The Golden Age Of American Animation
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The Golden Age Of American Animation
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the late 1960s, where theatrical animated shorts began losing popularity to the newer medium of television animation, produced on cheaper budgets and in a more limited animation style by companies such as Hanna-Barbera, UPA, Jay Ward Productions, and DePatie-Freleng. Many popular characters emerged from this period, including Disney's' '' Mickey Mouse'', '' Minnie Mouse'', '' Donald Duck'', '' Daisy Duck'', '' Goofy'', and ''Pluto''; Warner Bros.' ''Bugs Bunny'', ''Daffy Duck'', '' Porky Pig'', ''Tweety'', and '' Sylvester''; MGM's ''Tom and Jerry'' and ''Droopy''; Fleischer Studios' '' Betty Boop''; ''Felix the Cat''; Walter Lantz's ''Woody Woodpecker''; Terrytoons' ''Mighty Mouse''; UPA's '' Mr. Magoo''; and Jay Ward Productions' ''Rocky and Bullwinkle''. Feature-length animation began during this period, most ...
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Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ( ) was an American animation studio and production company which was active from 1957 to 2001. It was founded on July 7, 1957, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera following the decision of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to close its in-house cartoon studio. Headquartered in Cahuenga Blvd. until 1998 and then Sherman Oaks, both in Los Angeles, California, until going defunct, it created many television shows, theatrical films, televised movies and specials, including ''Huckleberry Hound'', ''Quick Draw McGraw'', ''The Flintstones'', ''Yogi Bear'', ''The Jetsons'', ''Jonny Quest'', ''Wacky Races'', ''Scooby-Doo'' and ''The Smurfs''. Its productions have won a record-breaking 8 Emmy Awards. Its fortunes declined by the 1980s as the profitability of Saturday-morning cartoons was eclipsed by weekday afternoon syndication. Taft Broadcasting acquired Hanna-Barbera in 1966 and retained ownership until 1991 when Turner Broadcasting System took over and used its ba ...
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cartoon Studio
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was an American animation studio operated by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) during the Golden Age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producing animated shorts to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters ''Tom and Jerry'', ''Droopy'', and ''Barney Bear''. Prior to forming its own cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producer Ub Iwerks, and later the ''Happy Harmonies'' series from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. The MGM cartoon studio was founded to replace Harman and Ising, although both men eventually became employees of the studio. After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 after its short ''The Milky Way'' became the first non-Disney cartoon to win the Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons. The studio's roster of talent benefited from an exodus of animators from the Warner Bros. Cartoons and Disne ...
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The Jungle Book (1967 Film)
''The Jungle Book'' is a 1967 American animated musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions. Based on Rudyard Kipling's 1894 book of the same title, it is the 19th Disney animated feature film. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, it was the last film to be produced by Walt Disney, who died during its production, and the first animated feature film released after his death. The plot follows Mowgli, a feral child raised in the Indian jungle by wolves, as his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear try to convince him to leave the jungle before the evil tiger Shere Khan arrives. The early versions of both the screenplay and the soundtrack followed Kipling's work more closely, with a dramatic, dark, and sinister tone which Disney did not want in his family film, leading to writer Bill Peet and songwriter Terry Gilkyson being replaced. The casting employed famous actors and musicians Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, George Sanders and Louis Prima, as well as Disney ...
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Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937 Film)
''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the 1812 German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length traditionally animated feature film and the first Disney animated feature film. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film's individual sequences. ''Snow White'' premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 21, 1937. It was a critical and commercial success and, with international earnings of more than $8 million during its initial release (compared to its $1.5 million budget), it briefly held the record of highest-grossing sound film ...
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Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned and nominations by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the List of films considered the best, greatest films ever by the American Film Institute. Disney was the first person to be nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories. Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early ...
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Rocky And Bullwinkle
''The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends'' (commonly referred to as simply ''Rocky and Bullwinkle'') is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the ABC and NBC television networks. The current blanket title was imposed for home video releases more than 40 years after the series originally aired and was never used when the show was televised; television airings of the show were broadcast under the titles of ''Rocky and His Friends'' from 1959 to 1961 (and again in Canada in 1963), ''The Bullwinkle Show'' from 1961 to 1964, and ''The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show'' (or ''The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle'') in syndication. Produced by Jay Ward Productions, the series is structured as a variety show, with the main feature being the serialized adventures of the two title characters, the anthropomorphic flying squirrel Rocket J. ("Rocky") Squirrel and moose Bullwinkle J. Moose. The main antagonists ...
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Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an American animated Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox. The character was originally called Super Mouse, and made his debut in the 1942 short ''The Mouse of Tomorrow''. The name was changed to Mighty Mouse in his eighth film, 1944's ''The Wreck of the Hesperus'', and the character went on to star in 80 theatrical shorts, concluding in 1961 with ''Cat Alarm''. In 1955, ''Mighty Mouse Playhouse'' debuted as a Saturday morning cartoon show on the CBS television network, which popularized the character far more than the original theatrical run. The show lasted until 1967. Filmation revived the character in ''The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle'', which ran from 1979 to 1980, and animation director Ralph Bakshi revived the concept again in ''Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures'', from 1987 to 1988. Mighty Mouse also appeared in comic books by several publishers, includin ...
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Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an American animation studio in New Rochelle, New York, that produced animated cartoons for theatrical release from 1929 to 1973 (and briefly returned between 1987 and 1996 for television in name only). Terrytoons was founded by Paul Terry, Frank Moser, and Joseph Coffman, and operated out of the "K" Building in downtown New Rochelle. The studio created many cartoon characters including Fanny Zilch, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Little Roquefort, the Terry Bears, Dimwit, and Luno; Terry's pre-existing character Farmer Al Falfa was also featured often in the series. The "New Terrytoons" period of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s produced such characters as Clint Clobber, Tom Terrific, Deputy Dawg, Hector Heathcote, Hashimoto-san, Sidney the Elephant, Possible Possum, James Hound, Astronut, Sad Cat, The Mighty Heroes, and Sally Sargent. Ralph Bakshi got his start as an animator, and eventually as a director, at Terrytoon ...
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Woody Woodpecker
Woody Woodpecker is an animated character that appeared in theatrical short films produced by the Walter Lantz Studio and distributed by Universal Studios between 1940 and 1972. Woody, an anthropomorphic woodpecker, was created in 1940 by Lantz and storyboard artist Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, who had previously laid the groundwork for two other screwball characters, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the late 1930s. Woody's character and design evolved over the years, from an insane bird with an unusually garish design to a more refined looking and acting character in the vein of the later Chuck Jones version of Bugs Bunny. Woody was originally voiced by prolific voice actor Mel Blanc, who was succeeded in the shorts by Danny Webb, Kent Rogers, Dick Nelson, Ben Hardaway, and, finally, Grace Stafford (wife of Walter Lantz). Woody Woodpecker cartoons were first broadcast on television in 1957 under the title ''The Woody Woodpecker Show'', which featur ...
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Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz (April 27, 1899 – March 22, 1994) was an American cartoonist, animator, producer and director best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker. Biography Early years and start in animation Lantz was born in New Rochelle, New York, to Italian immigrant parents Francesco Paolo Lantz (formerly Lanza) and Maria Jarvis (changed to Jarvis to avoid prejudice) from Calitri. According to Joe Adamson's biography ''The Walter Lantz Story'', Lantz's father was given his new surname by an immigration official who anglicized it. Walter Lantz was always interested in art, completing a mail-order drawing class at age 12. He was inspired when he saw Winsor McCay's animated short "Gertie the Dinosaur". While working as an auto mechanic, Lantz got his first break. Wealthy customer Fred Kafka liked his drawings on the garage's bulletin board and financed Lantz's studies at the Art Students League of New York. Kafka also helped him land a job as a ...
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Felix The Cat (TV Series)
''Felix the Cat'' is an American animated television series featuring the cartoon character of the same name. Like The Van Beuren Corporation before, Joe Oriolo gave Felix a more domesticated and pedestrian personality, geared more toward children, and introduced Felix's now-famous item of the "Magic Bag of Tricks", a satchel that can assume the shape and characteristics of anything Felix wants, and several new main characters such as Felix's arch-enemy, The Professor and his bulldog sidekick Rock Bottom. The cartoons are divided into two parts, with the first part ending in a cliffhanger resolved after a commercial break. A second Felix series, ''The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat'', aired on CBS in 1995–1997. Background In 1954, Otto Messmer retired from the Felix daily newspaper strips, and his assistant Joe Oriolo (the co-creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost) took over. Oriolo struck a deal with Felix's new owner to begin a new series of Felix cartoons for television. O ...
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Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick.Pointer (2017) She originally appeared in the ''Talkartoon'' and ''Betty Boop'' film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between 1930 and 1939. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising. A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as "combin ngin appearance the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable". Although she was toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the world's best-known and most popular cartoon characters. History Origins Betty ...
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