Thad, I agree 100%. I have been going through my WB cartoon collection chronologically lately and Tex's influence is undeniable. Heck, even the gags in Freleng's and Jack King's cartoons got a bit faster paced once Avery came onboard. Without Avery, I have to wonder if WB cartoons would have been doomed to be as forgettable as the cartoons of Columbia or Terry. Yeah, he got into a bit of a rut with those travelogue spoofs... but his Porkys and Merrie Melodies were really groundbreaking.
Clampett over Avery? If there had been no Avery, there would have been no Clampett.
Setting aside Tex's I'm-not-copying-copying-Disney-so-nyah style, If Tex had never gone to Warners, there would never have been cartoons to showcase Bob that ultimately led to a Clampett unit. And Bob wouldn't have had a Porky Pig to work with because Tex was the one who pointed the Pantless One to stardom. He'd be grinding away making unfunny Ham and Ex cartoons or who knows what else.
Tex's influence reached outside the studio as everyone knows.
The only thing I regret is Tex seemed to have a real unhappy portion of his life, ironic considering how much enjoyment he brought to others.
Happy birthday, Tex.
Tex Avery struck a chord at every studio he worked at. He developed the basic personalities of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny at Warner Bros. His fast-paced style spilled over into Hanna & Barbera's Tom & Jerry cartoons during the 1940's. And many of his human designs at Lantz during the 1950's were utilized for the remainder of the studio's run.
Which is shameful why Avery never earned any Oscars for his hard work, not even an Honorary one.
Hey, man. I just finished making a Tex Avery post on my blog as well. I think Jpox has one over on his blog too. Do you know of any other posts?
Tex's influence in the world of animation is undeniable. He influenced the style of every studio he worked and other directors were able to be inspired to better things because of his influence. (That sounds really awkward. I hope you know what I am trying to say!)
Tex was a genius, pure & simple. While Disney's cartoons tried to be as realistic as possible, Tex's kept a bit of the 20's & 30's influence with him. He did what cartoons were supposed to do in the first place: Defy reality, relativity, rationality, gravity, predictability &, long story short, do the impossible & make us laugh.
Just think what what the world of animation would be like today if he didn't contribute what he did. Hard to imagine, right? Happy 100th Tex, where ever you are!
I'm glad you put up "The Blow Out" as one of Tex examples, I haven't seen that since 2001. I remember it being one of my favorite of the black & white shorts that Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon showed a long time ago.
Tex is the guy "nobody"(even the most annoying Clampett's or Jones' fans)may bash.
There's always a habit of people assuming what was true at a future time was also true in the past, which is where a lot of the Clampett fanatics seem to be when they take their (ever-so-careful) jabs at Avery (and why PC types today are so annoying, because they think their attitudes and beliefs of today would have been the same if they were living in 1941).
Tex not only created the culture at Warners in which a Clampett could operate, but then he had to do it all over when he arrived at MGM, since the comedy there could best be described as "leaden" and far more affected by Disney than Warners sensibilities in late 1941 (at best Hanna-Barbera's early T&J cartoons are interesting shorts based on personality, not on unexpected gags). So even in 1943-44 Avery was making cartoons while fighting the system -- in this case the bland family-entertainment snobbery of MGM and it's mentor in the cartoon world at the Mouse Factory -- while Clampett was creating within a system that understood and was in synch with what he was trying to do, because of the foundation Tex set up.
Bob's cartoons from 1943-46 were better than Avery's, but as Clampett's sojourn over a Columbia showed, it's tough to be truly creative without the right type of environment.
The way I see it is, Tex established the very basis of what cartoons are. Clampett and Jones took it a step further. Anway, Happy Berfday Tex.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In the case of Tex Avery, both
because it all started with him.
Without Tex there would never have been Bugs & Daffy, or even Tom & Jerry as we know 'em (Hanna & Barbera's early T&J were painfully slow until Tex arrived at MGM).
Tex was an original talent, one of animation's founding fathers & the guy who truly put the 'looney' in Looney Tunes. Happy 100th Birthday, Tex!
What gag did Tex contribute in ALASKA?
Voiceman91---
I'm sure the deadpan singer in Alaska was Avery's idea. I can't say for sure if he had the idea to have Oswald beat Pete with his own pegleg, but I sure do love it.
There's no denying at how prevailing Tex's influence on animation was. Go watch something such as Elmer's Pet Rabbit or Buckaroo Bugs and watch his influence in action. Other studios, such as Lantz and Famous were also producing very Avery-esque cartoons.
"Which is shameful why Avery never earned any Oscars for his hard work, not even an Honorary one."
I definitely agree with you, Mr. Semaj (I'm surprised that he never did). Although I consider T and J to be one of my favorite MGM cartoons, Tex should have received at least one of the many awards that T and J won, based primarily on what Larry said.
Happy 100th birthday, Tex!
I read on the Cartune Encyclopedia that Pinto Colvig (an animator at the time) did the dead pan singer.
For some reason, that's the only part of the cartoon I can't stop watching.
I've never really seen a Lantz Oswald before. Thanks.
Oh, and one more thing. How did you recognize the animation styles of Jones and Clampett?
There's no arguing that Tex Avery broke through the stale Disney imitations being done at Warners at the time, and established a style of comedic cartoon that was widely imitated. He also created the most popular of Warner's cartoon stars -- Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.
Yes, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones got stuck working on the dull Buddy cartoons, while Avery was contributing gags to the better Oswald series. But it's unfair to imply that the Buddy cartoons represented Clampett's or Jones's idea of what a cartoon should be. Both hated the Buddy character and were disappointed in the cartoons Warners was making in that era. That's why Schlesinger gave Avery both men for Avery's new unit, because they didn't like animating for Jack King or even Friz Freleng.
I think Milt Gray was arguing that Bob Clampett was responsible for the exaggerated animation style that Warner Bros. cartoons became associated with. (And the animation vastly improved under Clampett's direction, as well as the final models for Porky and Bugs.) The animation in the early Avery cartoons is much more staid by comparison. It wasn't until Avery was at MGM for a few years that his animation became wilder, with the big-eyed "takes" he became known for.
J.J.,
It's perfectly fair to post those comparisons. If Clampett was the one responsible for all the defining moments in the early Warner history, as Milt writes, why couldn't he weave some magic into those pedestrian cartoons?
Milt sure as hell didn't mean anything about the actual cartooniness of the animation by writing "But for all the credit that Avery actually deserves, I believe Bob deserves most of the credit [for the cartoony direction Warner cartoons went in]."
Avery was definitely grooming his animators for the things that came to full-scale in Clampett's unit before he left Warners. How about that take of Bugs' at the end of "All This and Rabbit Stew"?
I took issue with much of what Milt wrote in that tribute (Come on John, post the rest! Unless you think Huck Hound will inspire a more interesting conversation...) because he seems to be emphasizing on his devotion to Clampett to spite whatever Chuck Jones said. (And really, who gives a damn what Jones said about Clampett's cartoons?)
"I took issue with much of what Milt wrote in that tribute (Come on John, post the rest! Unless you think Huck Hound will inspire a more interesting conversation...) because he seems to be emphasizing on his devotion to Clampett to spite whatever Chuck Jones said. (And really, who gives a damn what Jones said about Clampett's cartoons?)"
And...well again,the same "let's try to make my favorites looks even better"....
Great tribute. Thanks for posting some of his earlier shorts. I so rarely sit down to watch them.
Tex was the most influential director. Just look at the cartoons made at each studio he worked for. His influence at Warner's is obvious. Hanna and Barbera owe much of their success, even in TV, to Tex. Even the shorts made after he left Lantz seem at times to try and mimic Tex's humor. As for Clampett's influence. Let's see. It's kind of like this, I love Coltrane but what he have been without Charlie Parker.
And in one thing both,Clampett and Jones,agree: "Tex is the greatest"
Tex is a great influence to any historians and artists in the world. Great article about him tough. You should talk about his last efforts at Lantz in the 50's.
>>"It's perfectly fair to post those comparisons. If Clampett was the one responsible for all the defining moments in the early Warner history, as Milt writes, why couldn't he weave some magic into those pedestrian cartoons?"
Clampett and Jones, as animators, had no control over those early WB cartoons. According to Clampett, Avery was open to collaboration and suggestions from his crew, whereas Freleng was not. Clampett said he suggested gags to Freleng while an animator for him, and Freleng would reject them. Avery gave Clampett more creative freedom. I think Clampett's animation had a hand in defining Daffy Duck in Porky's Duck Hunt, just as McKimson's animation in A Wild Hare helped to define Bugs Bunny.
>>"Avery was definitely grooming his animators for the things that came to full-scale in Clampett's unit before he left Warners. How about that take of Bugs' at the end of 'All This and Rabbit Stew'?"
That take at the end of Rabbit Stew hints at the direction Avery would eventually go in when at MGM. However, Avery's color cartoons of '40-'41 deferred to McKimson's style (according to Barrier's book). McKimson, as head animator, would go over the other animator's work in Avery's unit. Clampett broke McKimson of this habit, and really allowed Rod Scribner to flower. I doubt Avery would have done that.
At MGM Avery's first few cartoons were rather sluggish in timing, and the animation was too similar to Disney's. Avery had to move his unit away from the Harman-Ising influence, and it took a few years. Meanwhile, at the same time, Clampett had already made great strides in the animation in his cartoons.
That said, I still think Avery was a great director, and was responsible for setting the format and style at Warners. I just think Clampett, Tashlin and Jones expanded on and defined what Avery did.
>>"(And really, who gives a damn what Jones said about Clampett's cartoons?)"
Unfortunately, most of the press did.
Well the critics went with what they liked best. Manny Farber picked Jones as his favorite shorts as far back as 1943. French magazines singled out Jones, Avery, and Tashlin as early as 1961. This had nothing to do with what Chuck Jones told them.
Who do you think most critics are going to go towards? The self-weary sophisticate blowhard or the guy self-promoting himself at college campuses in a Tweety jacket?
J.J., did you not read one of J. Lee's comments? Avery was grooming his animators for the takes he wanted before leaving Warners... He had to do it all over again at MGM! Clampett got his crew warmed up in the direction he wanted already, and just took it further the way Avery probably would have. But the animation did come to full form under Clampett, so for that he desrves credit.
>>Well the critics went with what they liked best. Manny Farber picked Jones as his favorite shorts as far back as 1943. French magazines singled out Jones, Avery, and Tashlin as early as 1961. This had nothing to do with what Chuck Jones told them.
Critics like Manny Farber are the exceptions. I'm talking about the press today, not in the 40's or 60's. Most of todays reporters grew up on the CBS Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, where Jones was the better director in comparison to the more tepid 50's cartoons of Freleng and McKimson. Did you read any of the tributes to Jones after his death in the press? Lots of misinformation, and a general lack of knowledge of the history of the studio.
J.J.,
There is a difference between the general press and film critics. You should know better, being so high up at the NY Globe. Anytime anyone dies in animation the AP articles are teeming with misinformation.
So are you saying, that if the later American critics who praised Jones had more of Clampett's or Tashlin's shorts to compare with (which a lot of them did, especially important ones like Barrier and Maltin), they would draw the conclusion that Jones was inferior to Clampett? This isn't a case of black or white here.
>>J.J., did you not read one of J. Lee's comments? Avery was grooming his animators for the takes he wanted before leaving Warners... He had to do it all over again at MGM! Clampett got his crew warmed up in the direction he wanted already, and just took it further the way Avery probably would have. But the animation did come to full form under Clampett, so for that he desrves credit.
Well, J Lee didn't mentioned that Avery was training his Warner crew for more exaggerated animaton. He mentioned that he did that at MGM.
There's nothing to suggest Avery was going in that direction at Warners with his color crew, despite the one big take at the end of All This and Rabbit Stew. The animation in those cartoons is more solid and less exaggerated. In fact, all the cartoon directors at that time seemed to go through the same phase of toning down the cartoony animation in favor of more dimensional, Disney-type animation -- even Clampett briefly did in cartoons like The Henpecked Duck).
Avery didn't warm up his crew before Clampett took over. Clampett had the cartooniest animation in his cruder black and white Looney Tunes during the 30's. When Avery started directing the more prestigious Merrie Melodies, the animation in his cartoons became more solid, but less exaggerated. (Especially after Irv Spence left.) I think this was McKimson's influence.
Wow, there's about a decade of posts that go over this whole subject, but in short, Jones and Clampett were the ying and yang to Avery's middle ground in the late 30s and early 40s at Warners -- Bob's B&W Looney Tunes were for the most part strong on gags but weak on story construction, while Jones was strong on story but his gags were Disneyesque "cute", but not laugh out loud funny.
Avery was in-between (when he wasn't doing his travelogue spoofs) in part due to the lingering mid-30s feeling that the color Merrie Melodies had to be a little more (sniff) "refined" than a mere black and white Looney Tune. Also, by 1940s McKimson had been designed the lead animator for all the units, as far as standardizing the look of the shared characters. So it's no surprise that Tex would defer to McKimson some in his 1940-41 shorts, because those are the first cartoons Warners had that really had a 1940s solidity and handsomeness to the characters, and by early 1941, all the units were striving for that, as all four units were put on near-equal footing making both color and B&W cartoons.
The WB cartoons of 1941 weren't really that much faster than the 1938 efforts, but they were far better animated and were three-years further advanced in developing the studio's wise-ass style. It wasn't until 1942 that things really started to speed up, and credit there does go to Clampett. But even Bob had to slow his cartoons down in 1941 to work on improving both his story construction and personality animation (I'm on Year Nine now of waiting for Steve Worth to admit this, after a long-ago TTTP thread).
That was the situation when Avery walked out of the studio in mid-1941, and then was suspended and fired. Avery turned over the car keys to a souped-up unit for Bob to really test the limits on, and while you have to give Clampett credit for bringing out the genius in Rod Scribner, it's hard to look at Avery's later efforts at Metro once he broke those animators of their Disney/H-I influences, and not think that a 1944 Warner Bros. Tex Avery cartoon with Scribner in his unit wouldn't have contained some pretty wild animation (or, conversely, that we wouldn't be praising McKimson today instead of Preston Blair for his great animation on Red-Hot Riding Hood in cartoons that would have gone out under Schlesinger's name, instead of Fred Quimby's).
>>So are you saying, that if the later American critics who praised Jones had more of Clampett's or Tashlin's shorts to compare with (which a lot of them did, especially important ones like Barrier and Maltin), they would draw the conclusion that Jones was inferior to Clampett? This isn't a case of black or white here.
That's not what I'm saying at all. Jones's cartoons are some of the greatest cartoons ever made. Even newspaper reporters know that much. (I wasn't including Maltin or Barrier with the regular press. They are the exceptions -- critics who know what they're talking about.)
What I meant was that Clampett and Tashlin are also great animation directors who usually get overlooked, since most of their cartoons weren't on network television in the 60's and 70's. Most of the reporters writing the appreciative obits for Jones didn't research the cartoons, either.
Jones lived longer than most of his peers, and he was well read and verbally witty in interviews. It's no wonder that reporters and writers would be drawn to him as a spokesman for the Warner cartoons. (Jones's cartoons were also more obviously sophisticated than those of his peers -- something that writers would be attracted to.) In essence, Jones had the last word.
J Lee,
It seems like we are saying the same thing. The only difference I have is the last paragraph you wrote. It's a big "What if?" Maybe Avery would have made cartoons with exaggerated animation like Clampett later did, if Avery had stayed at Warners, but we'll never know for sure.
It does seem like Avery might have grown tired of McKimson's influence on his cartoons if the "take" in All This and Rabbit Stew is anything to go by. It's also true that Clampett inherited a very strong crew when Avery left.
I can't help but think, however, that the personalities of Avery and Clampett would make a big difference in developing that bolder style. Avery was shy and thought of his own drawings as crude. He seemed to defer to the animators with stronger draftsmanship like McKimson and Preston Blair. (If Barrier's book is correct.) Clampett was more brash and sure of himself. (Though he also thought his own drawings were crude.) Also, Scribner and Clampett seemed to be on the same level, in terms of taste. It also seems to have been Clampett's goal to do more crazy things with animation, if we take his earlier Looney Tunes as examples -- like the rubberized dog in Porky's Tire Trouble or Daffy's body inflating in The Daffy Doc).
Well since you're saying others have been slighted by hack writers, you're right. What I want to put a stop to are the tales of Jones getting the place of top director with critics because his cartoons were easier to see and because they were superior only in comparison with Freleng and McKimson. (Something a lot of Clampett freaks like to point out.)
Tashlin's were pretty sophisticated too IMO.
J.J.
--My take is he deferred to McKimson in part because Bob had been named as the studio's supervising animator, as part of an effort to bring the look of all the studio's cartoons up to McKimson's level. Had Avery lasted into the 1940s at Warners, when all the animators were capable of far better work than just 2-3 years earlier, I think what you eventually saw in the 1945-and-beyond period for Tex at MGM is what you would have seen coming out a few years earlier, since the crew, including the designers and story department, were attuned to what Tex was trying to do.
Over at MGM, I think Tex's story about Quinby's warning of "No Warner Bros. rowdyism" combined with Avery's self-effacing personality and the overall higher quality of animators on staff, meant that he wasn't going to just barge in and pick up where he left off when he walked out on Leon. Quimby wanted cartoons in the WB comedy style, but he wanted that comedy to conform to MGM standards, in the same way Irving Thalberg wanted to "civilize" the Marx Brothers comedy when they came over from Paramount (MGM's history of good comedy was those making it either ha to fight tooth and nail to get it past the humorless higher-ups, or it came from outside sources like the Hal Roach Studio).
The only animator in synch with Avery when ex arrived at the Metro was Irv Spence. All the others had to learn on the job what Avery wanted, and you can see the battles over design and pacing in the 1942-45 MGM shorts Tex did. By the time Tex left Warners, the studio's animation style was close to arriving at the light touch that worked best for the 40s cartoons -- not too many lines or too much detail on the characters, just enough to make them work with high-speed slapstick comedy, and that's what Clampett, McKimson and Scribner perfected in the mid-40s.
The characters and animation in a number of Avery's early MGMers just feel too heavy, as if the other people on staff are still either at Disney, or trying to keep up with Disney's feature film design, the way Harman and Ising were (and the same holds true for the early Tom & Jerry shorts). Had the situation been reversed, and Clampett had left Warners for MGM in 1941, he would have faced the same problem in getting the crew to sacrifice some of their beautiful drawings for a style that was geared more towards putting over gags that would make the audience laugh.
>>Well since you're saying others have been slighted by hack writers, you're right. What I want to put a stop to are the tales of Jones getting the place of top director with critics because his cartoons were easier to see and because they were superior only in comparison with Freleng and McKimson. (Something a lot of Clampett freaks like to point out.)
Tashlin's were pretty sophisticated too IMO.
For people of my generation, the pre-'48 Warner cartoons were difficult to see. They were only available on UHF independent local stations.
The cartoons were part of the A.A.P. package, were shorn of their credits, and the black and white cartoons had been poorly redrawn in color. (I remember thinking as a kid that Porky Pig's Feat was one of the worst cartoons I had ever seen! I thought the animators must have been incompetent. It wasn't until early 90's that I finally saw the b&w version.) I knew some people who had never seen a Clampett or Tashlin cartoon growing up, simply because there were in a part of the country that didn't have a local UHF station that aired the cartoons.
That also means that if only the cartoons from the 50's were available to the public, Jones would look like the best director. Freleng and McKimson made their best cartoons in the 40's. The tighter budgets hurt their output later on. Meanwhile, Jones directed most of the classics he was known for post '48.
I agree that Tashlin also made sophisticated cartoons, (in fact all the directors did) but to most of the mainstream critics Jones usually stands out for that aspect -- because of cartoons like Feed the Kitty, One Froggy Evening, What's Opera, Doc? and the like.
And yet, we're still going back and forth over who was the best with all the cartoons available! What up wit dat?
Hey Thad, I have some questions for you about 'The Blow Out.' It really struck me that the animation of Porky's eyes was particularly sensitive and well done for the time. The use of blinks, eye darts, eye direction, changes in lid shape, etc. really make the little pig come to life, especially between 2:00 and 3:34.
The scene at the counter ("One ice cream soda, please") at around 2:35 is really nice. Do you know who animated this? Also, was the scene from 3:03 to 3:34 one of Jones's? Finally, was this cartoon a nice example for the time (1936) of animating the eyes/lids to show what a character was thinking and feeling? Are there better examples from that year?
Thanks again for doing such a great job with these posts.
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