Animation in the United States in the television era
Encyclopedia
Television animation developed from the success of animated movies in the first half of the 20th century. The state of animation changed dramatically in the four decades starting with the post-World War II
proliferation of television. While studios gave up on the big-budget theatrical short cartoons that throve in the 1930s and 1940s, new television animation studios would thrive based on the economy and volume of their output. By the end of the 1980s, most of the Golden Age animators had retired or died, and their younger successors were ready to change the industry and the way that animation was perceived.
, contained topical and often suggestive humor, though they were seen primarily as "children's entertainment" by movie exhibitors. This point of view prevailed when the new medium of television
began showing cartoons in the late 1940s.
One of the very first images to be broadcast over television was that of Felix the Cat
. In 1938, cartoonist Chad Grothkopf's eight-minute experimental Willie the Worm, cited as the first animated film created for TV, was shown on NBC.
As TV became a phenomenon and began to draw audiences away from movie theaters, many children's TV shows included airings of theatrical cartoons in their schedules, and this introduced a new generation of children to the cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s. Cartoon producer Paul Terry sold the rights to the Terrytoons
cartoon library to television and retired from the business in the early 1950s. This guaranteed a long life for the characters of Mighty Mouse
and Heckle and Jeckle
, whose cartoons were syndicated and rerun in children's television programming blocks for the next 30 to 40 years.
There were a number of early experiments in limited animation television cartoons. These cartoons usually were about five minutes in length and were serial in nature, allowing stations to flexibly program them. One of the first cartoons produced expressly for television was Crusader Rabbit
, a creation of Alexander Anderson and Jay Ward
. A small studio in Florida was responsible for another early adventure serial, Colonel Bleep
. Often, existing programs would be a launching ground for new cartoon characters. In 1956, the Howdy Doody
show aired the first Gumby
clay animated
cartoon from creator Art Clokey
. Sam Singer
earned a certain degree of infamy for his efforts at television animation, which included an animated adaptation of The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican
(which may or may not have made it to air) and the original series Bucky and Pepito
, both of which have been cited as among the worst of their kind.
Beginning in 1954, Walt Disney
capitalized on the medium of television with his own weekly TV series, Disneyland. This ABC show popularized his new Disneyland
theme park and began a decades-long series of TV broadcasts of Disney cartoons, which later expanded into the show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. While Disney recognized that the economics of the medium could not support his production standards and refused to go into TV animation, he still ordered the creation of one character exclusive to TV, Ludwig Von Drake
. The character's segments would link compilations of the company's archived theatrical shorts as complete episodes. Walt continued to host the show for the rest of his life, and he became as recognizable to the TV audience as his studio's cartoon characters.
. When MGM
closed its cartoon studio in 1957, Hanna-Barbera began producing cartoons directly for television, finding an audience in the evening "family hour" time. The first animated series from Hanna-Barbera were NBC's The Ruff & Reddy Show
and the first-run syndication entry The Huckleberry Hound Show. However, the studio hit its stride in 1960s with ABC
's The Flintstones
, the first half-hour animated sitcom. Like many of its immediate successors it was originally aired during prime time when the whole family would be watching television. The Flintstones was the first of several prime-time animated series from Hanna-Barbera, which included The Jetsons
, Top Cat
, and Jonny Quest
. But after the end of The Flintstones in 1966, Hanna-Barbera largely turned its efforts to the growing market for Saturday morning cartoon
s, outside of isolated series for first run syndication in the 1970s such as Wait Till Your Father Gets Home
.
Hanna-Barbera was notorious for using common tropes in its series. Its original series of the late 1950s through mid-1960s all featured anthropomorphic animals, usually an adult (who would in turn impersonate a well-known celebrity) and child, interacting with the humans of their environment. After the immense success of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
, which premiered on CBS
in 1969, the next decade of Hanna-Barbera's animated output would follow that show's formula: a group of teenagers solving mysteries or fighting crime, usually with the help of a wacky animal or a ghost. The many incarnations of Scooby-Doo ran uninterrupted on CBS and then ABC for 17 seasons. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hanna-Barbera turned to adaptations of prime time sitcoms. It was not until The Smurfs
in 1981 that H-B once again had anything successful outside the Scooby template; it, in turn, led to a derivative series (The Snorks
). The late 1980s and early 1990s saw Hanna-Barbera join the numerous studios producing younger and junior versions of cartoon characters for the Saturday morning cartoon market.
were applied to produce a great number of quickly-produced, low-budget TV cartoons.
The UPA studio
was one of the first victims of the TV-animation market. In 1952, because of his left-wing social activism, John Hubley
was dismissed from the studio under pressure from Columbia Pictures
(who was itself under pressure from the HUAC
). The creative atmosphere post-Hubley was not the same and UPA's theatrical shorts ended in 1959. In order to stay afloat financially, UPA turned to television to sustain itself. The TV versions of Mister Magoo and Dick Tracy were not successful and did nothing to reverse the studio's financial decline. In spite of the 1962 animated feature Gay Purr-ee
(distributed by Warner Bros.
), which featured the voices of Judy Garland
and Robert Goulet
and a Harold Arlen
/Yip Harburg
song score, and the beloved animated special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol
, UPA was shut down in 1964.
The Jay Ward studio
, producer of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
, used limited animation in its series, but compensated with its satire of Cold War
politics and popular culture and its off-beat humor. Like the earlier Crusader Rabbit, the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventures were multi-part serials. The Ward studio also produced George of the Jungle
, Super Chicken
, and Tom Slick
. It later produced a series of popular television commercials for Quaker Oats cereals Cap'n Crunch
, Quisp and Quake.
One of the most infamous users of limited animation was Cambria Studios, which invented and patented a process known as Syncro-Vox
, implementing it beginning in 1960. While the process resulted in an extremely economical, quick and inexpensive product (thus making it ideal for television), it had a fatal flaw that prevented it from being taken seriously: the process involved inserting the moving lips of the voice actor over a still frame of a character's mouth. The result was that Cambria's cartoons (Clutch Cargo
, Space Angel
and Captain Fathom
) contained hardly any animation at all, and were effectively pictures (albeit well-drawn ones that were of greater detail than other producers') with words. Cambria switched to a more mainstream limited animation process with The New Three Stooges
in 1965, but went out of business shortly afterward.
's current animated films (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, the live-action/animated combo Mary Poppins
, and The Jungle Book
) generated hefty revenue for the studio, as did the regular reissues of earlier animated films. Poppins, in particular, won five Academy Awards
(and received with the studio's first Best Picture nomination) and topped the 1964 box office charts while launching the film career of its star, Julie Andrews
, who won an Oscar
. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, now on NBC
, became a Sunday night television institution that kept Mickey Mouse
, Donald Duck
, Goofy
, and Pluto
in the public consciousness long after their theatrical cartoon series had ended. The anthology series ran until 1983. In 1961, Walt helped to establish the California Institute of the Arts
. The founding of the institute was both a philanthropic gesture and a savvy investment by Disney, as the school provided plenty of creative talent for the company in the years to come. In 1966, the studio brought A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
characters to the screen for the first time in the first of four animated featurettes
.
The Disney empire was rocked to its core when Walt died from lung cancer
on December 15, 1966. While the studio tried to remain true to his vision (a common catchphrase of the time was "What would Walt do?"), the level of popularity and acclaim the studio received in earlier years eluded it in the 1970s. The theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World (the latter having opened in 1971) ended up contributing more to the bottom line than the film division. Additionally, many veteran animators either retired or died, so the studio had to find ways to replace them. In 1973, Eric Larson
started a training program for new animators.
The studio's post-Walt animation fare consisted of the features The Aristocats
, Robin Hood
, and The Rescuers
, the featurettes Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
, It's Tough to Be a Bird
, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!
, and The Small One
, and the live-action/animation hybrids Bedknobs and Broomsticks
and Pete's Dragon
. Some of the films got mixed reactions from critics; Robin Hood, in particular, was widely criticized for re-use of animation from earlier films (especially in the production number "The Phony King of England"), but this was done because the film had fallen way behind schedule. Still, many of the films received Academy Award nominations (with two wins, one for the short Bird and another for the special effects in Bedknobs). Additionally, in keeping with Walt's original intentions, the three Pooh featurettes were compiled into the 1977 feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
.
The most devastating development since Walt's death occurred in September 1979, when studio animator Don Bluth
led a walkout of himself and 11 of his supporters (a large chunk of the studio's animation department at the time), including Gary Goldman
and John Pomeroy
. Fed up with the status quo at Disney, he and his acolytes left to start his own studio, which produced the short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat
and the feature film The Secret of NIMH
. Disney entered the 1980s facing an uncertain future, despite the respectable $39,900,000 gross and some good reviews for The Fox and the Hound
.
co-founded DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
, which produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies from 1964 to 1967. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
reopened the studio from 1967 to 1969, but the low-budget cartoons produced were not popular with critics or audiences then or now. The new characters introduced during the Seven Arts period, such as Cool Cat, Bunny and Claude, Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit, and Merlin the Magic Mouse, never caught on, while the Termite Terrace cartoons remained perennial television favorites through syndication and Saturday morning airings throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
moonlighted as a writer on the UPA feature Gay Purr-ee. When Warner Bros. distributed the film the following year, they discovered that he had contributed to the film in violation of his exclusive contract and fired him. Jones teamed with Les Goldman to form Sib Tower 12 Productions
to work with MGM
on the Tom and Jerry
series in the mid-1960s; his shorts were not as popular as the Hanna-Barbera originals but more so than the Gene Deitch
shorts produced overseas in the early 1960s. Jones then began producing a number of successful animated TV specials. His most famous special was How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
, a 1966 CBS
adaptation of the Dr. Seuss
story that still remains popular and has been released on video and DVD several times. Jones also produced three animated adaptations of short stories from Rudyard Kipling
's The Jungle Book
, a full-length MGM feature film entitled The Phantom Tollbooth
, and the 1970 TV version of Horton Hears a Who!
cartoons during the 1960s and 1970s, with the cartoons appearing almost simultaneously on television and in theaters through a distribution deal with United Artists
. Freleng also produced several TV specials based on Dr. Seuss
books throughout the 1970s, including The Cat in the Hat
and The Lorax
.
In 1981, Friz Freleng
retired. The DePatie-Freleng Enterprises studio was sold to Marvel Comics
, and it continued under his lead as Marvel Productions Ltd. This new studio focused almost exclusively on toy merchandising, and it found a new audience among young viewers with such action oriented cartoons as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
and The Transformers
.
and the Peter Max
-inspired psychedelic artwork of Canadian-born animator George Dunning
came together to create Yellow Submarine. Displeased with the previous animated television series depicting themselves, the Beatles themselves had reservations about the project at first and declined to participate beyond providing a mix of older and original musical recordings. However, they were impressed enough with the finished film to appear in a live action epilogue.
In 1968, Ralph Bakshi
, along with producer Steve Krantz
, founded Bakshi Productions, establishing the studio as an alternative to mainstream animation by producing animation his own way and accelerating the advancement of female and minority animators. He also paid his employees a higher salary than any other studio at that time. In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola
and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse
, a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica
. Bakshi was quoted in a 1971 article for the Los Angeles Times
as saying that the idea of "grown men sitting in cubicles drawing butterflies floating over a field of flowers, while American planes are dropping bombs in Vietnam
and kids are marching in the streets, is ludicrous." Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic
, a tale of inner-city street life. However, Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund the film because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience. While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place
, Bakshi came across a copy of R. Crumb
's Fritz the Cat
. Impressed by Crumb's sharp satire, Bakshi purchased the book and suggested to Krantz that it would work as a film.
Fritz the Cat
was the first animated film to receive an X rating
from the MPAA, and is the highest grossing independent animated film of all time. With the success of his second film, Heavy Traffic, Bakshi became the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films released back-to-back.
and Heavy Metal
, other films like Richard Williams' Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
were less successful. The industry largely continued to ignore or dismiss animation as something only kids watched on Saturday morning television.
s became a weekly ritual for millions of American kids. The networks were glad to oblige their demands by providing hours-long blocks of cartoon shows. Hanna-Barbera Productions became the leader in the production of TV cartoons for children. A number of other studios produced TV cartoons, such as Filmation
(Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
, The Archies
) and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
(The Pink Panther
), but Hanna-Barbera had developed a virtual lock on Saturday morning cartoons by the 1970s. Such critics of Hanna-Barbera's style of limited animation as Chuck Jones referred to it disparagingly as "illustrated radio", yet when one show was cancelled, the studio usually had another one ready to replace it because they were so cheap to produce.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, several successful prime-time animated TV specials aired. Because these one-shot cartoons were aired during prime-time hours (and thus had to appeal to adults as well as children), they had to obtain higher ratings than their Saturday and weekday counterparts. CBS
in particular allowed a large number of animated TV specials to air on its network, and several of these continue to be repeated annually and sold on video and DVD. The Rankin-Bass studio produced a number of stop-motion specials geared towards popular holidays (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
, Frosty the Snowman
, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town
); while Bill Melendez
's long-running series of Peanuts
specials won numerous awards, spawned four feature films, and even launched a Saturday morning series
. Other attempts to bring comic strip characters to TV did not have anywhere near as much success until one of the Peanuts directors, Phil Roman
, brought the Jim Davis
comic strip Garfield to TV starting in 1982, resulting in 11 specials and a long-running animated series
.
This era also saw a number independent animated
short films that were rarely seen outside of "art house" movie theaters. As the Hollywood animation studios faded, a number of independent producers of animation continued to make experimental, artistic animated films that explored new artistic territory in the medium of animation. Short films such as The Critic, Bambi Meets Godzilla
, Lupo the Butcher
, and many others were almost unknown to mainstream audiences; however, these independent animated films continued to keep the yearly category of the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
alive, as well as introducing a number of new names into the field of animation—names that would begin to bring change to the industry in the 1980s.
on NBC, very little else which they produced in this decade caught on. Adding to this was the financial problems of their owner Taft Broadcasting
, which was taken over by Carl Lindner, Jr.
, owner of Great American Insurance Company
, in 1987. Two years later, Tom Ruegger
launched an exodus of H-B employees to form a relaunched Warner Bros. Animation
division. In 1991, Turner Broadcasting System
bought the company and its library.
Other studios' offerings chipped away at the H-B Saturday dominance throughout the decade, such as H-B alumni Ruby-Spears Productions
' Alvin and the Chipmunks
, Marvel
and Jim Henson
's Muppet Babies
, DiC
and Columbia
's The Real Ghostbusters
, and Film Roman
's Garfield and Friends
. Additionally, the Saturday morning continued to see attempts to adapt prime time series for animation, some successfully (Happy Days
and its spinoffs, Mister T
, ALF: The Animated Series
), others less so (It's Punky Brewster, The Gary Coleman Show
, Little Rosie
). After three decades of resistance, Disney
finally entered Saturday morning in 1985 when The Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles
debuted; the first-run syndication success of DuckTales
, which premiered in 1987, eventually inspired a whole block of Disney-produced syndicated cartoons.
The 1980s also saw a number of cartoons based on children's toys, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
, The Transformers
, My Little Pony 'n Friends, He-Man, She-Ra: Princess of Power
, and Care Bears
. There were even cartoons based on Pac-Man
video games and the Rubik's cube
. Some of them even inspired feature films. While many of them were successful with children, shows like these were accused of being glorified toy commercials by parents' groups such as Action for Children's Television
. These groups also objected to the level of violence in many of these shows. ACT's efforts to curb these trends resulted in the Children's Television Act
, enacted in 1990 and strictly enforced by the FCC
starting in 1996.
production made a limited impact on the North America
n market. The most notable work were the television series like Astroboy
and Speed Racer
in the 1960s, Battle of The Planets
and Star Blazers
in the 1970s and Voltron
and Robotech
in the 1980s. As a rule, the imported series were heavily censored to make them acceptable to children; Star Blazers
and Robotech
were partial exceptions. Although, their impact on the art in North America was minimal for decades, the distinctive nature of the anime series created a cult following that grew gradually until the 1980s when Star Blazers and Robotech, with their complex storylines and frank depiction of violence, helped create the groundswell that would lead to the major influx of anime popularity starting in the 1990s.
industry, spearheaded by MTV
. Artistic experimentation in these short films often resulted in the production of innovative animated sequences that reminded viewers of the potential of animation as something other than Saturday morning cartoon
s. A number of memorable animated videos were produced during the heyday of MTV, including "Take on Me" by a-ha
; "Sledgehammer
" by Peter Gabriel
; "Money for Nothing
" by Dire Straits
; and "The Harlem Shuffle
" by The Rolling Stones
(the animated sequences in this video were directed by Ralph Bakshi
and John Kricfalusi
).
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
proliferation of television. While studios gave up on the big-budget theatrical short cartoons that throve in the 1930s and 1940s, new television animation studios would thrive based on the economy and volume of their output. By the end of the 1980s, most of the Golden Age animators had retired or died, and their younger successors were ready to change the industry and the way that animation was perceived.
From the big screen to the small screen
Cartoons were never intended just for children. Cartoons in the Golden Age, such as Red Hot Riding HoodRed Hot Riding Hood
Red Hot Riding Hood is an animated cartoon short subject, directed by Tex Avery and released on May 8, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1994 it was voted #7 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field...
, contained topical and often suggestive humor, though they were seen primarily as "children's entertainment" by movie exhibitors. This point of view prevailed when the new medium of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
began showing cartoons in the late 1940s.
One of the very first images to be broadcast over television was that of Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history...
. In 1938, cartoonist Chad Grothkopf's eight-minute experimental Willie the Worm, cited as the first animated film created for TV, was shown on NBC.
As TV became a phenomenon and began to draw audiences away from movie theaters, many children's TV shows included airings of theatrical cartoons in their schedules, and this introduced a new generation of children to the cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s. Cartoon producer Paul Terry sold the rights to the Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
cartoon library to television and retired from the business in the early 1950s. This guaranteed a long life for the characters of Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
and Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
, whose cartoons were syndicated and rerun in children's television programming blocks for the next 30 to 40 years.
There were a number of early experiments in limited animation television cartoons. These cartoons usually were about five minutes in length and were serial in nature, allowing stations to flexibly program them. One of the first cartoons produced expressly for television was Crusader Rabbit
Crusader Rabbit
Crusader Rabbit is the first animated series produced specifically for television. The concept was test marketed in 1948, while the initial episode - Crusader vs. the State of Texas - aired on KNBH in Los Angeles, California on August 1, 1950....
, a creation of Alexander Anderson and Jay Ward
Jay Ward
J Troplong "Jay" Ward was an American creator and producer of animated television cartoons. He produced animated series based on such characters as Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Hoppity Hooper, George of the Jungle, Tom Slick, and Super Chicken...
. A small studio in Florida was responsible for another early adventure serial, Colonel Bleep
Colonel Bleep
Colonel Bleep was the first color cartoon ever made for television. It was created by Robert D. Buchanan, and was filmed by Soundac of Miami. The show was originally syndicated in 1957 as a segment on Uncle Bill's TV Club. 104 five-minute episodes were produced...
. Often, existing programs would be a launching ground for new cartoon characters. In 1956, the Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...
show aired the first Gumby
Gumby
Gumby is a green clay humanoid character created and modeled by Art Clokey, who also created Davey and Goliath. Gumby has been the subject of a 233-episode series of American television as well as a feature-length film and other media...
clay animated
Clay animation
Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay....
cartoon from creator Art Clokey
Art Clokey
Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up...
. Sam Singer
Sam Singer
Sam Singer was an American animation producer. He is best known as executive producer of The Adventures of Pow Wow, which appeared as a segment of Captain Kangaroo. He also produced Bucky and Pepito, cited as the "worst cartoon ever made"-TV series:*Sinbad Jr...
earned a certain degree of infamy for his efforts at television animation, which included an animated adaptation of The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican
The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican
The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican is an animated television series that debuted in children's local stations in Chicago in 1950s. It consist of six episodes airing in 1954 It is exceedingly rare, but has gained some fame for appearing on Jerry Beck's "Worst Cartoons Ever." On the DVD, he states...
(which may or may not have made it to air) and the original series Bucky and Pepito
Bucky and Pepito
Bucky and Pepito was a 1958 animated television series produced by Sam Singer. Two episodes appeared on a compilation DVD of the worst cartoons ever made, and it was described by Harry McCracken as setting "a standard for awfulness that no contemporary TV cartoon has managed to...
, both of which have been cited as among the worst of their kind.
Beginning in 1954, Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
capitalized on the medium of television with his own weekly TV series, Disneyland. This ABC show popularized his new Disneyland
Disneyland Park (Anaheim)
Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company. Known as Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955, and still almost universally referred to by that name, it is the only theme park to be...
theme park and began a decades-long series of TV broadcasts of Disney cartoons, which later expanded into the show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. While Disney recognized that the economics of the medium could not support his production standards and refused to go into TV animation, he still ordered the creation of one character exclusive to TV, Ludwig Von Drake
Ludwig Von Drake
Professor Ludwig von Drake is one of Walt Disney's cartoon and comic book characters. He was first introduced on September 24, 1961, as the presenter in the cartoon An Adventure in Color, part of the first show of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC...
. The character's segments would link compilations of the company's archived theatrical shorts as complete episodes. Walt continued to host the show for the rest of his life, and he became as recognizable to the TV audience as his studio's cartoon characters.
Hanna-Barbera
The first major animation studio to produce cartoons exclusively for television was Hanna-Barbera ProductionsHanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
. When MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
closed its cartoon studio in 1957, Hanna-Barbera began producing cartoons directly for television, finding an audience in the evening "family hour" time. The first animated series from Hanna-Barbera were NBC's The Ruff & Reddy Show
The Ruff & Reddy Show
The Ruff & Reddy Show is a Hanna-Barbera animated series starring Ruff, a straight and smart cat voiced by Don Messick, and Reddy, a dumb and stupid dog voiced by Daws Butler...
and the first-run syndication entry The Huckleberry Hound Show. However, the studio hit its stride in 1960s with ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
, the first half-hour animated sitcom. Like many of its immediate successors it was originally aired during prime time when the whole family would be watching television. The Flintstones was the first of several prime-time animated series from Hanna-Barbera, which included The Jetsons
The Jetsons
The Jetsons is a animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing in prime-time from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987...
, Top Cat
Top Cat
Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...
, and Jonny Quest
Jonny Quest (TV series)
Jonny Quest – often casually referred to as The Adventures of Jonny Quest – is an American science fiction/adventure animated television series about a boy who accompanies his father on extraordinary adventures...
. But after the end of The Flintstones in 1966, Hanna-Barbera largely turned its efforts to the growing market for Saturday morning cartoon
Saturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
s, outside of isolated series for first run syndication in the 1970s such as Wait Till Your Father Gets Home
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was an animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera that aired in first-run syndication in the United States from 1972 to 1974...
.
Hanna-Barbera was notorious for using common tropes in its series. Its original series of the late 1950s through mid-1960s all featured anthropomorphic animals, usually an adult (who would in turn impersonate a well-known celebrity) and child, interacting with the humans of their environment. After the immense success of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
Scooby-Doo, Where are You!
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is the first incarnation of the long-running Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo. It premiered on September 13, 1969 at 10:30 a.m. EST and ran for two seasons on CBS as a half-hour long show. Twenty-five episodes were produced...
, which premiered on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
in 1969, the next decade of Hanna-Barbera's animated output would follow that show's formula: a group of teenagers solving mysteries or fighting crime, usually with the help of a wacky animal or a ghost. The many incarnations of Scooby-Doo ran uninterrupted on CBS and then ABC for 17 seasons. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hanna-Barbera turned to adaptations of prime time sitcoms. It was not until The Smurfs
The Smurfs
The Smurfs is a comic and television franchise centred on a group of small blue fictional creatures called Smurfs, created and first introduced as a series of comic strips by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo on October 23, 1958...
in 1981 that H-B once again had anything successful outside the Scooby template; it, in turn, led to a derivative series (The Snorks
The Snorks
Snorks is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera which ran on NBC from September 15, 1984 to May 13, 1989. Although not as popular as the animated series The Smurfs, the program continued to be available in syndication from 1986 to 1989, on the BBC in the late 1990s, and from...
). The late 1980s and early 1990s saw Hanna-Barbera join the numerous studios producing younger and junior versions of cartoon characters for the Saturday morning cartoon market.
Limited animation
One of the problems with producing animation for television was the extremely labor intensive animation process. While theatrical short subjects were previously produced in six month cycles or longer, network television needed a season of 10-20 half hour episodes each year. This led to a number of shortcut techniques to speed up the production process, and the techniques of limited animationLimited animation
Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames. One of its major trademarks is the stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design...
were applied to produce a great number of quickly-produced, low-budget TV cartoons.
The UPA studio
United Productions of America
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio of the 1940s through present day, beginning with industrial films and World War II training films. In the late 1940s, UPA produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures, most notably the Mr. Magoo series. In...
was one of the first victims of the TV-animation market. In 1952, because of his left-wing social activism, John Hubley
John Hubley
John Hubley was an American animation director, art director, producer and writer of traditional animation films known for both his formal experimentation and for his emotional realism which stemmed from his tendency to cast his own children as voice actors in his films.- Biography :Hubley was...
was dismissed from the studio under pressure from Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
(who was itself under pressure from the HUAC
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
). The creative atmosphere post-Hubley was not the same and UPA's theatrical shorts ended in 1959. In order to stay afloat financially, UPA turned to television to sustain itself. The TV versions of Mister Magoo and Dick Tracy were not successful and did nothing to reverse the studio's financial decline. In spite of the 1962 animated feature Gay Purr-ee
Gay Purr-ee
Gay Purr-ee is an animated film musical produced by United Productions of America and released by Warner Bros. in 1962. It features the voice talent of Judy Garland in her only animated-film role.- Plot:...
(distributed by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
), which featured the voices of Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
and Robert Goulet
Robert Goulet
Robert Gerard Goulet was a Canadian American entertainer as a singer and actor. He played the role of Lancelot in the Broadway musical Camelot of 1960.-Early life:...
and a Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the...
/Yip Harburg
Yip Harburg
Edgar Yipsel Harburg , known as E.Y. Harburg or Yip Harburg, was an American popular song lyricist who worked with many well-known composers...
song score, and the beloved animated special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol
Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol
Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol is a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' famous short story A Christmas Carol starring the character Mr. Magoo...
, UPA was shut down in 1964.
The Jay Ward studio
Jay Ward Productions
Jay Ward Productions was an Amercian animated television cartoon series production company, founded in 1949 by American animator Jay Ward. It made extensive use of limited animation techniques....
, producer of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959 to June 28, 1964 on the ABC and NBC television networks...
, used limited animation in its series, but compensated with its satire of Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
politics and popular culture and its off-beat humor. Like the earlier Crusader Rabbit, the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventures were multi-part serials. The Ward studio also produced George of the Jungle
George of the Jungle
George of the Jungle was an American animated series produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who created The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The character George was inspired by the legend of Tarzan. It ran for 17 episodes on Saturday mornings from September 9 to December 30, 1967, on the American TV...
, Super Chicken
Super Chicken
Super Chicken is a segment that ran on the animated television series George of the Jungle. It was produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who earlier had created the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons...
, and Tom Slick
Tom Slick
Thomas Baker "Tom" Slick, Jr. was a San Antonio, Texas based inventor, businessman, adventurer, and heir to an oil business. Slick's father, Thomas Baker Slick, Sr., a.k.a. "The King of the Wildcatters", had made a fortune during the Texas oil boom of the 1920s.-Career:During the 1950s, Slick was...
. It later produced a series of popular television commercials for Quaker Oats cereals Cap'n Crunch
Cap'n Crunch
Cap'n Crunch is a product line of sweetened corn and oat breakfast cereals introduced in 1963 and manufactured by Quaker Oats Company. Quaker Oats has been a division of PepsiCo since 2001. The product line is heralded by a cartoon mascot named Cap'n Crunch, a sea captain .-Development:Pamela Low,...
, Quisp and Quake.
One of the most infamous users of limited animation was Cambria Studios, which invented and patented a process known as Syncro-Vox
Syncro-Vox
Syncro-Vox is a filming method which combines static images with moving images, the most common use of which is to superimpose talking lips on a photograph of a celebrity or a cartoon drawing. It is one of the most extreme examples of the cost-cutting strategy of limited animation...
, implementing it beginning in 1960. While the process resulted in an extremely economical, quick and inexpensive product (thus making it ideal for television), it had a fatal flaw that prevented it from being taken seriously: the process involved inserting the moving lips of the voice actor over a still frame of a character's mouth. The result was that Cambria's cartoons (Clutch Cargo
Clutch Cargo
Clutch Cargo is an animated television series produced by Cambria Productions and syndicated beginning on March 9, 1959. Notable for its very limited animation, yet imaginative stories, the series was a surprise hit at the time, and could be seen on 65 stations nationwide in 1960.- Plot :The...
, Space Angel
Space Angel
Space Angel was an animated science fiction television series produced in the United States from early 1962 through 1964. It used the same Synchro-Vox lip technique as Clutch Cargo, the first cartoon produced by the same studio, Cambria Productions....
and Captain Fathom
Captain Fathom
Captain Fathom was an animated television series produced in 1965 by Cambria Studios. Like Cambria's other productions, Clutch Cargo and Space Angel, it was produced in Synchro-Vox. 18 30-minute episodes, all in color, were filmed. The episodes could be broken down into 5 6-minute segments in...
) contained hardly any animation at all, and were effectively pictures (albeit well-drawn ones that were of greater detail than other producers') with words. Cambria switched to a more mainstream limited animation process with The New Three Stooges
The New Three Stooges
The New Three Stooges is a syndicated television program that ran from 1965-1966 starring the Three Stooges. The show follows the trio's antics both in live-action and animated segments. The cast consisted of Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly-Joe DeRita, with actor and close friend Emil Sitka...
in 1965, but went out of business shortly afterward.
The 1960s and 1970s
By the 1960s, the perception of cartoons as children's entertainment was entrenched in the public consciousness. Animation began to disappear from movie theaters; while Disney continued to produce animated features after losing its founder, MGM and Warner Bros closed their studios, outsourced their animation, and got out of it entirely by the end of the decade. The majority of American animation came to be dominated by limited animation made for TV and aimed primarily at children. However, there were a number of attempts to challenge this perception during the 1960s and 1970s with ambitious (and often controversial) animated projects that were definitely not for children.Disney
In the 1960s, Walt DisneyWalt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's current animated films (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, the live-action/animated combo Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (film)
Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by...
, and The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book (1967 film)
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Released on October 18, 1967, it is the 19th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was inspired by the stories about the feral child Mowgli from the book of the same name by...
) generated hefty revenue for the studio, as did the regular reissues of earlier animated films. Poppins, in particular, won five Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
(and received with the studio's first Best Picture nomination) and topped the 1964 box office charts while launching the film career of its star, Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
, who won an Oscar
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, now on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, became a Sunday night television institution that kept Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
, Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
, Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
, and Pluto
Pluto (Disney)
Pluto, also called Pluto the Pup, is a cartoon character created in 1930 by Walt Disney Productions. He is a light brown , medium-sized, short-haired dog. Unlike Goofy, Pluto is not anthropomorphic beyond some characteristics such as facial expression...
in the public consciousness long after their theatrical cartoon series had ended. The anthology series ran until 1983. In 1961, Walt helped to establish the California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
. The founding of the institute was both a philanthropic gesture and a savvy investment by Disney, as the school provided plenty of creative talent for the company in the years to come. In 1966, the studio brought A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...
characters to the screen for the first time in the first of four animated featurettes
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is a 1966 animated featurette released by The Walt Disney Company. Based on the first two chapters of the book Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, it is the is the only Winnie the Pooh production released under the production of Walt Disney before his death later that...
.
The Disney empire was rocked to its core when Walt died from lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
on December 15, 1966. While the studio tried to remain true to his vision (a common catchphrase of the time was "What would Walt do?"), the level of popularity and acclaim the studio received in earlier years eluded it in the 1970s. The theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World (the latter having opened in 1971) ended up contributing more to the bottom line than the film division. Additionally, many veteran animators either retired or died, so the studio had to find ways to replace them. In 1973, Eric Larson
Eric Larson
Eric Larson was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios starting in 1933 and was one of the "Disney's Nine Old Men."...
started a training program for new animators.
The studio's post-Walt animation fare consisted of the features The Aristocats
The Aristocats
The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated feature produced and released by Walt Disney Productions in 1970 and stars Eva Gabor and Phil Harris, with Roddy Maude-Roxby as Edgar the butler, the villain of the story...
, Robin Hood
Robin Hood (1973 film)
Robin Hood is an 1973 American animated film produced by the Walt Disney Productions, first released in the United States on November 8, 1973...
, and The Rescuers
The Rescuers
The Rescuers is a 1977 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Productions and first released on June 22, 1977. The 23rd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is about the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization headquartered in New York and shadowing...
, the featurettes Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is a 1968 animated featurette based on stories from the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. The featurette was produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution on December 20, 1968 before The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. This was...
, It's Tough to Be a Bird
It's Tough to Be a Bird
It's Tough to Be a Bird is a 1969 educational animated short made by Walt Disney Productions. It won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoons in 1970 and was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Animated Film in 1971....
, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too is a 1974 animated feature from Disney released as a double feature with The Island at the Top of the World. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, but lost to Closed Mondays. It was later added as a segment to the 1977 film The Many...
, and The Small One
The Small One
The Small One is a Christmas animated short film created by Walt Disney Productions and was originally released to theaters in the United States by Buena Vista Distribution Company on December 15, 1978, before the 1978 re-release of Pinocchio. It started off as a children's book, by Charles...
, and the live-action/animation hybrids Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company which combines live action and animation and was released in North America on December 13, 1971...
and Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon is a 1977 live-action/animated musical film from Walt Disney Productions and the first Disney film to be recorded in the Dolby Stereo sound system...
. Some of the films got mixed reactions from critics; Robin Hood, in particular, was widely criticized for re-use of animation from earlier films (especially in the production number "The Phony King of England"), but this was done because the film had fallen way behind schedule. Still, many of the films received Academy Award nominations (with two wins, one for the short Bird and another for the special effects in Bedknobs). Additionally, in keeping with Walt's original intentions, the three Pooh featurettes were compiled into the 1977 feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the 22nd full-length animated film produced by Walt Disney Productions and first released on March 11, 1977....
.
The most devastating development since Walt's death occurred in September 1979, when studio animator Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
led a walkout of himself and 11 of his supporters (a large chunk of the studio's animation department at the time), including Gary Goldman
Gary Goldman
Gary Wayne Goldman is an American Film Producer, Director, Animator, Writer and voice actor, he is well known for working on films with Don Bluth like Anastasia, An American Tail and The Land Before Time...
and John Pomeroy
John Pomeroy
John Pomeroy is an American animator who has worked for several major studios, including The Walt Disney Company and Sullivan Bluth Studios...
. Fed up with the status quo at Disney, he and his acolytes left to start his own studio, which produced the short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat
Banjo the Woodpile Cat
Banjo the Woodpile Cat is a 1979 animated short television film directed by Don Bluth. It follows the story of Banjo, an overly curious and rebellious kitten who, after getting into trouble for falling from a house to see if he could land on his feet, runs away from his woodpile home in his owners'...
and the feature film The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH is a 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth in his directorial debut. It is an adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The film was produced by Aurora Pictures and released by United Artists. While released to critical acclaim,...
. Disney entered the 1980s facing an uncertain future, despite the respectable $39,900,000 gross and some good reviews for The Fox and the Hound
The Fox and the Hound (film)
The Fox and the Hound is a 1981 animated feature loosely based on the Daniel P. Mannix novel of the same name, produced by Walt Disney Productions and released in the United States on July 10, 1981...
.
The end of Termite Terrace
Warner Bros. shut down its animation studio completely in 1963, and the directors of Termite Terrace went their separate ways. Friz FrelengFriz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
co-founded DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981. They produced theatrical cartoons, animated series, commercials, title sequences and television specials. Notable among these is The Pink Panther film titles and cartoon shorts and the Dr....
, which produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies from 1964 to 1967. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts was formed in 1967 and became defunct in 1970, when Seven Arts Productions acquired Jack Warner's controlling interest in Warner Bros. for $32 million and merged with it. The deal also included Warner Bros. Records, Reprise Records and the B&W Looney Tunes library...
reopened the studio from 1967 to 1969, but the low-budget cartoons produced were not popular with critics or audiences then or now. The new characters introduced during the Seven Arts period, such as Cool Cat, Bunny and Claude, Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit, and Merlin the Magic Mouse, never caught on, while the Termite Terrace cartoons remained perennial television favorites through syndication and Saturday morning airings throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
Chuck Jones and MGM
In 1961, Chuck JonesChuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
moonlighted as a writer on the UPA feature Gay Purr-ee. When Warner Bros. distributed the film the following year, they discovered that he had contributed to the film in violation of his exclusive contract and fired him. Jones teamed with Les Goldman to form Sib Tower 12 Productions
MGM Animation/Visual Arts
MGM Animation/Visual Arts was an animation studio established in 1962 by animation director/producer Chuck Jones and producer Les Goldman as Sib Tower 12 Productions...
to work with MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
on the Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
series in the mid-1960s; his shorts were not as popular as the Hanna-Barbera originals but more so than the Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
shorts produced overseas in the early 1960s. Jones then began producing a number of successful animated TV specials. His most famous special was How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a 1966 American animated television special directed by Chuck Jones. It is based on the homonymous children's book by Dr. Seuss, the story of The Grinch trying to take away Christmas from the townsfolk of Whoville below his mountain hideaway...
, a 1966 CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
adaptation of the Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....
story that still remains popular and has been released on video and DVD several times. Jones also produced three animated adaptations of short stories from Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
, a full-length MGM feature film entitled The Phantom Tollbooth
The Phantom Tollbooth (film)
The Phantom Tollbooth is a 1970 American live-action/animated film based on Norton Juster's 1961 children's book The Phantom Tollbooth. This film was produced by Chuck Jones at MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones also directed the film, save for the live action bookends directed by fellow Warner Bros....
, and the 1970 TV version of Horton Hears a Who!
Horton Hears a Who! (TV special)
Horton Hears a Who! is a 1970 television half-hour long special based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name, Horton Hears a Who!. It was produced and directed by Chuck Jones - who previously produced the Seuss special How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - for MGM Television...
Friz Freleng
After leaving the remnants of Termite Terrace behind for good, Friz Freleng and his new partner David H. DePatie went on to produce the Pink PantherThe Pink Panther Show
The Pink Panther Show is a showcase of cartoon shorts produced by David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng between 1969 and 1979. The television series was produced by Mirisch Films and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, and was broadcast on two American TV networks:...
cartoons during the 1960s and 1970s, with the cartoons appearing almost simultaneously on television and in theaters through a distribution deal with United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
. Freleng also produced several TV specials based on Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....
books throughout the 1970s, including The Cat in the Hat
The Cat in the Hat (TV special)
The Cat in the Hat is an animated musical television special first aired on CBS on March 10, 1971, based on the 1957 Dr. Seuss' children's book of the same name and produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
and The Lorax
The Lorax
The Lorax is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss and first published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, who speaks for the trees against the greedy Once-ler. As in most Dr...
.
In 1981, Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
retired. The DePatie-Freleng Enterprises studio was sold to Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, and it continued under his lead as Marvel Productions Ltd. This new studio focused almost exclusively on toy merchandising, and it found a new audience among young viewers with such action oriented cartoons as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is a military-themed line of action figures and toys in Hasbro's G.I. Joe franchise. The toyline lasted from 1982 to 1994, producing well over 500 figures and 250 vehicles and playsets. The line reappeared in 1997 and has continued in one form or another to the...
and The Transformers
The Transformers (TV series)
The Transformers is an animated television series depicting a war among giant robots who could transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Written and recorded in America, the series was animated in Japan and South Korea...
.
Yellow Submarine
In 1968, the music of The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and the Peter Max
Peter Max
Peter Max is a German-born Jewish American artist. At first, works in this style appeared on posters and were seen on the walls of college dorms all across America. Max then became fascinated with new printing techniques that allowed for four-color reproduction on product merchandise...
-inspired psychedelic artwork of Canadian-born animator George Dunning
George Dunning
George Garnett Dunning was a Canadian film maker and animator. He is best known for animating and directing the 1968 Beatles' film Yellow Submarine.-Biography:...
came together to create Yellow Submarine. Displeased with the previous animated television series depicting themselves, the Beatles themselves had reservations about the project at first and declined to participate beyond providing a mix of older and original musical recordings. However, they were impressed enough with the finished film to appear in a live action epilogue.
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
, along with producer Steve Krantz
Steve Krantz
Stephen Falk Krantz was a film producer and writer who was most active from 1966 to 1996.- Career :Born in Brooklyn, New York, Steve Krantz graduated from Columbia University and went on to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II as a second lieutenant.He worked as a...
, founded Bakshi Productions, establishing the studio as an alternative to mainstream animation by producing animation his own way and accelerating the advancement of female and minority animators. He also paid his employees a higher salary than any other studio at that time. In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse
Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse
Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse was a Canadian animated television series produced by the late Steve Krantz, which originally aired in Canada in 1967 and became popular in several parts of the world, most notably the United States, where it was syndicated on both local and PBS stations between 1970...
, a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. Bakshi was quoted in a 1971 article for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
as saying that the idea of "grown men sitting in cubicles drawing butterflies floating over a field of flowers, while American planes are dropping bombs in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and kids are marching in the streets, is ludicrous." Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often surreal fantasies of a young New York cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using pinball imagery as a metaphor for...
, a tale of inner-city street life. However, Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund the film because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience. While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place
St. Mark's Place (Manhattan)
Saint Mark's Place is a street in the East Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is named after St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue. St. Mark's Place, which is a section of 8th Street, runs from Third Avenue to Avenue A...
, Bakshi came across a copy of R. Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
's Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "supercity" of anthropomorphic animals, the strip focuses on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently goes on wild adventures that sometimes involve sexcapades. Crumb began drawing this character in homemade comic books when he was a...
. Impressed by Crumb's sharp satire, Bakshi purchased the book and suggested to Krantz that it would work as a film.
Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat (film)
Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...
was the first animated film to receive an X rating
X-rated
In some countries, X is or has been a motion picture rating reserved for the most explicit films. Films rated X are intended only for viewing by adults, usually legally defined as people over the age of 17.-United Kingdom:...
from the MPAA, and is the highest grossing independent animated film of all time. With the success of his second film, Heavy Traffic, Bakshi became the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films released back-to-back.
Other animation
A few attempts were made to produce independent feature-length animated films in the 1970s. Despite the efforts put into such films as Watership DownWatership Down (film)
Watership Down is a 1978 English adventure drama animated film written, produced and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the book by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions...
and Heavy Metal
Heavy Metal (film)
Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian fantasy-animated film directed by Gerald Potterton and produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the publisher of Heavy Metal magazine....
, other films like Richard Williams' Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure is a 1977 American animated film directed by Richard Williams. It was produced by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, and released by 20th Century Fox...
were less successful. The industry largely continued to ignore or dismiss animation as something only kids watched on Saturday morning television.
Commercialization and counterculture
Animation on television focused almost exclusively on children, and the tradition of getting up early to watch Saturday morning cartoonSaturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
s became a weekly ritual for millions of American kids. The networks were glad to oblige their demands by providing hours-long blocks of cartoon shows. Hanna-Barbera Productions became the leader in the production of TV cartoons for children. A number of other studios produced TV cartoons, such as Filmation
Filmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...
(Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is an animated series created, produced, and hosted by comedian Bill Cosby, who also lent his voice to a number of characters, including Fat Albert himself. Filmation was the production company for the series. The show premiered in 1972 and ran until 1985...
, The Archies
The Archies
The Archies are a garage band founded by Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, a group of adolescent fictional characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show...
) and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981. They produced theatrical cartoons, animated series, commercials, title sequences and television specials. Notable among these is The Pink Panther film titles and cartoon shorts and the Dr....
(The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther (character)
The Pink Panther is the main and title character in the opening and closing credit sequences of every film in The Pink Panther series except for A Shot in the Dark and Inspector Clouseau. His popularity spawned a series of theatrical shorts, merchandise, a comic book, and television cartoons...
), but Hanna-Barbera had developed a virtual lock on Saturday morning cartoons by the 1970s. Such critics of Hanna-Barbera's style of limited animation as Chuck Jones referred to it disparagingly as "illustrated radio", yet when one show was cancelled, the studio usually had another one ready to replace it because they were so cheap to produce.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, several successful prime-time animated TV specials aired. Because these one-shot cartoons were aired during prime-time hours (and thus had to appeal to adults as well as children), they had to obtain higher ratings than their Saturday and weekday counterparts. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
in particular allowed a large number of animated TV specials to air on its network, and several of these continue to be repeated annually and sold on video and DVD. The Rankin-Bass studio produced a number of stop-motion specials geared towards popular holidays (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (TV special)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a Christmas television special produced in stop motion animation by Rankin/Bass. It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the USA, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour...
, Frosty the Snowman
Frosty the Snowman (TV program)
Frosty the Snowman is an American animated television special based on the popular song of the same title. The program, which first aired on December 7, 1969 on CBS , was produced for television by Rankin/Bass and featured the voices of comedians Jimmy Durante as narrator and Jackie Vernon as the...
, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town
Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (TV special)
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is a 1970 stop motion television special, made by Rankin-Bass with models carved from wood . The film stars actor Fred Astaire as S.D. Kluger, the narrator, and Mickey Rooney as Kris Kringle/Santa Claus...
); while Bill Melendez
Bill Melendez
José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Meléndez was a Mexican-American character animator, film director, voice artist and producer, known for his cartoons for Warner Brothers, UPA and the Peanuts series...
's long-running series of Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
specials won numerous awards, spawned four feature films, and even launched a Saturday morning series
The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show
The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show is an animated television series featuring characters and storylines from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. It aired Saturday mornings on the CBS network from 1983 to 1985. It re-aired on The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in the 1990s...
. Other attempts to bring comic strip characters to TV did not have anywhere near as much success until one of the Peanuts directors, Phil Roman
Phil Roman
Philip Roman , is an animator. He is the founder of animation studios Film Roman and Phil Roman Entertainment. Roman is of Mexican American descent....
, brought the Jim Davis
Jim Davis (cartoonist)
James Robert Davis is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the comic strip Garfield, which he signs as Jim Davis. He has also worked on other strips: Tumbleweeds, Gnorm Gnat, U.S. Acres and a strip about Mr...
comic strip Garfield to TV starting in 1982, resulting in 11 specials and a long-running animated series
Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis. The show was produced by Film Roman, in association with United Feature Syndicate and Paws, Inc., and ran on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988 to December 10, 1994, with...
.
This era also saw a number independent animated
Independent animation
Independent animation is a term used to describe animated short cartoons and feature films produced outside the professional Hollywood animation industry.- Early independent animation :The history of animation is as old as the film industry itself...
short films that were rarely seen outside of "art house" movie theaters. As the Hollywood animation studios faded, a number of independent producers of animation continued to make experimental, artistic animated films that explored new artistic territory in the medium of animation. Short films such as The Critic, Bambi Meets Godzilla
Bambi Meets Godzilla
Bambi Meets Godzilla is the title of the cartoon created entirely by Marv Newland. Less than two minutes long, the film is a classic of animation—#38 in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons ....
, Lupo the Butcher
Lupo the Butcher
Lupo the Butcher is a 1987 animated film directed and written by Danny Antonucci. Gary Lambeth is credited as being the ink and paint artist.-Plot:...
, and many others were almost unknown to mainstream audiences; however, these independent animated films continued to keep the yearly category of the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
alive, as well as introducing a number of new names into the field of animation—names that would begin to bring change to the industry in the 1980s.
Television and toy trends
Though the dominant Hanna-Barbera Productions launched a phenomenon with the 1981 premiere of The SmurfsThe Smurfs
The Smurfs is a comic and television franchise centred on a group of small blue fictional creatures called Smurfs, created and first introduced as a series of comic strips by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo on October 23, 1958...
on NBC, very little else which they produced in this decade caught on. Adding to this was the financial problems of their owner Taft Broadcasting
Taft Broadcasting
The Taft Broadcasting Company, also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated, was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio....
, which was taken over by Carl Lindner, Jr.
Carl Lindner, Jr.
Carl Henry Lindner, Jr. was a Cincinnati businessman and one of the world's richest people. According to the 2006 issue of Forbes Magazine's 400 list, Lindner was ranked 133 and was worth an estimated $2.3 billion...
, owner of Great American Insurance Company
American Financial Group
American Financial Group Incorporated is a holding company based in Cincinnati, Ohio whose primary business is insurance and investments. American Financial Group's purpose is to enable businesses and individuals to manage risk using insurance products and services tailored to meet their specific...
, in 1987. Two years later, Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger is an American animation writer, producer, and director.-Career:In the 1980s Ruegger worked for Hanna-Barbera, writing and producing various animated series, most notably The Snorks, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.In 1989 he began...
launched an exodus of H-B employees to form a relaunched Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
division. In 1991, Turner Broadcasting System
Turner Broadcasting System
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. is the Time Warner subsidiary managing the collection of cable networks and properties started and acquired by Robert Edward "Ted" Turner starting in the mid-1970s. The company has its headquarters in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. TBS, Inc...
bought the company and its library.
Other studios' offerings chipped away at the H-B Saturday dominance throughout the decade, such as H-B alumni Ruby-Spears Productions
Ruby-Spears Productions
Ruby-Spears Productions is a Burbank, California-based entertainment production company that specializes in animation...
' Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks is an American animated music group created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. The group consists of three singing animated anthropomorphic chipmunks: Alvin, the mischievous troublemaker, who quickly became the star of the group; Simon, the tall, bespectacled intellectual;...
, Marvel
Marvel Productions
Marvel Productions Ltd. , last called New World Animation, was a television and film studio subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment Group , based in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, then New World Entertainment and News Corporation/Fox...
and Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
's Muppet Babies
Muppet Babies
Jim Henson's Muppet Babies is an American animated television series that aired from September 15, 1984 to November 2, 1991 on CBS. The show portrayed childhood versions of the Muppets living together in a large nursery in the care of a human woman called Nanny...
, DiC
DiC Entertainment
DIC Entertainment was an international film and television production company. In addition to animated television shows such as Ulysses 31 , Inspector Gadget , The Littles , The Real Ghostbusters , Captain Planet and the Planeteers , and the first two seasons of the English adaptation of...
and Columbia
Columbia Pictures Television
Columbia Pictures Television was the second name of the Columbia Pictures television division Screen Gems . The studio changed its name on September 4, 1974.-1974-1982:...
's The Real Ghostbusters
The Real Ghostbusters
The Real Ghostbusters is an American animated television series based on the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The series ran from 1986 to 1991, and was produced by Columbia Pictures Television, DiC Enterprises, and Coca-Cola Telecommunications. "The Real" was added to the title after a dispute with...
, and Film Roman
Film Roman
Film Roman is an animation studio founded by Phil Roman, best known for producing the animation for The Simpsons, King of the Hill for 20th Century Fox, as well as the Garfield and Peanuts animated TV specials....
's Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis. The show was produced by Film Roman, in association with United Feature Syndicate and Paws, Inc., and ran on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988 to December 10, 1994, with...
. Additionally, the Saturday morning continued to see attempts to adapt prime time series for animation, some successfully (Happy Days
Happy Days
Happy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in mid-1950s to mid-1960s America....
and its spinoffs, Mister T
Mister T (TV series)
Mister T was an animated series that aired on NBC from 1983 to 1986. A total of 30 episodes were produced during the first two seasons, with the final season consisting entirely of reruns...
, ALF: The Animated Series
Alf: The Animated Series
ALF: The Animated Series was an animated cartoon spin-off based on the live-action Sitcom series ALF. It premiered on September 26, 1987 and ran for 26 episodes.-Synopsis:...
), others less so (It's Punky Brewster, The Gary Coleman Show
The Gary Coleman Show
The Gary Coleman Show is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera that originally aired on NBC during the 1982-1983 season.-Synposis:...
, Little Rosie
Little Rosie
Little Rosey was Roseanne Barr's first attempt at a cartoon.-Plot:Based loosely on comedian Roseanne's childhood, this animated series aired late in the day on ABC's Saturday morning lineup...
). After three decades of resistance, Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
finally entered Saturday morning in 1985 when The Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles
The Wuzzles
Disney's Wuzzles is an American animated television series created for Saturday morning television, and was first broadcast on September 14, 1985 on CBS. An idea of Michael Eisner for his new Disney television animation studio, the Wuzzles are crossbred animals which sport a combined appearance of...
debuted; the first-run syndication success of DuckTales
DuckTales
DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, it premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990 with a total of four seasons and 100 episodes...
, which premiered in 1987, eventually inspired a whole block of Disney-produced syndicated cartoons.
The 1980s also saw a number of cartoons based on children's toys, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 TV series)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an American animated television series produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson. The pilot was shown during the week of December 28, 1987 in syndication as a five part miniseries and began its official run on October 1, 1988...
, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is a military-themed line of action figures and toys in Hasbro's G.I. Joe franchise. The toyline lasted from 1982 to 1994, producing well over 500 figures and 250 vehicles and playsets. The line reappeared in 1997 and has continued in one form or another to the...
, The Transformers
The Transformers (TV series)
The Transformers is an animated television series depicting a war among giant robots who could transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Written and recorded in America, the series was animated in Japan and South Korea...
, My Little Pony 'n Friends, He-Man, She-Ra: Princess of Power
She-Ra: Princess of Power
She-Ra: Princess of Power is an American animated television series produced in 1985 by Filmation. It is a spinoff of Filmation's highly successful He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, aimed primarily at a young girls' audience to counter-balance the latter show's popularity with boys...
, and Care Bears
Care Bears
The Care Bears are characters created by American Greetings in 1981 for use on greeting cards. The original artwork for the cards was painted by artist Elena Kucharik. In 1983, Kenner turned the Care Bears into plush teddy bears...
. There were even cartoons based on Pac-Man
Pac-Man (TV series)
Pac-Man is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera based on the video game Pac-Man by Namco, which premiered on ABC and ran from 1982 to 1983. During the first airing of the show, the large number of advertisers sponsoring it caused commercial breaks to be double their normal length...
video games and the Rubik's cube
Rubik, the Amazing Cube
Rubik, the Amazing Cube was a Saturday morning cartoon that aired from 10 September 1983–1 September 1984 in the United States, produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. The program, broadcast as part of The Pac-Man/Rubik, the Amazing Cube Hour block on ABC, featured a magic Rubik’s Cube named Rubik...
. Some of them even inspired feature films. While many of them were successful with children, shows like these were accused of being glorified toy commercials by parents' groups such as Action for Children's Television
Action for Children's Television
Action for Children's Television was founded by Peggy Charren and Judy Chalfen in Newton, Massachusetts in 1968 as a grassroots organization dedicated to improving the quality of television programming offered to children...
. These groups also objected to the level of violence in many of these shows. ACT's efforts to curb these trends resulted in the Children's Television Act
Children's Television Act
The Children's Television Act was enacted in 1990 in the United States to enhance television's potential to teach the nation's children valuable information and skills. The Act requires each full-service television station that offers children's television programming in the U.S...
, enacted in 1990 and strictly enforced by the FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
starting in 1996.
Anime comes to America
Throughout this period, Japanese animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
production made a limited impact on the North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n market. The most notable work were the television series like Astroboy
Astro Boy (1960s)
is a Japanese manga series first published in 1952 and television program first broadcast in Japan in 1963. The story follows the adventures of a robot named Astro Boy and a selection of other characters along the way....
and Speed Racer
Speed Racer
Speed Racer is an English adaptation name of the Japanese manga and anime, which centered on automobile racing. Mach GoGoGo was originally serialized in print form in Shueisha's 1958 Shōnen Book, and was released in tankōbon book form by Sun Wide Comics, re-released in Japan by Fusosha...
in the 1960s, Battle of The Planets
Battle of the Planets
Battle of the Planets is an American animated television adaptation of the Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman . Of the 105 original Gatchaman episodes, 85 were used in the Battle of the Planets adaptation, produced by Sandy Frank Entertainment...
and Star Blazers
Star Blazers
Star Blazers is an American animated television series adaptation of the Japanese anime series, . Star Blazers was first broadcast in the United States in 1979. Significantly, it was the first popular English-translated anime that had an over-arching plot and storyline that required the episodes to...
in the 1970s and Voltron
Voltron
Voltron is the titular super robot of an anime series that features a team of young pilots, known as the Voltron Force. The team’s individual vehicles join together to form the giant super robot, with which they defend the galaxy from evil...
and Robotech
Robotech
Robotech is an 85-episode science fiction anime adaptation produced by Harmony Gold USA in association with Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd. and first released in the United States in 1985...
in the 1980s. As a rule, the imported series were heavily censored to make them acceptable to children; Star Blazers
Star Blazers
Star Blazers is an American animated television series adaptation of the Japanese anime series, . Star Blazers was first broadcast in the United States in 1979. Significantly, it was the first popular English-translated anime that had an over-arching plot and storyline that required the episodes to...
and Robotech
Robotech
Robotech is an 85-episode science fiction anime adaptation produced by Harmony Gold USA in association with Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd. and first released in the United States in 1985...
were partial exceptions. Although, their impact on the art in North America was minimal for decades, the distinctive nature of the anime series created a cult following that grew gradually until the 1980s when Star Blazers and Robotech, with their complex storylines and frank depiction of violence, helped create the groundswell that would lead to the major influx of anime popularity starting in the 1990s.
Music videos
The 1980s also saw the rise of the music videoMusic video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
industry, spearheaded by MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
. Artistic experimentation in these short films often resulted in the production of innovative animated sequences that reminded viewers of the potential of animation as something other than Saturday morning cartoon
Saturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
s. A number of memorable animated videos were produced during the heyday of MTV, including "Take on Me" by a-ha
A-ha
A-ha were a Norwegian pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. The band was founded by Morten Harket , Magne Furuholmen , and Pål Waaktaar...
; "Sledgehammer
Sledgehammer (song)
"Sledgehammer" is a song by British musician Peter Gabriel from his 1986 album So. It hit number one in Canada on 21 July 1986 where it spent four weeks; number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States on 26 July 1986; and number four in the UK singles chart, thanks in part to a...
" by Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
; "Money for Nothing
Money for Nothing (song)
"Money for Nothing" is a single by British rock band Dire Straits, taken from their 1985 album Brothers in Arms. It was one of Dire Straits' most successful singles, peaking at number one for three weeks in the United States, and it also reached number one for three weeks on the U.S. Mainstream...
" by Dire Straits
Dire Straits
Dire Straits were a British rock band active from 1977 to 1995, composed of Mark Knopfler , his younger brother David Knopfler , John Illsley , and Pick Withers .Dire Straits' sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest...
; and "The Harlem Shuffle
Harlem Shuffle (song)
"Harlem Shuffle" is an R&B song written and originally recorded by the duo Bob & Earl in 1963. The tune has been covered by; Booker T and the MG's, The Boogie Kings on their self-titled album on the Montel Michelle label , The Fabulous Flippers, a regional band out of Kansas , The Traits, Roy...
" by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
(the animated sequences in this video were directed by Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
and John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Michael John Kricfalusi , better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, its adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based...
).