Archive for the ‘Cartoon History’ Category
Roy Crane
Royston Campbell Crane (November 22, 1901 – July 7, 1977, who signed his work Roy Crane, was an American cartoonist and creator of the comic strip characters Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy, and Buz Sawyer. He created one of the earliest adventure comic strips, and influenced many of the subsequent cartoonists in that genre.
Crane was born in Abilene, Texas and grew up in nearby Sweetwater. When he was 14 years old, he took the C.N. Landon correspondence course in cartooning. He initially attended college at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and later the University of Texas, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. At 19, he studied for six months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. His early career was a checkered one, including pitching tents for a Chautauqua, a seaman’s berth, and a stint riding the rails. In 1922, he began his newspaper cartooning career on the New York World, where he assisted H.T. Webster.
In 1924, Crane approached C.N. Landon, who was then an editor at the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). Landon agreed to let him try his hand at a humorous strip titled Washington Tubbs II, soon shortened to Wash Tubbs, which debuted on April 21, 1924. After about four months, Crane tired of the gag-a-day format and sent his diminutive hero off on a treasure hunt. The strip evolved into a rollicking adventure yarn, all the more so after the introduction in 1929 of the raffish soldier of fortune, Captain Easy.
World War II rendered the comic-opera settings of Tubbs’s adventures frivolous. The strip took on a new tone. In 1943, an offer from Hearst’s King Features Syndicate persuaded Crane to jump ship and create a more realistic comic strip, Buz Sawyer. He left Wash Tubbs in the hands of his assistant, Leslie Turner, a boyhood friend who had shared the hobo life with him.
Crane, an excellent draftsman despite his deceptively cartoonish style, established himself as a master of shading. He progressed from line drawings with cross-hatching to grease pencil on textured paper, then to Benday Dots, and finally to Craftint doubletone paper. The Craftint paper, when brushed with the right solutions, revealed either one or two layers of diagonal shading. Under Crane’s brush, the technique yielded scenes of dramatic atmosphere, such as junglescapes fading into the misty distance. From time to time, Crane went on location to research his plot lines and visuals.
Crane was awarded the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year in 1950, and their Story Comic Strip Award in 1965, both for Buz Sawyer . He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin in 1969. He progressively relinquished his cartooning to assistants, and died in Orlando, Florida in 1977.
Wash Tubbs
Wash Tubbs was a comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from April 14, 1924 to 1988.
Initially titled Washington Tubbs II, Wash Tubbs was originally a comedy, or “Bigfoot,” strip focused on the misadventures of the title character, a jazz age bumbler who ran a store. However the strip’s creator, cartoonist Roy Crane, reinvented the strip after its 12th week to make it the first true action/adventure comic strip. On Sundays, Wash Tubbs appeared as a topper, or subsidiary strip, from 1927 to 1933 over J.R. Williams’ Out Our Way Sunday strip.
Wash was a girl-crazy zany, and his character never truly changed even as the strip changed around him. After a Polynesian treasure hunt in which Wash made and lost a fortune, a series of adventures followed in which Wash fell afoul of his arch-enemy, Bull Dawson, who was to reappear throughout the series. The short, bespectacled Wash was not a fighter, and Crane tried out a couple of scrappier sidekicks until May 6, 1929, when he introduced Captain Easy, a tough, taciturn Southerner with a mysterious past. Easy gradually took over the strip and became its lead character, getting his own Sunday page, Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune, in 1933. In 1949 Wash Tubbs was officially renamed Captain Easy. Wash continued to appear as a supporting character but became steadily less important during the 1940s.
The Tubbs and Easy characters were owned by the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate and creator Roy Crane abandoned the strips in 1943 to begin Buz Sawyer, a strip he would own outright.
After Crane’s departure, control of the strips passed to Crane’s assistant, Les Turner, who had worked on Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune since 1937. With Tubbs an increasingly unimportant character, Turner officially renamed the daily and Sunday strips Captain Easy in 1949.
Turner collaborated with a number of artists on the strip, including Walt Scott and Mel Graff. When Turner retired in 1969 control of the strips passed to his assistant, Bill Crooks. After more than 60 years in publication, the series was discontinued in 1988.
Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy were also featured in Big Little Books during the 1930s, and in a short run of Dell comic books during the 1940s. The entire 1924-1943 run of Crane’s strip was reprinted in Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, an 18-volume series with biographical and historical commentary by Bill Blackbeard. This series was published by NBM Publishing (Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine) on a quarterly schedule from 1987 to 1992.
Captain Easy
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune was an action/adventure comic strip created by Roy Crane that started Sunday, June 11, 1933 and was discontinued in 1988.
Originally Captain Easy was a supporting character in the series Wash Tubbs, which focused on the adventures of the zany Washington Tubbs II. On May 6, 1929 Crane introduced taciturn toughguy Captain Easy, who soon took over the strip. In 1933 Crane created Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune as a Sunday page starring Easy.
Captain Easy was a chivalrous Southern adventurer in the classic adventure-hero mold. After a series of globe-trotting adventures, Easy enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, afterwards becoming a private detective.
The Sunday adventures were initially unconnected to those of the Wash Tubbs strip and dealt with Easy’s adventures prior to meeting Tubbs. They are considered a tour-de-force by Crane, who crafted layouts intended to be seen as a coherent whole rather than a disparate collection of panels. Unfortunately, in 1937 the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, which employed Crane and owned the strip, introduced the modern policy which requires Sunday pages to be designed as panels that can be rearranged for different formats. Crane then turned the Sunday pages over to Les Turner, his assistant, to concentrate on the daily strip.
After Crane’s departure, control of the strips passed to Turner, who turned the Sunday pages over to his assistant, Walt Scott. Easy was in the Army by that time, and with Tubbs an increasingly unimportant character, Turner officially renamed the daily and Sunday strips Captain Easy in 1949.
Scott drew Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune through the 1940s and 1950s. Mel Graff began ghosting it in 1960. When Turner retired in 1969, control of the strips passed to his assistant, Bill Crooks and Jim Lawrence. Mick Casale came aboard in 1982 and lasted until the series was discontinued in 1988.
Wash Tubbs also appeared as a topper, or subsidiary strip, from 1927 to 1933 above J.R. Williams’s Sunday comic Out Our Way.
Buz Sawyer
Buz Sawyer was a popular comic strip created by Roy Crane that ran from November 1, 1943 to 1989. The last strip signed by Crane was dated 21 April 1979.
John “Buz” Sawyer was initially a fighter pilot for the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. A chivalrous adventurer, he became a troubleshooter for an oil company when the war ended but rejoined the Navy in the 1950s.
Roy Crane was one of the innovators of the adventure comic strip. Wash Tubbs began in 1924 as a humorous story about the romantic adventures of Washington Tubbs, but increasingly Tubbs became involved in exciting adventures in exotic places. With the creation of the popular soldier of fortune Captain Easy in 1929, the strip became, along with Tarzan of the Apes and Buck Rogers, one of the first adventure strips. However, Crane was an employee of the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, which owned the rights to the Tubbs and Easy characters. Crane approached King Features Syndicate with an idea for a new strip, and when they offered him ownership, he abandoned Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy strips in 1943, giving full concentration to launching Buz Sawyer.
Roscoe Sweeney, who was Sawyer’s comic-relief sidekick, largely disappeared from the dailies after the war. Instead, Sweeney became the central character of the Buz Sawyer Sunday strip, a comedy about rural and suburban life. Beginning in the late 1940s, Crane turned the writing and drawing chores for that strip over to cartoonist Clark Haas, who was a pioneer jet pilot. Later, Al Wenzel did the Sunday strip.
Eventually, Crane turned most of the writing and drawing of the daily strip over to assistants Edwin Granberry and Hank Schlensker, who began signing it after Crane’s death in 1977. When they retired a decade later, John Celardo drew the daily until it was discontinued in 1989.
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland “Joe” Barbera (March 24, 1911-December 18, 2006) was an animator, cartoon artist, storyboard artist, television director, television producer, and co-founder, together with William Hanna, of Hanna-Barbera. The studio produced popular cartoons such as The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Top Cat and Yogi Bear.
Biography Early years
Joseph Barbera (pronounced bar-BEAR-uh) was born in the Little Italy section of Manhattan, New York, to emmigrants of Lebanese descent.
Career Early career
Barbera started his career as a tailor’s delivery boy. During the Great Depression, he tried unsuccessfully to become a magazine cartoonist for a magazine called The NY Hits Magazine. Additionally, he once told of a letter that he wrote to Walt Disney asking for advice about getting started in the animation industry. Barbera said that Disney wrote back and replied that “its a tough business” and that he (Barbera) should seek another line of work. Undeterred by Disney’s comments, Joe Barbera pressed forward.
In 1932, he joined the Van Beuren Studio as an animator and scriptwriter. He worked on cartoons such as Cubby Bear, and Rainbow Parades and also co-produced Tom and Jerry (a couple of boys, unrelated to his later cat-and-mouse series). When Van Beuren closed down in 1936, Barbera moved over to the MGM studios.
Teaming with William Hanna
Lured by a substantial salary increase, Barbera left Terrytoons and New York for the new MGM cartoon unit in California in 1937. The following year, he teamed up with William Hanna to direct theatrical short cartoons; Barbera was the storyboard/layout artist, and Hanna was in charge of the timing. Their first venture was Puss Gets the Boot (1940), the first Tom and Jerry film, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject.
Hanna-Barbera founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera pose with several of the Emmy awards the Hanna-Barbera studio has won. Hanna and Barbera’s 17-year partnership on the Tom & Jerry series resulted in 7 Academy Awards for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject, and 14 total nominations, more than any other character-based theatrical animated series. Hanna and Barbera were placed in charge of MGM’s animation division in late 1955; however, this proved short-lived as MGM closed the division in 1957. They subsequently teamed up to produce the series The Ruff & Reddy Show, under the name H-B Enterprises, soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions. By using the limited animation techniques, Hanna and Barbera could provide programming for networks at reduced cost.
By the late 1960s, Hanna-Barbera Productions had become the most successful television animation studio, producing hit television programs such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
Later career
Hanna-Barbera had been a subsidiary of Taft Broadcasting (later Great American Communications) since 1967. The studio thrived until 1991, when it was sold to Turner Broadcasting. Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors and periodically worked on new Hanna-Barbera shows, including the What-a-Cartoon! series.
He served as creative consultant for the 1993 film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie for Miramax Films, WMG and Film Roman. Hanna-Barbera, received eight Emmys, including the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1988.
Their strengths melded perfectly, critic Leonard Maltin wrote in his book Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Barbera brought the comic gags and skilled drawing, while Hanna brought warmth and a keen sense of timing. Maltin wrote:
“This writing-directing team may hold a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year – without a break or change in routine.”
Hanna, who died in 2001, once said he was never a good artist but his partner could “capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
After Hanna’s death, Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Bros. Animation on direct-to-video cartoon features as well as television series such as What’s New, Scooby-Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales. In the Tom and Jerry cartoon “The Mansion Cat” from 2000, Barbera was the houseowner’s voice actor. He also wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed and co-produced the theatrical Tom and Jerry short The KarateGuard in 2005, thus returning to his and Hanna’s first successful cartoon format. His final animated project was the direct-to-video feature Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale, which came out on DVD in the U.S. on October 2, 2007.
Death
Barbera died at the age of 95 of natural causes at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles on December 18, 2006, ending a seventy-year career in animation. His wife Sheila was at his side when he died, and three children by a previous marriage also survived him: Jayne (who worked for Hanna-Barbera), Neal and Lynn. Cartoon Network put up a bumper in late December 2006 that showed Barbera in a black marker portrait. In the next scene, the words “We’ll miss you” were written above the Cartoon Network logo. Adult Swim had a banner that said Joseph Barbera [1911-2006] with the banner fading out without showing the [adult swim] logo at the end, something they only do when a person they consider important passes away and something they’d only done twice before; for Harry Goz in 2003 and Sam Loeb in 2005.
