Happy Thanksgiving!

Signed copies of the book

For those who might have missed out on the original opportunity to own a signed cast and crew first edition of my book, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special, I have two copies of the limited edition of 50 that were signed by 9 of the original cast and crew-Marie Matthews, Marty Murphy, Gloria Wood, Bob Inman, Bob Singer, Laura Olsher, Jane Kean, David Weidman and Ann Guenther.  They're priced at $150 each and would make a great gift for die-hard fans of the special.

Other signed copies include three copies signed by Bob Singer, Marie Matthews and myself, priced at $45 each.  Copies of either can be ordered here.

And now for something completely different...

Every so often I'll stray off topic here and today is one of those days.  I'm highlighting a new DVD release from Dreamworks, a Dragons two-pack, featuring a charming new 22 minute short with the How to Train Your Dragon characters called Gift of the Night Fury and a separate DVD, Book of Dragons.  Why am I announcing it?  Shameless self-promotion.  Renegade Animation contributed to Book of Dragons along with Shine, the studio that did the end credits for How To Train Your Dragon, to create the 17 minute short.  Book of Dragons is meant to assist gamers in playing the new Dragons online video game but within the video, squeezed between cool After Effects animation segments by Shine, you'll find about 8 minutes of good ol' 2D stylized character animation done by Renegade.  I'm not at liberty to post any clips but here are some images from the 2D animation. 

Of course, the real star of this release is the charming, Christmas-themed, Gift of the Night Fury but don't miss Book of Dragons simply because you're not a gamer.  Gift was directed by Tom Owens and produced by Kate Spencer Lachance while Book was directed by Steve Hickner and produced by Lisa Freberg.  Character animation on Book was directed by me, produced by Jim Praytor and executive produced by Ashley Postlewaite.  You can buy the set here.

Color Styling in The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo

Paul Revere

With the long awaited release of the complete The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, it’s finally possible to get a clear overview of the series.  While this show will be nostalgic for those who grew up with it, probably the most intriguing aspect to be revealed by this release is the production design and color styling.  There were hints of the quality of the production design in previous bootleg copies and in the few backgrounds that were discovered during the research process for the book on Christmas Carol.  However, this set of discs shows  that despite the abbreviated schedule, the layout and backgrounds put a high sheen on otherwise factory-level work.

Treasure Island

Many of the same artists responsible for the look of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol were responsible for Famous Adventures-from character designer Lee Mishkin to layout artists Dick Ung and Bob Singer to painters Robert Inman and Gloria Wood.  Due to the intense demands of production, seven episodes out of the 26 were sub-contracted to GrantRay Lawrence (the studio set up by former MGM animators, Grant Simmons and Ray Patterson):Three Musketeers, Snow White, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Count of Monte Cristo, Captain Kidd, Sherlock Holmes and Don Quixote, Part 2.  There are three distinct blocks of credits for the shows and they are most likely generic; in many cases the credited artist may or may not have worked on that particular show and others who did, might not be credited.

Gunga Din

The first in the series, William Tell, although nicely styled is rather traditional in its palette.  By the second episode, a bit of the artistic flair the studio was once known for begins to creep into production.  Gunga Din has a limited palette but with its broad vistas and rocky hills devoid of vegetation, it gives a good visceral feel of the unrelenting heat of India.  Contrast the hot oranges in the landscape dramatically accented by purple shadows with the restful, cool palette used for the interiors. 

Moby Dick

 Colors in Moby Dick are less dramatic but are striking in their harmony-note the warm accent in the otherwise cool palette in the example at right.  It’s also the first episode with both the subjective and expressive use of colors on the characters.  Characters are often made more interesting simply by the use of color and certainly took full advantage of the new medium of color television.   

Treasure Island

Cyrano de Bergerac

Treasure Island features strong layouts by Bob Singer and some very painterly backgrounds by Gloria Wood.  Here, too, characters are colored in a non-literal fashion adding to their appeal.   This episode has a particularly epic feel to it with its styling.





Cyrano DeBergerac has a strong architectural component to it, featuring strong draftsmanship by Jacques Rupp, about whom you'll hear more in an upcoming post.  Color palettes feature a diversity of looks, with some very clean palettes like the one at right along with some very dramatic palettes (see page 100 in my book.) 

Noah's Ark

The backgrounds by Bob Inman in Noah’s Ark are more traditional in painting technique but utilize unusual colors featuring hot pinks against cooler colors.  This episode features nice design styling by Bob Singer.

King Arthur

Showing that the artists weren’t into color for its own sake, there are some nicely subdued color palettes in King Arthur  and Rip Van Winkle, Rip being a bit more painterly in execution.   

Robin Hood

Robin Hood, perhaps the most epic  episodes in the series, was designed and laid out by Bob Singer and painted by Bob Inman.  Some sections, like the one pictured at right, were fairly conventional in painting technique.  Scenes of the exterior and inside the castle dungeon feature palette knife work for texturing the stone walls.

Doctor Frankenstein

One of the stronger entries, Doctor Frankenstein features Gloria Wood’s Expressionist painting style which adds immeasurably to the eerie feel.  More than any other episode, this one closely approximates her work in the graveyard sequence in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.  It also comes the closest to the kind of stylistic expression UPA was once known for, in films like The Telltale Heart.  You can buy The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo as part of the boxed set Magoo on TV 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? 

David Weidman, painter

What ultimately became the book, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special, started simply enough.  Production Designer Michael Giaimo and I, who both had fond memories of the show, decided to interview David Weidman, one of the credited background painters on the special, to see what we could find out about the making of the film for ourselves, nothing more.  After the recorder was setup and I pulled out my list of questions, I showed David stills from the film to tweak his memory and start the interview process.  He stared and stared at the images and told me that not only didn’t he remember the film, he didn’t think he even worked on it.  

It was a bit disheartening to say the least, but after we began going through some of his artwork collection, the painting in the above photo surfaced making it clear that although he may not have remembered the film, he did indeed work on it.  With a bit more interviewing, David began to recall painting a Christmas tree in the finale of the film but he only remembered it because he felt guilt over not painting it the same green as it was painted earlier in the film but instead chose a hue that he felt worked better for the environment.  Because Weidman couldn’t answer any of my questions about the production, I began pursuing other leads and after several other interviews, it became apparent that there was a book waiting to be written on the making of the special.

What I did learn that day was that David Weidman was an incredibly prolific artist outside of his career in animation.  David didn’t remember working on the film, not because of memory loss but because his mind was elsewhere at the time.  Weidman had been classically trained as an artist and entered animation as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.  His primary focus was on his own art, which he pursued after hours and between gigs at the studios.

Weidman in his early days

Like many of the animation artists of his era, David Weidman attended one of Los Angeles’ well regarded art schools, in his case, Jepson Art Institute where he acquired a solid grounding in art training.  His two biggest influences were Bill Moore, who taught design at both Chouinard and Jepson (and who influenced many of today's leaders in animation when he taught at CalArts in the 70s and 80s) and Rico LeBrun, who taught animal anatomy and drawing for the artists on Bambi.  It was LeBrun that had the biggest impact on David’s personal work and the school itself was a pioneer in the art of serigraphy (silk screen printing), which would have a significant impact on Weidman's later efforts.

 He began his career in 1955 with John Hubley at Hubley’s Storyboard Studios working on commercials before assisting as a designer on the animated version of Finian’s Rainbow, which ultimately was never produced.  David next found work at UPA as part of the hiring binge for The Boing Boing Show in 1956.  He was one of several future Christmas Carol artists who found employment on the 1957 version of Crusader Rabbit and then spent time at TV Spots (later renamed Creston Studios) working on such sub-contracted productions as Jack Kinney’s 1960 Popeye TV shorts, King Leonardo and his Short Subjects, Jay Ward’s Fractured Fairy Tales and the wholly Creston-produced Calvin and the Colonel.  In 1962, he was briefly back at UPA, helping to finish the background paintings for Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.  David is also credited as a background painter on The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which he did through Grantray Lawrence, who subcontracted a number of the episodes from UPA. 

Around 1965, Weidman began to feel the itch to do something that reflected his own vision, rather than participate as one part of a commercial enterprise.  As he told his wife back then, “I feel like I keep making sentences but I’m never able to finish the paragraph.  Someday I just want to be able to finish something!”  In an effort to follow a project through from beginning to end, he chose serigraphy, or silk screen printing, as his medium of expression and began innovating new techniques and processes to realize his designs.  He opened his own gallery on La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles, the street where many interior design shops and suppliers cater to the trade. 

Starting in the later 60s, designer Walt Peregoy took over as head of the background department at Hanna Barbera and began looking for people to shake up the look of the backgrounds.  One of his first calls was to David Weidman, whom he felt shared his artistic aesthetic.  Some of the series David painted on were Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. The two images from Wacky Races at right show how Weidman's serigraph work began to inform his background painting at the time.  He returned to UPA as a freelancer in 1969 to work on Mr. Magoo’s last TV special, Uncle Sam Magoo.

Weidman has recently experienced a resurgence of interest in his prints, now deemed “Retro” although they were actually produced at the time and many of his prints are still available today.  A book documenting his work and career was published and last year, Urban Outfitters produced a line of decorator pillows featuring his work.  If you are interested in owning your own Weidman print or in buying a signed copy of his book, you can purchase both here.  For those on a budget who would like to own both, I recommend buying the package that includes a signed copy of his book AND a miniature silk screen print of one of his designs.

UPDATE!  If you live in the Southern California area, David Weidman's works will be exhibited at Bermudez Projects in downtown Los Angeles starting November 11 through December 1st. David Weidman, Modern Master: Prints 1967-1974 is part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty celebrating the birth of the LA art scene with over 60 cultural institutions across Southern California.  David anticipates being there for the VIP opening next Friday, November 11th from 6-9 PM.  Please RSVP here if you plan to drop by to meet him in person and pick up one of his amazing prints.  For more information, click here.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Mr. Magoo and the Frankenstein monster!  Cel setup from their 1964 Soakie commercial.

Special thanks to Brian Peterson for the above image.