Boxoffice-July.1997

The Big Picture
UNLIMITED
ANIMATION
Remembering tlie Golden Era of UPA, tlie Little
Animation Studio tliat Could by Ray Greene
A
funny thing happened on
the way to our nostalgic Big
Picture feature this month.
As a magazinefortunate enough to
call Oscar-winning animator Ernest
Pintoff a friend, we came up
with an idea we thought might complement
our cover story, then told
Ernie what we had in mind. Original
art seemed not onlypossible but
calledfor, andErnie saidhe thought
he had something on hand that
might help us out.
What he came up with was something
so special we felt a black-andwhite
page couldn 't do it justice. In
the meantime, the subject selected
for consideration proved vast
enough to require more than our
usual page space.
The solution was easy: move the
Big Pictureforward into afullfourcolor
double spread that would
meet the visual and narrative possibilities
facilitated by the art
Ernie managed to supply. Continuity
fans will find the Big Picture
back where it belongs next month.
In the meantime, we hope you'll
enjoy this rareformat departurefor
the little .summertime gift it is meant
to provide.
Caricature has always been a
served for illustrations in the slick magazines
of the 4()s and "SOs, and which survives in part
in the recent feature film work of "Aladdin"
and "Hercules" co-directors John Musker and
Ron GemenLs—really only found its way into
theatrical animation in the eariy 1950s, thanks
influence of the Walt Disney Studios during
the '30s and '40s. Though the stories were
fanciful, the visual aesthetic behind such signature
works as "Snow White," "Pinocchio"
and even "Fantasia" was grounded in the concept
of ever more convincing dimensionality
and realism. Under the guidance of
foundere Walt and Roy Disney, the
Disney Studios became famous for
the rigorous discipline they subjected
their artists to, which embraced
art classes and movement
studies with one goal in mind: to
replace the amorphous and inconsistent
motion which virtually all
early cartoons suffered from with
something approaching the real
thing.
Disney's success at re-inventing
the way animation looked is apparent
not only in its own work from
the period but in that of all its significant
competitors of the early
sound era. Original Mickey Mouse
animator Iwerks foundered when
he started his own snidio, in lai^e
part because ofmisguided attempts
to match the production value of
the Disney short subjects division
which he himself had helped create.
At Paramount, Max and Dave
Fleischer, who were arguably
Disney's closest and most imaginative
rivals throughout the
'30s, were forced by the studio into
feature animation production in the
aftermath of "Snow White's" stunning
boxoffice achievement, overextending
and eventually
bankrupting theraselves in the pro-
part of the animator's art. CAUSE.. . Gerald McBoing Boing, titular star of ttie 1951 UPA short that cess. At MOM, the Tom and Jerry
From the earliest Mickey grabbed an Oscar and marked an early example of the studio's graphic style. series put the slapstick energy of
Mouse cartoons to Felix the Cat to
to a then-Columbia based animation studio
"Steamboat Willie" together with
Betty Boop and Ub Iwerks' Flip the Frog, the called United Productions of America, aka a lush pictorial style to create one of
pioneers of film animation took a wicked delight
in presenting exaggerated and at times
UPA.
There was a reason why it took so long for
animation's longest running success stories,
while at Warner Bros., awareness ofthe Disney
grotesque images of the popular figures oftheir what should have seemed a natural marriage hou.se style contributed in the margins to the
day. But "ftxmal" caricature—the kind re-
to take place: the unprecedented success and evolution ofan increasingly three-dimensional
approach to the medium.
PA was the one cartixm studio that was
founded upon a specific mandate to
reject the influential Disney hou.se style
in favor of a more eclectic approach, embrac-