Paul Terry

Paul Terry

Paul Houlton Terry (born February 19, 1887 in San Mateo , California , † October 25, 1971 in New York City , New York ) was an American animator . Terry was responsible as a director and producer between 1915 and 1955 for more than 1,300 cartoons and ran his own animation studio with Terrytoons since 1929 .

Life

Early years

Paul Terry grew up in San Francisco . Following the example of his older brother John, he dropped out of high school and looked for a job as a delivery boy with the San Francisco Bulletin . In 1904 he began a career as a newspaper photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle . In 1911 he moved to the East Coast for the New York Press , where he not only worked as a photographer but also as a cartoonist .

Inspired by the success of Winsor McCay's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur , Terry tried himself as an animator. His first attempt was an adaptation of Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt and Jeff , but the film remained unfinished. A year later, in the summer of 1915, Terry's first cartoon was finally published, Little Herman . The film was not a success, one film producer suggested the filmstrip was more valuable before Terry was exposed, but Little Herman caught the interest of JR Bray Studios .

Paul Terry developed the character Farmer Al Falfa for John Randolph Bray and made eleven films with this character. At Bray, Terry was one of the first animators to consistently use the Cel animation developed by Bray and Earl Hurd . After just a year, Terry left Bray Studios and started his own production company. Since Terry owned the copyrights to Al Falfa, he produced other films that were distributed by Edison Studios. Terry closed the Paul Terry Productions after a few months in order to do his military service as a soldier with the Surgeon General of the United States in the First World War .

Aesop's fables

After the end of World War I, Paul Terry worked for Paramount Pictures . Paramount initially announced the return of Farmer Al Falfa, but Terry decided to work as an independent producer and animator again and founded in 1920 with Amadee J. Van Beuren and with the financial support of the theater company Keith-Albee (which later became part of the production company RKO Pictures rose) the production studio Aesop's Fables Studio .

For the new studio, Paul Terry and Amadee J. Van Beuren took up an idea from the author Howard Estabrook to produce cartoons based on Aesop's fables . The first film of the Aesop's Fables , The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg , was released on June 19, 1921 by distribution by Pathé .

Terry reacted to the changed demands of the cinemas since the end of the war to show short films only as a support program for the feature films. To ensure the success of his films, a new cartoon was completed every week. The high time pressure ensured the development of economic animation techniques, with which Paul Terry promoted the development of industrial animation production even more than John Randolph Bray. While the first films were still related to Aesop, the stories quickly moved further and further away from the historical models. Farmer Al Falfa was soon one of the recurring characters in Terry's cartoons. Although they didn't match the quality of the Felix the Cat or Koko the Clown films , Aesop's fables were hugely popular. Walt Disney was very impressed with the films and stated that his early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies films were his attempt to become as good as the Aesop's fables .

In 1928 Amadee J. Van Beuren took control of Aesop's Fables Studio , which he incorporated into his Van Beuren Corporation . After the success of The Jazzsinger , Van Beuren wanted to be the first to produce animated sound films , but this encountered resistance from Terry. Van Beuren then dismissed Paul Terry.

Terrytoons

Together with the animator Frank Moser, who was also dismissed by Van Beuren, Paul Terry founded the Terrytoons studio in 1929 . Terry and Moser found a suitable sales partner in Educational Pictures , which specializes in the publication of short films . While a film was completed every week at Aesop's Fables until recently , Terry and Moser gave each other two weeks at Terrytoons to cope with the challenges of the now inevitable sound film. Since Paul Terry was unwilling to pay royalties for popular melodies, the film music composer Philip Scheib was commissioned to write his own music. To shorten the production time, the soundtrack was completely pre-recorded.

Nevertheless, the employees at Terrytoons were constantly under enormous time pressure. In order to keep production costs as low as possible, Paul Terry kept his staff as small as possible. Disney employed five times as many artists to produce a cartoon as Terrytoons. Paul Terry was aware of the "cheap" look of his films, he compared his work with what Woolworth had to offer , while Disney worked more on the level of Tiffany’s . While the cost of making the Terrytoons rose from $ 4,000 in the early 1930s to $ 6,000 in 1935, at the same time the cost of making a Mickey Mouse cartoon at Disney was more than $ 25,000, and even more Leon Schlesinger's Looney Tunes cost around $ 10,000.

Creative developments were not possible under these working conditions. Talents like Bill Tytla or Joseph Barbera left Terrytoons after a few months and later became successful animators at Disney and MGM . Farmer Al Falfa was again the focus of Terry's films, other characters such as Kiko the kangaroo or Puddy the Pup did not emerge until the mid-1930s, but could not keep up with the popularity of Disney, Fleischer's Popeye or Warner's piggy Dick .

In 1935 there was a break between Paul Terry and Frank Moser when Educational Pictures threatened to terminate their contract due to the poor quality of the Terrytoons. Terry responded to the criticism and promised better films. He benefited from the closure of the Van Beuren studio and was able to reinstate such old companions as John Foster , who had taken over the Aesop's Fables at Van Beuren after Terry's departure . In 1937 Terry had a leadership team with Foster as chief dramaturge and Mannie Davis, Connie Rasinski and Eddie Donnelly as directors, who would have creative control of Terrytoons for the next 20 years.

When the big animation studios switched to color films in the second half of the 1930s, Paul Terry again fought against the surge in innovation, which for him only represented an increase in costs. The first color film, String Bean Jack , was published as early as 1938 , but Terry continued to produce some of the films in black and white until 1943 in order to keep the overall budget as low as possible. Also in 1938, 20th Century Fox took over the distribution of Paul Terry's films.

In the late 1930s, Terry finally allowed the overdue development of new characters that quickly ousted Al Falfa, Kiko, and Puddy from the big screen. The first new characters were Gandy Goose , who was based on the comedian Ed Wynn , and his counterpart Sourpuss , who was inspired by Jimmy Durante . In 1942, Mighty Mouse was one of the most famous Terrytoons characters. The success was exceeded four years later by the two ravens Heckle and Jeckle , which Paul Terry later described as his best cartoon series. With the success of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle came Paul Terry's recognition by the film industry; between 1943 and 1946 three of his cartoons were nominated for an Oscar .

At the end of the 1940s, Paul Terry relied more and more on the recurring characters. 1950 started a series of cartoons with the mouse Roquefort and the cat Percy , which were based on MGM's Tom and Jerry films, but other characters such as Dinky Duck or the Terry Bears did not make a big impression on the audience. In addition, Terry's films hardly differed from the releases of the 1930s. The animation, the music and the stories all looked outdated, only the design of the backgrounds was up to date.

Although 20th Century Fox owned the rights to the CinemaScope process and used it successfully in its feature films from 1953, Paul Terry did not use the widescreen format for his cartoons until 1955 . He saw the future for Terrytoons more on television . In 1952 he was the first studio operator to broadcast his old cartoons on television. Mighty Mouse in particular was very successful with a half-hour television series on CBS . Nevertheless, it was a great surprise for his employees when Terry sold his studio, including the rights to all films and characters, to the television station CBS for the high sum of 3.5 million US dollars in 1955.

After selling Terrytoons, Paul Terry retired at the age of 68. He died on October 25, 1971 in New York City.

Nominations

• Oscar nominations:
  • 1943 for All Out for “V” as best animated short film
  • 1945 for My Boy Johnny as best animated short film
  • 1946 for Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life as best animated short film

literature

• Leonard Maltin : The classic American cartoon (OT: Of Mice and Magic ). Heyne, Munich, ISBN 3-453-86042-X
• Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. American Animation in its Golden Age . Oxford University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-516729-0
• Donald Crafton: Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928 . MIT Press; Cambridge, Mass., 1982, ISBN 0-262-03083-7 .

Web links

• Paul Terry in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. P. 10.
2. ↑ Donald Crafton: Before Mickey. P. 148.
3. ^ Leonard Maltin: Of Mice and Magic. P. 128.
4. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. P. 34.
5. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. P. 35.
6. ^ Leonard Maltin: Of Mice and Magic. P. 136.
7. ↑ Walt Disney: Growing Pains . In: Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. January 1941, p. 32.
8. ↑ Max and Dave Fleischer had been producing so-called sound car tunes with Lee De Forest's Phonosound system since 1924 ; this sound system could not establish itself in Hollywood, cf. Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. P. 55.
9. ↑ Quoted from Charles Solomon: Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1989, ISBN 0-394-54684-9 , p. 94.
10. ^ Leonard Maltin: Of Mice and Magic. P. 134.
11. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. P. 326.
12. ^ Leonard Maltin: Of Mice and Magic. P. 144.
13. ^ Leonard Maltin: Of Mice and Magic. P. 146.