Single Animator Cartoons

[mayerson]

I'm specifically interested in theatrical cartoons where one animator did the entire short. I'm not thinking about independent shorts. Off the top of my head, I'm aware of these:

No Barking - Ken Harris
Rabbit Rampage - Ben Washam
The Hole Idea - Robert McKimson
Strike Up the Band - Al Eugster
Snow White (the Boop version) - Doc Crandall

Are there any others? The WB shorts are related to the 3D shutdown, so it was a special case, not company policy. The Fleischers seemed open to the idea, as it happened more than once. Did it ever happen at other studios?

Are there cases where only two animators did an entire short?

I'm curious as to how we know that Crandall was the sole animator on Snow White. Is that based on the screen credit or did the information come from somewhere else?

-Mark Mayerson

[Thad]

PAPPY'S PUPPY (WB) - Gerry Chiniquy
DROOLER'S DELIGHT (Lantz) - Ed Love

There were only two animators on the following WB shorts as well:

FELINE FRAME-UP - Richard Thompson, Abe Levitow
THE CAT'S BAH - Ben Washam, Lloyd Vaughan
STOP! LOOK! AND HASTEN! - Richard Thompson, Abe Levitow
SHEEP AHOY - Richard Thompson, Abe Levitow
PIZZICATO PUSSYCAT - Virgil Ross, Manuel Perez
THIS IS A LIFE? - Ted Bonnicksen, Arthur Davis
DIME TO RETIRE - Robert McKimson, Keith Darling
TOO HOP TO HANDLE - Robert McKimson, Keith Darling


-Thad

[ALK]

A Wild Hare, Virgil Ross

[Jaime_Weinman]

You'll notice that most of the one- and two-animator cartoons come from WB around the time of the 3-D shutdown, when the staff was in flux.

Originally Posted by ALK

A Wild Hare, Virgil Ross

No, that cartoon contains animation from Bob McKimson and others. Remember, until 1945 or so all WB cartoons credited only one animator per cartoon, but that didn't represent all the people who actually worked on the animation.

[Sogturtle]

Well Mark, what you and Thad listed was essentially complete for single and two animator cartoons for Warner Bros. It should be pointed out that Virgil Ross stated in interview (that despite the credits) that he and Gerry Chiniquy (because of their musical abilities) were the sole animators of Freleng's wonderful "Rhapsody Rabbit". I strongly suspect there were other such Warner cartoons (Shamus Culhane claimed that Chuck Jones had Bob Cannon and himself animate all of "Inki And The Minah Bird" 1943).

In addition of course the very earliest Disney Sound Era toons were the work of only one or two animators (principally Ub Iwerks who appears to have functioned as essentially animation director to Walt's being story director). It was with good reason that Iwerks received screen credit! Years later when Ub returned to Disney, one of the two cartoons he directed was for the Canadian government, namely "Stop That Tank" which bore the animation of only two men. As memory serves me, one of them was a guy named Ward Kimball... [But maybe I'm remembering wrongly].

From what we know of Iwerks first Flip the Frog "Fiddlesticks", it was animated completely by him. The first few subsequent cartoons featured animation by Iwerks and for a brief while Rollin "Ham" Hamilton. During that time Iwerks was in the process of hiring more animators and training young people for the job.

The 1952 Tom and Jerry toon "Smitten Kitten" featured new connecting footage done by Kenneth Muse. Likewise the two cartoons directed byTom Ray, "Matinee Mouse" and "Shutter Bugged Cat" featured new animation solely by Mr. Ray.

As for Roland Crandall at Fleischer... My remembrance is that ONE animator told in interview about "Doc" going off and making "Snow White" all on his own (directing and animating). Almost certainly he would have had at least one assistant/inbetweener. However most of his other Fleischer (that is non-Kneitel collaborative) was almost certainly done the same way... Witness...

"Betty Boop For President" 1932 (BB),
one source adds "Hide And Seek" '32 (T--BB).

When he split from Kneitel we again find him credited totally by himself on...
"Twilight On The Trail" 1937 (SS),
"Please Keep Me In Your Dreams" '37 (SS),
"Whispers In The Dark" '37 (SS),
"Magic On Broadway" '37 (SS),
"You Took The Words Right Out Of My Heart" '38 (SS),
"Thanks For The Memory" '38 (SS),
"You Leave Me Breathless" '38 (SS),
"Beside A Moonlit Stream" '38 (SS),
"Pudgy In Thrills And Chills" '38 (BB).

His last cartoons (all three of them) DO feature the name of other animators though, (as did the 1934 entries "She Wronged Him Right" and "Betty In Blunderland").

[Sogturtle]

Originally Posted by cbrubaker

Sid Marcus's last Lantz short, "Operation Shanghai", only lists Les Kline as the animator. Somehow, Kline's animation looks better with Marcus than Paul Smith.

These two shorts from DFE only credit two animators (not sure if only two people animated the whole cartoon)

Le Cop on Le Rock (Manuel Perez, Don Williams)
Saltwater Tuffy (Nelson Shin, Bob Bransford)

Charles~

Darn good points!! We should probably add that literally scads of the Lantz toons of the Sixties feature the work of only two animators. On the Marcus cartoons it was Art Davis and Ray Abrams, while on the Paul J. Smith mind-rotters it was Les Kline and Al Coe.

[Sogturtle]

Originally Posted by cbrubaker

Thank you.

Ironically, in the 1970s, there were at least 7 animators in Lantz cartoons, even though they were losing budget.

One of those animators was none other than Virgil Ross. Too bad those cartoons just got worse. There was also a brand new animator in the industry, named Tom Byrne, whoever that is...

Yeah Charles, the Lantz-Paul Smith mis-begotten efforts of the early Seventies did incongruously suddenly pick up on credited animators. Besides the great Virgil Ross (sort of moonlighting from Filmation), they also included Volus Jones (formerly of Warner Bros., Columbia, Disney...). As concerns Tom Byrne, he actually only ATTAINED screen credit on the Lantz theatricals in the early '70's (he'd been in animation seemingly forever). Annnnnnd if you're wondering about Joe Voght, he was at Mintz back in the early Thirties!

[JDWeil]

Single animator shorts were quite common during the silent era, especially at Fables Studios where the likes of Frank Moser was responsible for a number of single animated shorts and Otto Messmer did likewise to a number of Felix cartoons.

[Frank]

Many early Hanna-Barbera cartoons especially the early Flintstones episodes were animated by at least one animator. Kenneth Muse, Carlo Vinci, Dick Lundy, just to name a few.

[Sogturtle]

Hmmmm... As far as theatrical cartoons and Hanna-Barbera goes, the earlier "Loopy De Loop" cartoons were single animator efforts. However of course since they're all limited animation then likely we shouldn't count those.

*Thank you Howard Fein for the correction that the latter toons of the series were two animator affairs. Shows what happens when you don't see 'em for years and years!