John Randolph Bray
John Randolph Bray (born August 25, 1879 in Addison , Michigan , † October 10, 1978 in Bridgeport , Connecticut ) was an American producer , director and screenwriter of cartoons . Bray is considered one of the pioneers of the genre. Bray's company, JR Bray Studios , produced over 500 films between 1913 and 1937, mostly animation, including the first full-color cartoon, The Debut of Thomas Katt (1920), and short documentaries about exotic areas and animals.
Life
The comic artist
Bray grew up in a small town as the son of a pastor. He began studying in 1895, but dropped out after a year. He began writing for various magazines and from 1901 worked as a reporter for the Detroit Evening News . In 1903 he moved to New York and became a cartoonist for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle . The ambitious Bray soon began to offer his drawings to other magazines. His breakthrough came in 1906 when Judge magazine published his comic book Little Johnny and His Teddy Bears for three years. Bray was also able to place his cartoons in Life and Harper's Bazaar .
Bray was now financially secure, he could afford to buy a farm in Highland Falls that he lived on from now on. In the early 1910s, however, the success of his comics gradually began to decline, which was also due to the fact that Bray spent more and more time working on the new medium of animation. His experiments with animation made it clear to him that if this type of film were to be not only amusing but also lucrative, the methods of making cartoons needed to be improved.
The cartoonist
In 1913 Bray created his first cartoon ( The Artist's Dream ) for Pathé . His contract required him to make six more films in six months, which seemed impossible, since Bray had already taken six months to make his first film. Bray found the solution to the time-consuming task of redrawing the background for each scene in the use of printed backgrounds with blank spaces for characters who are acting and moving. In this way he drastically minimized the time and the number of employees involved in producing a film. Bray had this new method patented (US Patent No. 1,107,193).
To make the films for Pathé , Bray had a team of artists work all week in Highland Falls, but it took the team six months to make the next film, Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt (1914). This first film came out in January, the next in March, then the next films in April, May and August. Now the success of the new method was evident. At the same time, Bray rationalized the work by not having every employee doing all production steps (creating backgrounds, drawing, coloring, etc.), but rather specialized employees who devoted themselves to a single work step and thus worked together. The company could now produce films on a weekly basis.
The film producer
At the end of 1914, Bray founded JR Bray Studios , based in New York. In addition to the new methods, the decisive factor for Bray's success was that he had an eye for talented filmmakers and illustrators. Like Walt Disney after him, he tied almost all the promising directors, authors and draftsmen of his time to himself. Finally, Bray worked for Wallace A. Carlson , Roland Crandall , Thomas A. Dorgan , Dave Fleischer , Max Fleischer , Clyde Geronimi , David Hand , George Herriman , Earl Hurd , Gregory La Cava , Walter Lantz , Ashley Miller , Frank Moser , Joe Rock , Pat Sullivan , Paul Terry and Vernon Stallings . The company not only produced funny cartoons, but also secured lucrative contracts with the Ministry of Defense to produce training films for soldiers.
Another innovation brought the final breakthrough for Bray: his draftsman Earl Hurd received the patent in 1914 for the use of transparent celluloid films on which the characters were drawn and which were placed on the unchanged background. In order to benefit from Hurd's invention and not get a potential competitor in it, Bray made Hurd his partner. They founded the Bray-Hurd Processing Company and thus established a quasi-monopoly on the production of cartoons: anyone who wanted to produce cartoons cheaply either had to work for Bray or pay him royalties for using the foil method (Bray set his rights with long legal disputes). The patent lasted until 1932, only then did the method become common property.
In order to establish himself in the animation industry, Bray did not shy away from dubious methods. So he visited Winsor McCay during the creation of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Claiming he was a journalist writing an article on cartoons , he had McCay's methods explained to him, only to apply for those patents under his own name and recreate Gertie the Dinosaur in 1915. When McCay struggled, Bray sued him. In the ensuing legal battle, however, McCay won and received royalties from Bray.
Bray's dwindling power
Bray had already lost some of his power in 1920 when Samuel Goldwyn secured a majority stake in JR Bray Studios . At the same time, it became clear over the years that Bray was less an artist than a businessman. He had to rely very much on the creativity of his employees, who gradually, striving for independence and new artistic inspiration, left his company, often to work for Disney. "He didn't have Disney's innate sense of storytelling [...] and just didn't know what really brought success." An example of Bray's wrong business decisions was that Bray rejected the idea of using color film for cartoons as unprofitable.
In 1927, Bray closed his studios and completely withdrew from the animation industry. A year later, with the start of the sound film era , the film industry would develop in new directions that Bray had not foreseen. Bray's remaining influence waned completely when his patents expired in 1932. However, he remained active in the film business, with his focus only on animal documentaries. Bray did not resign as president of his company until 1963, but remained chairman of the board. He died in October 1978, just a few months before his 100th birthday.
Web links
- John Randolph Bray in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Bray at Answers.com
- Library of Congress website on cartoon pioneers
- Bray at Masters of Animation
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.answers.com/topic/john-randolph-bray
- ↑ http://www.inkwellimagesink.com/pages/articles/CentennialOfAmericanAnimation.shtml
- ↑ http://samuraifrog.blogspot.com/2005/03/masters-of-animation-bray-barre.html
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bray, John Randolph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American producer, director and screenwriter of animated films |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 25, 1879 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Addison , Michigan |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 10, 1978 |
| Place of death | Bridgeport , Connecticut |