Adam Abraham - When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA

When Magoo Flew

The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio

Adam Abraham

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

2012 Adam Abraham

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abraham, Adam.

When Magoo flew : the rise and fall of animation studio UPA / by Adam Abraham.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8195-6914-1 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-8195-7270-7 (ebook)

1. UPA Productions of AmericaHistory. 2. Animated filmsUnited States.

I. Title.

NC1766.U52U733 2012

384.850973--dc23

2011041674

... abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here.

G. K. CHESTERTON

UPA requires some explanation. Although dimly remembered or completely forgotten today, United Productions of America (UPA) was a phenomenon, a groundbreaking studio that changed the look and feel of the American animated cartoon.

In the 1950s, the artists of UPA moved beyond the rounded realism of the Walt Disney Studio and the crash-bang anarchy of Warner Bros. to create films that were innovative and graphically boldthe cartoon equivalent to modern art. UPAs influence could eventually be seen everywhere, from Hanna-Barbera in California to the Zagreb Film studio in European influence that continues to this day, in television cartoons and in computer animation produced for the Internet.

When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA examines this achievement and chronicles the birth, joyous reign, and regrettable decline of a unique American enterprise.

The origins of the studio can be traced to the bitter 1941 strike at Walt Disney Productions. Among the artists who left Disneys during this turbulent period were the three men who eventually formed UPA: Stephen Bosustow, David Hilberman, and Zachary Schwartz. Schwartz was the iconoclast of the group. He insisted that animated films were a form of graphic artcloser to painting and magazine illustration than to live-action cinema. Hilberman was the political conscience of the trio. After helping to organize the strike, he felt that his future would lie in producing films for government, industry, and educational organizations. Steve Bosustow was the designated businessman, not so much for his financial acumen but probably because he was a less assured artist than his two partners. As America entered World War II, this fledgling triumvirate gained commissions to produce animated propaganda and training films. Limited budgets and the need for utter clarity led to innovations that formed the kernel of the UPA look: flattened character designs, streamlined backgrounds, and stylized movement.

After the war, UPA won a contract to produce theatrical cartoons for Columbia Pictures; this deal led to a flowering in the 1950s, when UPA won three Academy Awards for best animated short subject. Two directors emerged as artistic leaders of the studio. John Hubley was trained as a designer; in place of the rounded, doughy cartoon characters prized by many animation producers, Hubley offered angular designs inspired by modern art and illustration. Hubleys fellow director and sometime rival, Robert Cannon, was trained as an animator. Departing from the realistic movement of 1930s animation, Cannons characters move like cartoonselastic or staccato, liberated from the laws of gravity. As developed by Hubley and Cannon, the UPA cartoon was soon adored by audiences, praised by workaday journalists and highbrow critics, and honored by a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

UPA stood as a point of intersection among the arts. The lessons of modern masters such as Picasso, Matisse, and Mondrian combined with the stylings of New Yorker illustrators such as Saul Steinberg. We find the influence of ballet as well as syncopated jazz. Further, the UPA artists consciously avoided the talking animals, lowbrow humor, and cartoon violence typical of American animation. Dr. Seuss, James Thurber, and even Edgar Allan Poe provide the source material for some of UPAs striking creations. With facilities in Los Angeles, New York, and London, UPA produced a television series for CBS, commercials for Madison Avenue, industrial films, and an animated feature. Even middle-class housewives knew the name UPA and its logo, composed of three cheerfully colored eggs.

By reinventing the form and content of the animated film, UPA captured the Disney mantle as industry leader and trendsetter. In one of the storys many ironies, UPAs president, Steve Bosustow, bore some resemblance to his former boss, with the same mustache. Yet in contrast to the uniform styling at Walt Disney Productions, each UPA film has its own look, appropriate to its subject. The most complaisant of managers, Bosustow gave his employees extraordinary freedom as he presided over that rare anomaly: a for-profit company dedicated to Art.

But it was a nearsighted, cantankerous old man who proved to be UPAs most enduring creation. Mr. Magoo, memorably voiced by Jim Backus, appeared in fifty-three short films and won two Academy Awards. By the mid-1950s, Mr. Magoo was one of the most popular short-subject stars in the country, in part because he encapsulated the nations postwar optimism. His intransigence and inability to see the world the way it really is allowed UPAs artists to satirize America in the age of Eisenhower, suburban sprawl, and the bomb.

However, a dark shadow passes over this happy tale. The left-leaning radicalism that spurred the growth of UPA also hastened its decline. When Walt Disney testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the one artist he named was UPA cofounder David Hilberman. Professional anti-Communists and their virulent red-smashing publications targeted UPA; in the early fifties, director John Hubley, writer Philip Eastman, and a handful of others were fired or forced to disavow any ties to Communism in order to spare the company further persecution. By the end of the decade, most of UPAs creative lights were gone.

The following pages document the rise and fall of one particular business entity, but they also recount the lives of many animators, writers, directors, and designers. This band of artists endured a brutal strike, a world war, and a witch-hunt; they thrived on the munificence of the federal government and then felt its wrath when the political climate changed. Joyous or pathetic, an inspiration or a warning, here is the UPA story.

First, I thank my teachers: John Canemaker, who taught me that an animated film could be taken seriously, and John Culhane, who taught me that a life in animation is a life filled with joy.

I have been awed and overwhelmed by the warm reception that I have received from the community of animation historians and researchers. Michael Barrier, a scholar and a gentleman, proved generous with his important collection and ever patient with my many questions and requests. His writing and research stand as a model of rigor that inspired me to try harder. Jerry Beck, whose love of animation is infectious, has been a friend to this project from the start. He shared obscure films from his collection and spent time chatting with me when he probably should have been somewhere else. Amid Amidi has been my animation ally in New York City. His work on 1950s design has been an important guide, and he shared hundreds of images and answered all my questions with grace. Leonard Maltin, whose own animation book traveled with me to Europe and now is appropriately tattered, shared his knowledge of classic cartoons and aided me when no one else could. I also thank Mark Kausler for screening some rare films and sharing his important animation research. In addition, I enjoyed productive conversations with Karl Cohen, Jake Friedman, Jim Goldner, Mike Kazaleh, Colin Kellogg, Howard Rieder, Tom Sito, Charles Solomon, and Darrell Van Citters.