Bob Singer, background painter

In a post from several years ago, I profiled Bob Singer, one of the production designers on Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, who laid out several key areas of the film including the prologue on Broadway and the opening sequence in Scrooge’s office.  In his capacity as a layout artist, he was responsible for drawing the characters and their environments but had nothing to do with how they were interpreted in color.  However, prior to joining UPA, Bob was employed at Warner Bros. Cartoons as a background painter.  He did most of his painting in Bob McKimson’s unit but would occasionally swing into action doing both paintings and layouts for other directors, like Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow.  He was about to become Friz Freleng’s layout man when UPA offered him more money.

During my consultation for I Say, I Say... Son!, the book on Looney Tunes director Bob McKimson, I reviewed a number of Foghorn cartoons and came across one featuring Singer’s work as a background painter.  Below are some frames from the cartoon, Crockett Doodle Doo, highlighting Singer’s sense of color, with layouts by animation legend, Bob Givens.  Click on each image to enlarge it:

You can see the complete cartoon here but if you want to see a nice print where you can fully appreciate the color and design work, order it here.

Magoo on TV DVD boxed set

The demise of DVDs has been forecast for several years now due to streaming but as anyone who’s tried to stream much content through the various services can tell you, the bulk of filmed content can still only be found on DVDs.  Not only that, but some aspects of the DVD market are thriving as companies continue to release material that can’t be found anywhere else.  Tomorrow’s release of Magoo on TV, an 11 disc boxed set is one such item.  Someone at Shout Factory saw an unmet need and decided to fulfill it by releasing Mr. Magoo’s entire television career on one complete boxed set, featuring cool retro-inspired cover art.

A rundown of what’s in the box:

The Mr. Magoo Show-All 130 five minute shorts from the 1960 syndicated series, including the original opens, closes and bumpers.  Commentaries in this set include animation historian Jerry Beck on Beatnik Magoo, Blithering Heights, Magoo and the Beanstalk and Magoo Meets Boing Boing while I add my two cents on Magoo Meets Frankenstein.

The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo-All 26 half hours from the 1964 series, including the original titles and show lead-ins with Mr. Magoo, which have never before been released in their entirety to home video.  For years, the multi-part episodes were cut together as single longer episodes and released as a single unit, much like the Robin Hood episodes were only available as Mr. Magoo in Sherwood Forest.  Commentaries on this set include Don Morgan, series layout artist, discussing Moby Dick; Bob Singer, series layout artist, discussing Robin Hood; and me discussing William Tell and Doctor Frankenstein.

Uncle Sam Magoo-The 1970 NBC special along with a new 16 minute featurette produced especially for this set, Oh, Magoo, You’ve Done It Again! which discusses TV animation production and includes interviews with layout men Bob Singer and Don Morgan, production head Richard Krown, production coordinator Paul Carlson, animation historian Jerry Beck and me.  There’s also a small gallery of still art and images of Magoo.

What’s New, Mr. Magoo?-All 16 half hours of the awkward 1977 De-Patie Freleng series.

18 page illustrated booklet on Mr. Magoo’s TV career, including the special, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

And now for the inevitable questions:

Have Benny Rubin’s comic Cholly tracks for The Mr. Magoo Show been restored?  Solly, Cholly, I regret to report that Shout Factory was unable to gain access to the original negatives and had to make due with the 1980s USA Network transfers.  Only about a third of the shorts feature the original Charlie voice.  

Has this material been re-mastered or restored?  No, Shout Factory was only able to use existing transfers.  The expense of re-mastering from the original negative is more than special interest releases like this can afford.

Have Mr.  Magoo’s television commercials been included?  Unfortunately, no.  Most of them are difficult to find, some may even be lost.  There has been no archive kept of any of his commercial work, including the hundreds of GE spots he made over several decades.  Once the material is found, permission must then be obtained from often apathetic corporations for its use.

Why wasn’t Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol included in the set?  Classic Media just released a new Blu-Ray transfer of the classic special last year and preferred not to compete with itself by having it included in this set.

The two highlights of this set for me are the documentary in which some of the last remaining artists from UPA discuss the production of the TV cartoons and the complete, never before released series,The Famous Adventures of Mr.  Magoo.  You can buy it here.

Coming next summer from Shout Factory, a new boxed set featuring the complete series of Mr. Magoo’s theatrical cartoons including the long out of print,1001 Arabian Nights and rare bonus material.

UPDATE! As a promotional giveaway, Shout Factory is offering a boxed set to the first one to correctly answer this question:

There were three credited actresses who provided the female voices for the Famous Adventures series but only one appeared only once.  Who was she and in what episode did she provide the voice? 

Bob Singer, layout artist

In 1960, job opportunities abounded at UPA due to the studio’s sharp refocus from theatrical shorts to TV animation.  The Mr. Magoo Show and The Dick Tracy Show , each with an order for 130 five minute shorts, necessitated a hiring binge.  Corny Cole had called ex-roommate Bob Inman to come over and around the same time, layout artist Sam Weiss told his friend Bob Singer of an opening in the layout department.  Singer, who was working at Warner Bros. as a background painter, was just beginning to cross over into layout and jumped at the chance to pursue it full time.  He spent the next five years as a layout man at UPA.  

Bob Singer started his career as a background painter for Shamus Culhane on the Bell Science films and also painted on the titles for Around the World in 80 Days.  He was recommended for a storyboard job on the Bell films at Warner Bros. by Ben Washam, an animator in Chuck Jones’ unit, who had freelanced for Culhane.  When those films finished, Bob began painting backgrounds for the McKimson unit, occasionally painting for the Jones unit and finally for Abe Levitow on A Witch’s Tangled Hare.  He had just moved into layout and was about to join Freleng’s unit in that capacity when Sam Weiss made his fateful call to join him at UPA.

Between the conclusion of the TV shorts and the ramp up on Gay Purr-ee, Singer filled his time doing layouts for General Electric commercials featuring Mr. Magoo.  On Gay Purr-ee, he was handed sizable sections of the film to stage and layout.  Bob remembers:

Since Chuck Jones wrote the story as a writer's storyboard, it was not suitable for production. We had to re-board most of it. I was assigned to do all the sequences occurring in the loft in Paris where our heroine was kept captive by the bad guy.  Then I did all the layouts for that area, including following Musette as she escaped and ran through the streets. Another area I boarded and laid out began in a cafe where Jaune-Tom and his sidekick (Robespierre) were drinking and had a drunken spree that introduced a song sequence ending in a burst of fireworks. Also, near the end of the picture there was a sequence in Alaska, ending on a ship at sea which I again boarded and laid out.

When production began to wind down on the feature, Bob was picked to move on to Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, the film that was moving through the studio right on the heels of Gay Purr-ee.  Sequences Bob laid out were the titles, credits, the prologue with the song "Back on Broadway", Scrooge’s office, the graveyard and the epilogue after the play ends.  Singer’s character and background layouts are highlighted throughout my book.

The year 1963 was a slow one at UPA and appears to have been primarily filled with the production of GE commercials.  When The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo was given the greenlight at the beginning of 1964, Singer was asked, along with Marty Murphy and Corny Cole, to help board the premiere episode, William Tell, and also laid out a chunk of the film.  Bob worked on many of the episodes such as the four part Robin Hood, Paul Revere, Treasure Island and several others.  Production had begun in January and although there were 26 episodes in the series, they were all completed and the entire artistic staff was laid off before the series made its debut in mid-September that same year.  The last man out was Bob Singer, who fell back on his background painting skills to finish up a GE spot on his way out the door. Below is a page of Bob's storyboards from the William Tell episode and a layout from the Robin Hood episode.

From there, he briefly went to Tower 12, Chuck Jones’ operation which became the new incarnation of MGM, but left after a few short weeks due to what he felt was a creatively constrictive atmosphere.  In October 1964, Bob began the longest stint of his career, at Hanna Barbera, eventually rising to the head of layout there.  He worked on dozens of shows from Jonny Quest to Scooby Doo and everything in between.  Of all the productions Singer worked on at HB, the one he was most proud of was art directing the feature, Charlotte’s Web.  Bob finally decided to retire from the business in 1993.  

Since then, he has kept active by writing and self-publishing a book on storyboarding and doing commissioned art featuring the Hanna Barbera characters.  Although the book details the television production model for storyboarding, it’s recommended for its solid approach to production boarding, still applicable even with today’s technological methodology.  If you would like to order a copy of the book or inquire about a personalized commissioned piece of art, you can contact Bob here.


In looking back on his career, Bob felt the artistic high point of his career was at UPA:

Abe (Levitow) was fortunate that he had assembled an excellent staff of artists who did good work in a timely fashion.  Being an excellent artist himself, we all had a great deal of respect for him. With a boss like that you worked hard to please him and there was a good working environment in the studio, although filled with deadlines. I have worked in at least 16 different studios around town, as we all did, but I look at my time at UPA as the most pleasant and rewarding.  Abe allowed his artists to have the freedom to invent, contribute and create without feeling the heavy hand of supervision and the ego that goes with it.