Tuesday,
December 19, 2006
Obit: Joseph Barbera,
95; Animation Giant of Hanna-Barbera
The
ANNOTICO Report
OBITUARIES
By
Charles Solomon
December 19, 2006
Joseph
Barbera, who, with his longtime partner William
"
During the 1940s, Barbera and Hanna were MGM's
blue-ribbon cartoon directors, winning seven Oscars for the "Tom and
Jerry" shorts. After MGM closed its animation unit in 1957, they moved to
television, where they created a series of hits in the 1960s, beginning with
"The Flintstones," the first animated series in prime time.
By the 1970s, Hanna-Barbera was the dominant studio
in Saturday morning cartoons, making shows for the three major networks and
accounting for as much as 70% of the so-called kid-vid
programming in some seasons.
"Joe Barbera was a passionate storyteller and a
creative genius who, along with his late partner
During their six-decade partnership, Barbera and
Hanna produced more than 300 series for network and syndicated TV. They also
adapted comic books and live-action series and made theatrical features,
direct-to-video releases and TV specials.
They sold their production company in 1967 but remained involved in the
company's management. In his 90s, Barbera was still
helping to shape new projects and was reporting to his office until a few weeks
ago, according to spokesman Gary Miereanu. Hanna died
in 2001 at 90.
Born March 24, 1911, in
A screening of Walt Disney's 1929 "The Skeleton Dance" sparked his
interest in animation. After working at the Van Buren and Terrytoons
studios in the
At MGM, Barbera met Hanna, a story man, and the two
became friends. When MGM failed to establish a successful cartoon series, the
two men decided to create a film of their own.
Their idea ? which their
co-workers dismissed as a cliche ? was
a cat-and-mouse cartoon featuring Jasper, a hot-tempered cat, and an unnamed
chubby-cheeked mouse. The 1940 short, "Puss Gets the Boot," earned
Hanna and Barbera their first Oscar nomination in the
cartoon short category.
In their next short, "The Midn
i! ght
Snack" (1941), the cat was renamed Tom and the mouse was christened Jerry.
The feuding pair quickly became one of the most popular in cartoon history,
winning Hanna and Barbera seven Academy Awards
between 1943 and 1952. Tom and Jerry even co-starred alongside such MGM stars
as Gene Kelly in "Anchors Aweigh" (1945) and Esther Williams in
"Dangerous When Wet" (1953). Barbera and
Hanna also animated a sea serpent for the 1956 Kelly musical "Invitation
to the Dance."
In a 1988 interview, Hanna recalled, "Joe would draw the storyboard and
plot the actions. I would do the timing and go over the scenes with the
animators. We used to make a 'Tom and Jerry' short every six weeks and they
were about six minutes long, so we were producing about a minute of animation a
week."
The "Tom and Jerry" series came to an abrupt end in 1957 when the
management at MGM closed the animation studio. Hanna and Barbera
formed a production company and began looking for work in t! elevision. Little animation was
being produced for TV, but they managed to interest Screen Gems in the series
"Ruff and Reddy," the comic adventures of a big, dumb bulldog and a
small, clever cat. It premiered on NBC in December 1957 as part of a package
show that included live hosts, puppets and old theatrical cartoons.
In contrast to the lavish "Tom and Jerry" cartoons that cost more
than $40,000 apiece in the mid-'50s, the first episodes of "Ruff and
Reddy" were budgeted at $2,700 apiece. To cut corners, Hanna and Barbera began using limited animation.
"Instead of the 25,000 to 40,000 drawings we used in a 'Tom and Jerry'
short, we were able to make a cartoon with 1,200 to 1,800 drawings," Barbera said in 1988. "But you had to be an animator
to understand where to use those drawings and how to use camera moves to give
them more life. We learned you can cover a lot of ground with dialogue."
"The Huckleberry Hound Show," their first half-hour program, pr e! miered in syndication in 1958,
starring a laconic blue dog who spoke in a Southern drawl. Huckleberry was
quickly upstaged by "Yogi Bear," which scored an even bigger hit when
it debuted in 1961.
Yogi, who frequently proclaimed he was "smarter than the average bear,"
used his devious intelligence to swipe food from campers' "pic-a-nic baskets" in
Hanna-Barbera's most popular show of the '60s was
"The Flintstones," which ran from 1960 through 1966, the
longest-running animated prime-time series until "The Simpsons."
Barbera and Hanna later served as executive producers
of the 1994 live-action feature film based on the Stone Age characters.
Securing backing for the cartoon was a struggle at first. Barbera
spent two months trying to find a sponsor for the program before the networks
would consider it. He appeared in dozens of corporate boardrooms, tacking up
storyboard drawings and pitching the series.
"I booked into the Sher r! y-Netherland in
The partners followed the "Flintstones" success with three more prime
time shows: "Top Cat" (1961), "The Jetsons"
(1962) and "Jonny Quest" (1964).
During the mid-'60s, they shifted to producing children's
series for the burgeoning Saturday-morning market. "The
Smurfs," "Space Ghost," and "Scooby-Doo,
Where Are You?" rank among the most popular kid-vid
shows of the baby boom and Gen X eras.
Taft Entertainment acquired Hanna-Barbera Productions
in 1967 for $12 million. The studio was subsequently resold and is now part of
Time Warner Corp.
When Barbera and Hanna received the Governors' Award
from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1988, Barbera
explained how their 60-year collaboration had functioned.
"We never mix soc i! ally.
It isn't deliberate; it just happened that way," he said. "
Barbera noted that they agreed on the division of
labor, which made for an amicable partnership. "I work on creating the
ideas for projects and trying to sell those ideas in the various markets,"
he said. "
"When
Barbera and Hanna also received seven Emmys, a Humanitas Prize and a Golden Globe, as well as numerous
festival and broadcasting awards. They were inducted into the Television
Academy Hall of Fame in 1994.
In March 2005, Ba r! bera attended a ceremony at the Academy of Television
Arts & Sciences in
Barbera also served as president of the Greek Theatre
Assn. and the Southern California Theatre Assn.
He is survived by his wife, Sheila; three children from a previous marriage,
Lynn Lombardo of Van Nuys, Jayne Barbera of Encino
and Neal Barbera of Sherman Oaks; two grandchildren;
and five great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
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