Animation on TCM

Turner Classic Movies will be featuring animation in the immediate and near future.

On Tuesday, Aug 5 at 4:30 a.m Eastern Time, they'll run Gay Purr-ee, a feature made by UPA in 1962, starring the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet.  The songs are by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, the team behind the songs in The Wizard of Oz, though these songs are not as memorable.

The crew is a polyglot of Hollywood animation veterans from many studios.  It was directed by Abe Levitow and written by Chuck and Dorothy Jones.  Designers and art directors include Corny Cole, Ernie Nordli and Victor Haboush.  Animators include Ken Harris, Irv Spence, Ben Washam, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons, Volus Jones, Harvey Toombs, Don Lusk and Hal Ambro.  The studios that those animators worked at include Warner Bros, MGM, Lantz and Disney.

On October 6 (and I'll post a reminder closer to the date), TCM will run 10 hours of continuous animation.  Starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, the films of Winsor McCay, with eminent animation historian and McCay biographer John Canemaker as guest.  At 9:45, it's the 100th anniversary of the Bray studio, with guest Tom Stathes, who has emerged as a leading historian of silent animation.  At 11, cartoons from the Van Beuren studio, with guest Steve Stanchfield.

Stanchfield has become one of the premiere home video producers for animation.  While companies like Warner Bros. are retreating from home video formats, Stanchfield is upping the output of his company Thunderbean Animation.  His latest release is Technicolor Dreams and Black and White Nightmares, which includes a color copy of the first three strip Technicolor cartoon, Ted Eshbaugh's The Wizard of Oz.

The balance of TCM's night consists of four animated features.   Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is on at 12:15 a.m, Max and Dave Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels is on at 1:30, Toei Animation's Magic Boy is on at 3 and Chuck Jones' The Phantom Tollbooth is on at 4:30.

Abe Levitow Notes on Animating

Abe Levitow was one of the main animators in Chuck Jones unit in the 1950's. He later became a co-director with Jones at Warners and a director for Jones at MGM. In addition, he directed Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol for UPA.

I can't remember when I got these notes, though I'm guessing it was the late '70's. I also have no idea who Levitow wrote them for. Was it for a project he was directing? Was it for students somewhere? In any case, while the information in the notes has been covered elsewhere, it is presented in a clear, concise manner and you can never be reminded of fundamentals often enough.

(At the time I first posted this, the site devoted to Abe Levitow had been hacked. It has now been restored and is very much worth your time. You can find it here.)

Abe Levitow

A Levitow-animated scene from Rabbit Seasoning.

Via Michael Sporn's Splog, I learned of a new site dedicated to the late Abe Levitow, animator and director. Levitow was a fixture of the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros. and MGM in the '50s and '60s and also contributed to UPA, working on their features 1001 Arabian Nights, Gay Purr-ee and the TV special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.

There is an abundance of lovely artwork here, and not all of it is by Levitow. There are colour pieces by Bob Inman, Victor Haboush and Corny Cole, for example. There are also great photos of Levitow and the people he worked in the animation business, as well as with Judy Garland and Robert Goulet, who supplied voices for Gay Purr-ee. Dig deep into this site and you'll be rewarded.


In this photo, Levitow is wearing the light shirt at the center of the image and Dick Williams is the right-most person. The others are unidentified. I may be wrong, but I think that the man standing on the left, who appears to be wearing a tuxedo, is Shamus Culhane. Can anyone confirm that?

I'm pretty sure the unidentified person at left is John Culhane. The others, identified on the Levitow site, are, from left to right, Dick Williams, Vincent Price and Abe Levitow.