The Animator, January 1938

 

The second issue of The Animator is missing as of this writing, so here is the third edition from the start of January 1938. Snow White had its Carthay Circle premiere and would have its general release the following month.

The Animator provided an avenue for sharing industry news with Guild members, outside of the usual trade journals such as Variety, The Film Daily, et. al., chiefly Ub Iwerks’s upcoming series of “Gran’Pop Monkey” cartoons based on the illustrations by Lawson Wood. Contrary to what the newsletter persists, twenty-four cartoons - not fifty - were planned, but according to The Film Daily, only three were completed by the end of 1938, with no more produced. 

The newsletter also proudly declares its objective: “The Screen Cartoon Guild is the only bonafide organization representing all of the studios in the animated cartoon industry.”

Though she is unnamed in the newsletter, the home address of Schlesinger employee/Guild secretary Charlotte Darling, appears again at the bottom of the document. 

Courtesy of Mark Kausler. 

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Now, here’s issue number 4, from January 21, 1938. 

“Looney Tunes” in color? Charles McKimson joins MGM! New model sheets for Scrappy! By then, the Screen Cartoon Guild’s membership expanded, mainly from artists at Walter Lantz.

 

As you'll see on the left hand column, the writer heavily criticizes the anti-union organization The Neutral Thousands (initialized as TNT), established in 1937, and Harman-Ising's "sudden and inconvenient" shutdowns, which laid off many of its artists. 

 

In their “Exposure Sheet” column, the Guild newsletter offers exclusive tidbits otherwise undocumented in the trades, frequently providing the only clue as to one’s career path in animation. We’ve previously seen that Charles (“Chuck”), the youngest McKimson brother, started in animation as early as 1933 at Harman-Ising; now, we see that Charles joined MGM’s cartoon department (which opened months earlier in August 1937.) It is uncertain how long Charles worked at MGM and in what capacity—assistant or full animator is my educated guess. At any rate, Chuck joined Leon Schlesinger as a full-fledged animator in Tex Avery’s unit, receiving his first on-screen credit in Land of the Midnight Fun (1939).

The name “Peter Paige” escapes me, but it might be Peter Page, who became a Disney storyman by 1939. (David Gerstein and JB Kaufman, Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History, pp. 321-322.)

The newsletter references Boy Meets Dog, Walter Lantz’s commercial film for Ipana Toothpaste, the “nationally known molar grease company” in question. Like Disney borrowed Harman-Ising’s inkers and painters for Snow White, Leon Schlesinger allowed Walter to use his ink-and-paint staff to meet the sponsored cartoon’s deadline.

 

 

Background painter John Waltz, a name brought to my attention by Steven Hartley years ago, was profiled on Tralfaz. Perhaps Waltz was hired at MGM to do background paintings, as well? 

 

As many animation fans are aware, the Looney Tunes continued in black-and-white until 1942’s The Hep Cat, directed by Bob Clampett. An original release print of the series’ color debut has not survived, more commonly seen in its 1949 “Blue Ribbon” reissue.

Lew Landsman’s departure from Schlesinger’s is worthy of note. A storyman for Schlesinger, Landsman received only one screen credit there (see left). Later, Lew returned to Leon Schlesinger’s—the studio’s internal house organ, also named The Exposure Sheet, announced his second departure in approximately February 1939. In fact, a September 1945 issue of Top Cel shares that Lew found a job at Famous Studios in New York (no occupation is specified.) 

 

For its final anecdote, the newsletter proclaims 1938 as a “banner year” for Mickey Mouse, who Donald Duck eclipsed, and Walt knew it. On January 10, 1938, renowned musical conductor Leopold Stokowski recorded an orchestration of Paul Dukas’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” for a “special” Mickey Mouse comeback vehicle; its development began as early as May 1937. (Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons)  

 

 

Courtesy of CSUN Northridge Archives, Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Guild, Local 839 Collection. Special thanks to David Sigler for providing this document.