design element was one of the studio’s distinguishing hallmarks from the very beginning.