In the mid-’30s, Avery left the studio and somehow talked his way into a directing job at Leon Schlesinger’s Warner Bros.-based studio. He wanted to be a director.”īut Lantz didn’t need any directors at that time. Everyone contributed gags, but Tex was the outstanding contributor and the funniest. The animators and assistants would meet with me in the evening every two weeks.
We didn’t have a story department in those days. The thing I noticed mostly about Tex was that he had a natural talent, especially his exaggerated sense of humor. He was a very hard worker and his ambition was to become an animator. It wasn’t too long before he became an assistant animator.
Lantz later remembered, “I was impressed by the talent he had for drawing cartoons and started him out by doing ‘in-between’ drawings for the animators. In the late ’20s he moved to Los Angeles with the idea of working for one of its dailies after a while Avery wound up being taken on at Walter Lantz’ Universal-based animation studio. Hoping to become a newspaper cartoonist, he studied for a time at the Chicago Art Institute. Avery grew up in Dallas, where he became obsessed with humor and cartooning, contributing comic drawings to his high school newspaper and yearbook. The broad, tall tale humor of his home state was apparently a life-long influence on Avery. He basically turned the short cartoon on its ear, and deeply influenced nearly all his peers and just about everyone who has subsequently worked in animation.īorn Frederick Bean Avery in Taylor, Texas in 1908, he was, per family lore, distantly related to the famed hanging Judge Roy Bean, “The Law West of the Pecos” (possible) and to Daniel Boone (unlikely). He brought fresh style, outrageous wit, lightning speed and tempo and a fevered, wild, anything-to-make-you laugh sensibility to the medium. Yep, Tex Avery was that important to the Hollywood cartoon. Of the top two geniuses, one created elaborate fairy tales and ornate feature-length fantasias - the other guy was Tex Avery. “There were several masters of animation during Hollywood’s golden era. Tex Avery was one of the greatest talents ever to work in animation it’s difficult to disagree with disc co-producer Jerry Beck’s assertion on the back of the Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 package: Note: Frequent CineSavant advisor and contributor “B” wrote a smart review article about the Warner Archive’s Porky Pig 101 DVD set back in 2017 … which prompted me to ask him to do this extended look at the long-awaited Tex Avery disc. Writers: Rich Hogan, Heck Allen, Tex Avery
Musical Direction: Scott Bradley ( Who Killed Who? was scored by Bernard Katz) Voice characterizations: Not credited onscreen, but voices include Bill Thompson, Frank Graham, Kent Rogers, Sara Berner, Daws Butler, John Brown, Wally Maher, John Wald, Patrick McGeehan, Dick Nelson, Don Messick, Billy Bletcher, Connie Russell, Tex Avery (whose voice turns up frequently).Īnimators: Credited animators include Preston Blair, Ray Abrams, Ed Love, Irven Spence, Grant Simmons, Michael Lah, Walter Clinton, Louie Schmitt Street Date Febru/ available through the WBshop / 21.99 This is a virtual godsend for the director’s legion of fans, and a worthwhile introduction for those yet unfamiliar with Avery’s uniquely zany oeuvre.ġ943-1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 138 min. Some of his greatest cartoons are included, and many of these shorts have likely not looked and sounded so good since their original theatrical release. At long last a beautifully restored and mastered selection of a number of cartoon king Tex Avery’s brilliant, innovative and (most of all) hilarious MGM shorts comes to Blu-ray via the Warner Archive, with the implied promise of more volumes to come.
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