These notes accompany a program of independent animated films screening on December 26, 27, and 28 in Theater 3.
The departure of many animation artists from Disney as a result of labor troubles and a desire for freer expression led to a diffusion of talent and styles in the animation field. America also experienced the development of highly independent and solitary individuals working in the fields of animation and experimental filmmaking in general. We will look at some of this latter work in a few months, but today’s program is designed to be a once-over-lightly look at pioneering animators away from Hollywood in the post-World War II era. It is by no means comprehensive.
Douglass Crockwell (1904–1968, The Long Bodies) was somewhat isolated in upstate New York, where he pursued a career as a Norman Rockwell-esque illustrator for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, but his avocation involved experimenting with abstract film imagery using various substances (glass, clay, wax) to create shifting forms, far removed from his magazine work. It can be argued that the abstractions of Crockwell, Len Lye (1901–1980), and Robert Breer (1926–2011, Jamestown Baloos) coincided with the burgeoning concerns of “modern art” and of museums like ours that may have been resistant to film narrative. (However, it must be said that Iris Barry, the founder of what became MoMA’s Department of Film, was from the first a great admirer of Walt Disney and non-abstract characters like Mickey Mouse.) Lye, a transplanted New Zealander, had been a major force in Britain in the 1930s in John Grierson’s General Post Office unit, which preceded Grierson’s stint as head of the National Film Board of Canada. Lye’s revolutionary technique consisted of inscribing the actual image on the celluloid film (a practice that would be perfected by the painterly films of Stan Brakhage a half-century later.) Color Cry was made by Lye during his period in America, using a technique of his own invention that he called “shadowcast film stencils.” Eventually, Lye gave up film for painting and sculpture. Breer also worked in these mediums, though he continued making films into the 21st century.
At the center of the postwar independent animation movement was United Productions of America (UPA). The formation of the studio grew out of the strike at Disney in 1941. The thrust of UPA’s innovations was to make the animated figures more limited and less naturalistic. This was a significant creative move, but in later years, it became more of a cost-cutting decision than an aesthetic one. The heart and soul of UPA was John Hubley (1914–1977), who had worked on all the Disney features from Snow White to Bambi. Robert Cannon (1909–1964) who had been one of the major Porky Pig guys at Warner Brothers, directed the first UPA film, Brotherhood of Man, followed by the highly original Gerald McBoing Boing. Hubley contributed the Mr. Magoo film Fuddy Duddy Buddy, but Magoo’s favorite director was Pete Burness (1904–1969), who made When Magoo Flew. Ted Parmelee (1912–1964) made an extraordinary adaptation of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, originally intended to be part of the brief 1953 craze for 3-D. The business end of UPA was handled by Stephen Bosustow (1911–1981), who eventually took over Magoo’s TV career with Burness, and they also produced programs like Rocky and Bullwinkle....