1.
Merrie Melodies
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Merrie Melodies is an American animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. between 1931 and 1969, during the golden age of American animation. As with its parent series, Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies featured some of the most famous cartoon characters ever created, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd. Merrie Melodies was originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures from 1931 to 1933, Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the newly renamed Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies was outsourced to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and Format Films from 1964 to 1967, cartoons resumed production for the series final two years. Three of the Merrie Melodies films won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, in 2013, TV Guide ranked the Warner Bros. Cartoons the third Greatest Cartoon of All Time, producer Leon Schlesinger had already produced one cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, based on music, and its success prompted him to try to sell a sister series to Warner Bros. His selling point was that the new cartoons would feature music from the soundtracks of Warner Bros. films and would serve as advertisements for Warner Bros. recordings. The studio agreed, and Schlesinger dubbed the series Merrie Melodies, walt Disney Productions had already scored with their Silly Symphonies. Since cartoon production usually began with a soundtrack, animating a piece of music made it easier to plot elements. The origins of the Merrie Melodies series begin with the failure of an action series of musical shorts called Spooney Melodies. These shorts were basically a type of music video that included segments with a popular artist singing along with appropriate background sequences. Warner Bros. wanted to promote this music because they had acquired the ownership of Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US $28 million. Because of the success of their Looney Tunes series, Warner Bros. decided to develop a new series of animated shorts called Merrie Melodies. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising led the development and it was meant to be a series of musical cartoons that featured hit songs of the day, especially those then owned by Warner Bros. and featured in their musical films. In 1931, many of the featured the orchestra of Abe Lyman. The first cartoon of the new Merrie Melodies series was Lady, Ising attempted to introduce several characters in his Merrie Melodies films, such as Piggy, Foxy, and Goopy Geer. Eventually however, the series continued without any recurring characters, the shorts proved to be enormously popular with the public. In 1932, a Merrie Melodies cartoon, entitled Its Got Me Again. was nominated for the first Academy Award to be given for animation, when Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933, they took with them all rights to the characters they had created
2.
Bob Clampett
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Clampett was born and raised not far from Hollywood, and early on expressed an interest in animation and puppetry. Among Clampetts most acclaimed films are Porky in Wackyland, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, Cartoons in 1946 and turned his attention to television, creating the famous puppet show Time for Beany in 1949. A later animated version of the series, titled Beany and Cecil, well-loved by millions, the animated series carried the byline a Bob Clampett Cartoon. In his later years, Clampett toured college campuses and animation festivals as a lecturer on the history of animation and his Warner cartoons have seen renewed praise in decades since for their surrealistic qualities, energetic and outrageous animation, and irreverent humor. Animation historian Jerry Beck lauded Clampett for putting the word looney in Looney Tunes, Robert Emerson Clampett was born in San Diego, California on May 8,1913. Clampett was displaying extraordinary art skills by the age of five, while living in Hollywood as a young boy, Clampett and his mother Joan lived next door to Charlie Chaplin and his brother Syd. Clampett also recalled watching his father play handball at the Los Angeles Athletic Club with another of the great silent comedians, from his early teens Clampett showed an interest in animation and puppetry. In high school, Clampett drew a comic about the nocturnal adventures of a pussycat. King Features took note and offered Clampett a cartoonists contract to begin a seventy-five dollars a week after high school, King Features allowed Clampett to work in their Los Angeles art department on Saturdays and vacations during high school. On occasion, King Features would print one of Clampetts cartoons for encouragement, in addition, they paid his way through Otis Art Institute, where Clampett learned to paint with oils and to sculpt. Clampett attended both Glendale High School and Hoover High School in Glendale, California but left Hoover a few months short of graduating in 1931, afterwards, Clampett found a job working at a doll factory owned by his aunt, Charlotte Clark. Clark was looking for an item to sell and Clampett suggested Mickey Mouse due to growing popularity. Unable to find a drawing of the character anywhere, Clampett took his sketchpad to the movies, Clark was concerned with the copyright, so the two drove to the Disney studio. Walt and Roy Disney were delighted and they set up a business not far from the Disney studio, I helped him load the dolls in the car. One time his car, loaded with Mickeys, wouldnt start, and I pushed while Walt steered, until it caught, and he took off. Clampett was, in his words, so enchanted by the new medium of cartoons that he instead joined Harman-Ising Studios in 1931 for ten dollars a week. Schlesinger viewed one of Clampetts 16mm films and was impressed, offering him an assistant position at the studio and his first job was animating secondary characters in the first Merrie Melodie, Lady, Play Your Mandolin. The same year, Clampett began attending story meetings after submitting an idea used for Smile, Darn Ya
3.
Leon Schlesinger
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Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, remembered for founding Leon Schlesinger Studios, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the Golden Age of American animation and he was also a distant relative of the Warner Brothers. Schlesinger was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, after working at a theater as an usher, songbook agent, actor, and manager, he founded Pacific Title & Art Studio in 1919, where most of his business was producing title cards for silent films. As talking pictures replaced them in 1929 and 1930, Schlesinger looked for ways to capitalize on the new technology, some film historians claim that he helped finance the Warner Brothers first talkie, The Jazz Singer. Schlesinger was a businessman with a keen eye for talent. When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. with Bosko in 1934, sunset Boulevard lot at the corner of Van Ness and Fernwood. He wooed animators away from other studios, including some of those who had departed with Harman, one of these was Friz Freleng, whom Schlesinger promoted to oversee production of Looney Tunes and to develop the sister series, Merrie Melodies. Frelengs talent quickly shone through, and Schlesingers hiring of Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and he later added Carl Stalling and Mel Blanc, and collectively these men created such famous characters as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. Schlesinger largely took a hands off approach to the animation unit, Schlesinger sold Pacific Title & Art Studio in 1935 to concentrate on his animation studio. Schlesingers hard-nosed business practices cannot be overstated and his animators worked in a dilapidated studio, and Schlesinger briefly shut down the studio in mid-1941 when unionized employees demanded a pay raise. On another occasion, he boycotted the Academy Awards for what he claimed was preferential treatment for the Walt Disney and he also farmed some of the Looney Tunes out to his brother-in-law, Ray Katz, for tax breaks. Schlesinger was also known for his lisp, one oft-repeated official story states that Mel Blanc patterned the voices of both Daffy Duck and Sylvester the cat on Schlesinger. However, in Mel Blancs autobiography, Thats Not All Folks and he contradicts that conventional belief, writing It seemed to me that such an extended mandible would hinder his speech, particularly on words containing an s sound. Daffys slobbery, exaggerated lisp was developed over time, animators who worked with Schlesinger also found him conceited and somewhat foppish, wearing too much cologne and dressing like a dandy. Leon Schlesinger appeared as himself in Frelengs short You Ought to Be in Pictures, in this short, Mel Blanc voices Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and all other characters, except Schlesinger who dubbed his voice because the studio did not have a sound camera. As with other Warner cartoon staffers, Schlesinger appeared in form in such cartoons as Hollywood Steps Out, Russian Rhapsody. Schlesinger remained head of the studio until 1944 when he sold his assets to Warner Bros. He continued to market the characters and headed Warners Theater Services unit until his death from an infection on Christmas Day,1949 at the age of 65
4.
Dr. Seuss
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Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, cartoonist, animator, book publisher, and artist best known for authoring childrens books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes several of the most popular books of all time, selling over 600 million copies. Geisel adopted his Dr. Seuss pen name during his university studies at Dartmouth College and he left Oxford in 1927 to begin his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for Vanity Fair, Life, and various other publications. He also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil and he published his first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937. After the war, Geisel focused on books, writing classics such as If I Ran the Zoo. If I Ran the Circus, The Cat in the Hat and he published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series. He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for Horton Hatches the Egg, Geisels birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association. Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta, all four of his grandparents were German immigrants. His father managed the brewery and was later appointed to supervise Springfields public park system by Mayor John A. Denison after the brewery closed because of Prohibition. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in Dr. Seuss first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is less than a mile southwest of his home on Fairfield Street. He enrolled at Springfield Central High School in 1917 and graduated in 1921 and he took an art class as a freshman and later became manager of the school soccer team. Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925, at Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. While at Dartmouth, he was caught drinking gin with nine friends in his room, at the time, the possession and consumption of alcohol was illegal under Prohibition laws, which remained in place between 1920 and 1933. As a result of this infraction, Dean Craven Laycock insisted that Geisel resign from all extracurricular activities, to continue work on the Jack-O-Lantern without the administrations knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name Seuss. He was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, upon graduating from Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford intending to earn a PhD in English literature. At Oxford, he met Helen Palmer, who encouraged him to give up becoming an English teacher in favor of pursuing drawing as a career. Making use of his time in Europe, he pitched a series of cartoons called Eminent Europeans to Life magazine and his first nationally published cartoon appeared in the July 16,1927 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. This single $25 sale encouraged Geisel to move from Springfield to New York City, later that year, Geisel accepted a job as writer and illustrator at the humor magazine Judge, and he felt financially stable enough to marry Helen
5.
Kent Rogers
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Kent Byron Rogers was an American actor and impressionist who appeared in several live-action shorts and features, and a voice actor for Warner Bros. and Walter Lantz Productions. Rogers amassed an impressive resume of roles during his short career, Rogers also provided the original voice of Beaky Buzzard in Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid and The Bashful Buzzard. He also provided the voice of Junior Bear in Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears, the initial 1944 entry of Chuck Jones The Three Bears series, for Walter Lantz Productions he voiced Woody Woodpecker in five theatrical cartoon shorts released from 1942 to 1943. Rogers died in the crash of a flight at Pensacola, Florida. Stan Freberg and Mel Blanc replaced Rogers as the voice of Beaky Buzzard, Rogers is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, HI. Kent Rogers at the Internet Movie Database Kent Rogers at Find a Grave
6.
Sara Berner
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Sara Berner was an American film, television and radio actress. Her supporting roles included two for Alfred Hitchcock and she played the upstairs neighbor in the 1954 feature Rear Window. Her final film role as the voice of a telephone operator in the 1959 film North by Northwest. Born Lillian Herdan in Albany, New York, the first of the five children of Sam Herdan and Sarah Herdan, examples of her work include the voice of Mama Buzzard in The Bashful Buzzard and in Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, the singing voice of one-time character A. Flea in the 1943 short, An Itch in Time and the voices in 1946s Book Revue. In the 1943 propaganda short Tokyo Woes, she voiced the titular character and she worked for the Walter Lantz studios as the title character in a number of Andy Panda shorts, as well as voicing Chilly Willy in his first film appearance. For MGM she voiced Jerry Mouse a few times, most notably in the dance sequence with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh. A newspaper article in 1950 described Berner as one of radios most versatile actresses, bea Benaderet played another ditzy CBS telephone operator, Gertrude Gearshift on the same program. They were at the board and had conversations, often at the expense of Jack Benny - who was often impatiently waiting on the other end of the line for one of them to complete his call. Her other radio work included roles on Arthurs Place, Burns and Allen, Berner had her own program, Saras Private Caper, on NBC beginning June 15,1950. In 1937, Berner was one of a 16-member all-girl unit that toured with Major Edward Bowes, Berner married Milton Rosner, a theatrical agent, August 11,1951, and they had one daughter, Eugenie. They were divorced May 2,1958, Berner died on December 19,1969 at aged 57. She was buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles
7.
Mel Blanc
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Melvin Jerome Mel Blanc was an American voice actor, actor, radio comedian, and recording artist. Coyote, Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil, and many of the characters from the Looney Tunes. He was, in fact, the voice for all of the major male Warner Bros. cartoon characters except for Elmer Fudd and he later worked for Hanna-Barberas television cartoons, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. Blanc was also the voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures. Having earned the nickname The Man of a Thousand Voices, Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry, Blanc was born in San Francisco, California to Russian-Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Blank, the younger of two children. He grew up in the neighborhood of Western Addition in San Francisco, growing up, he had a fondness for voices and dialect which he began voicing at the age of 10. He claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a blank. Blanc joined The Order of DeMolay as a man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum and he moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb and Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15. The program played Monday through Saturday from 11,00 pm to midnight, with his wifes encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros. –owned KFWB in Hollywood in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show, but the year switched to CBS Radio. The first role came from a mishap when the recording of the automobiles sounds failed to play on cue, prompting Blanc to take the microphone, the audience reacted so positively that Benny decided to dispense with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role. One of Blancs most memorable characters from Bennys radio programs was Sy, the Little Mexican, sue. sew routine was so effective that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there, thanks to the comedic timing of Blanc and Benny. Blanc continued to work with him on radio until the series ended in 1955 and they last appeared together on a Johnny Carson Tonight Show in January 1974. A few months later, Blanc spoke highly of Benny on a Tom Snyder Tomorrow show special aired the night of the comedians death, by 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show. Blanc played himself as the owner of a fix-it shop. Blanc also appeared on other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen
8.
Carl W. Stalling
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Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros. where he averaged one complete score each week, Stalling was born to Ernest and Sophia C. His parents were from Germany, his father arrived in the United States in 1883, the family settled in Lexington, Missouri where his father was a carpenter. He started playing piano at six, by the age of 12, he was the principal piano accompanist in his hometowns silent movie house. For a short period, he was also the theatre organist at the St. Louis Theatre, by his early 20s, he was conducting his own orchestra and improvising on the organ at the Isis Movie Theatre in Kansas City. His actual job at the time was to play organ accompaniment for silent films, during that time, he met and befriended a young Walt Disney, who was producing animated comedy shorts in Kansas City. According to music critic Neil Strauss, the meeting between Stalling and Disney in the early 1920s was of great importance to the development of music for animation. Stalling was at his job at the Isis Movie Theatre, demonstrating his ability to combine well-known music by other creators with his own, Disney stepped into the movie theater and was reportedly impressed with his style. He approached Stalling to introduce himself, and their acquaintance was mutually beneficial, Stalling was able to arrange the screening of a few Disney animated shorts at the Isis, and Disney ensured that Stalling would play the accompaniment for his films. Disney eventually left Kansas City and moved to California in order to open a new studio, Stalling and Disney kept in touch through correspondence, and considered each other friends. In 1928, Disney was on a journey from California to New York City in order to record the sound and make the preview of Steamboat Willie, during the journey he stopped at Kansas City to hire Stalling to compose film scores for two other animated shorts. Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney, including Plane Crazy, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin Gaucho were originally silent films and were the first two Mickey Mouse animated short films in production. When finishing composing the scores, Stalling went to New York City to record them for Disney. Walt was apparently pleased with the results, and offered to hire Stalling as his studios first music director, in order to get the job, Stalling had to move to California, where the studio was located. According to Martha Sigall, Stalling accepted because the job offer was an opportunity for him. He probably realized that his career as an organist for a silent movie theatre was coming to an end, sound films were the new trend. Stalling soon followed Disney in moving to Hollywood, in order to work for his friend, animation historian Allan Neuwirth credits Stalling for basically inventing the process of creating a film score for cartoons. According to Neil Strauss, the wildly talented Stalling was suitable as a score composer for animated films
