George Garnett Dunning (November 17, 1920 – February 15, 1979) was a Canadian film maker and animator. He is best known for animating and directing the 1968 Beatles' film Yellow Submarine.

Biography

He was born in Toronto and studied in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 at the Ontario College of Art, and soon found freelance work as an illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

. Dunning joined the NFB of Canada in 1943, where he worked with Norman McLaren

Norman McLaren

Norman McLaren, CC, CQ was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada...

 and contributed to several episodes of the Chants populaires series. From 1944 to 1947 Dunning created many original short films and developed his skills animating articulated, painted, metal cut-outs.

In 1948, he spent a year working for UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 under the mentorship of Czech-born animator Berthold Bartosch

Berthold Bartosch

Berthold Bartosch was a film-maker, born in Bohemia .He moved to Berlin in 1920 and collaborated with Lotte Reiniger on her paper silhouette animations:*The Ornament of the Loving Heart...

. Then in 1949, he and fellow NFB grad Jim McKay created one of Toronto’s first animation studios, Graphic Associates, where he produced commercials and gave Michael Snow

Michael Snow

Michael Snow, CC is a Canadian artist working in painting, sculpture, video, films, photography, holography, drawing, books and music.-Life:...

 his first job in film. In 1956 he moved to England to manage UPA

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...

’s new London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 office. After the office went under, he hired many of the UPA staff to work for him and his newly established production company, TVC. By 1961, TVC was producing about one hundred commercials a year. During this time Dunning also managed to make many personal short films noted for their surrealistic

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 atmosphere and Kafkaesque themes.

Dunning also oversaw the cartoon series The Beatles for 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...

, and this led to his involvement with the film he will always be associated with, Yellow Submarine. Dunning was also responsible for the opening credits of Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

' A Shot in the Dark

A Shot in the Dark (1964 film)

A Shot in the Dark is a 1964 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and is the second installment in the Pink Panther series. Peter Sellers is featured again as Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté...

, along with a series of shorts, "The digger", for Vision On

Vision On

Vision On was a British children's television programme, shown on BBC1 from 1964 to 1976 and designed specifically for deaf children. It was conceived and developed by BBC producers Ursula Eason and Patrick Dowling to replace a monthly series For the Deaf, a programme paced slowly enough for...

.

About the time of his death he was working on animated version of Shakespeare's The Tempest

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

, which was never completed.

Sources

• Axelrod, Mitchell. Beatletoons: The Real Story Behind The Cartoon Beatles. Wynn, 1999. Lenburg, Jeff. Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books, 1999.
• Lehman, Christopher P. American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961-1973. McFarland, 2007.
• TV.com.
• The Big Cartoon Database.

External links

• Canadian Film Encyclopedia [A publication of The Film Reference Library/a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group]