Sunday, November 09, 2008

Joe and Bill Explain It All


Here is a CBC news clip from 1961 where Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna explain the production process for making TV cartoons. It's a shame that the clip is in such poor shape.

One of the interesting things is the casual sexism. "Girls" do ink and paint, but a "man" paints the backgrounds. Welcome to the era of Mad Men and Wilder's The Apartment.

If you can identify any of the artists who appear on screen, please comment.

(Thanks to Chris Walsh for pointing me to this.)

11 comments:

  1. great video thanks for putting this

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Mark. Great post, one person I can identify is the storyboard artist - Alex Lovy - had a career at Lantz - I think he's credited with designing the first Woody Woodpecker model and longtime at H and B.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where does that leave the women and the boys? :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Back in the days when making TV cartoons looked like a lot of fun, and they employed animators who were actually allowed to draw.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, memories - thanks for this, although it predates my first job by about 4 years

    Couple of points:

    When Joe's talking L/O, all the shots are of storyboarding - probably used because the panel size is more interesting (in context) than 12 fld

    "girls" - when I got in, I&P was "The Girls" everywhere, even when (as several did) there were men in the group - one should also note that H-B had female BG artists

    please: I am not defending the sexism that was rampant, just adding some facts - and one should remember that Joe and Bill were on their second careers, with attitudes/vocabularies based on the studio structures of the 30's

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mark, I spent last night watching the Woody Woodpecker Vol. 2 bonus stuff on how cartoons were made. And there was Alex Lovy.

    He's the guy doing the layouts at the beginning of this clip.

    Jim

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yes it's true I can read the sexism of that era.Prejudice like those not dissapear,today is a subconcious thing.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Is Richard Thomas in there anywhere? He would have been a key background painter.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow! Everybody’s so darn young, it’s tough to recognize anyone. Of course, that’s Alex Lovy doing storyboards -- not layout.

    And, I think that’s Frank Paiker operating the camera. Could that be a very young Kenny Spears cutting sound? The timeline would be about right. Finally, Bill Hanna seems like a kindly old uncle explaining the process to the young woman. Boy, if she only knew how tough Bill really was.

    Still, it was a delightful time, and cartoon making was really a lot of fun.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh help me! Please get a life! Sexism...give me a break. Those comments were in no way belittling, so get over your nauseating political correctness.

    ReplyDelete