I haven’t put together one of these reels in a long time, so here’s one highlighting the work of Irv Spence, easily one of the Golden Age’s most distinctive and recognizable animators. While this features highlights from the epic saga of Tom & Jerry (the series Spence spent most of his career on), this also features his work for Tex Avery (at Schlesinger’s and MGM) and for that odd curio studio of Ub Iwerks’s. I’d like to actually have copies of his work at Jam Handy (roughly ’45-’47) one day too.
Thad’s Books
Irv Spence was pretty much Jim Tyer, only working in a FAR better enviroment. While I love his work for T&J, his style really fitted Avery’s cartoons like a glove.
While I was hoping for an inclusion of Framed Cat, I saw the rest of the clips coming (especially Walking Hood). Another great reel!
Great piece, Thad.
I’m not as good as picking out animators at other studios as I am with Tom and Jerry/MGM. But when I see Spence’s Warners stuff it’s so unmistakably him it makes me wonder how I never noticed it before.
Spence and Muse had styles that were as different as night and day. But I can’t picture the Tom and Jerry series without either of them.
Fabulous arrangement! No inclusion of his tenure at Bakshi Productions? Too much a historical or genre shift?
Not sure of what his stuff looks like at Bakshi’s to tell you the truth. A lot of those guys were in TV mode by that point and their individuality was stifled.
Huh. Bakshi credits him as being his principle animator, claiming he animated the near entirety of Wizards. The very spine of his studio during his most important period, (the urban period). Hey Good Lookin’ seems heavy with him, possibly, with it’s Golden Age competence. Bakshi is said to be rather aesthetically crude, but my feeling is only superficially so on the embellished production side. The animation is solid, and I’ve an appreciation for all the flaws and no-no’s committed in all his great pictures. None of it smacks of television animation, however.
Yes, I know of Bakshi’s high opinion of Spence (and all the old guys who worked for him). My comment was not on the quality of the animation (certainly it’s well-above TV animation), but that of the mindset of a lot of those animators. Much of their individuality had been denigrated by that point by cynical TV animation studios. I can pick out certain scenes that Tyer, Gentilella, and others animated only because Bakshi has said so, not because of their distinctive earmarks. That said, they were still professionals and could do highly competent work when directed well, as they do in Bakshi’s best films.
Also, Wizards and Hey Good Lookin’ are pretty terrible. I much prefer his first three movies to anything else he did.
Irv Spence animated the scene in Coonskin where the Godfather and his sons try to crush the butterfly that the Godfather’s wife has turned into.
According to Mark Kausler, he also did some of the scenes where the Godfather’s clown henchman swang around vines like Tarzan.
When I saw Fritz The Cat I immediately recognized Virgil Ross’s work, specifically a scene when those two pig cops were talking to each other. I really can’t say the same for the other golden age animators.
Pertainting to this topic, I loved Irv Spences work though I really wished he stayed with Avery during his entire tenure at MGM. Can you believe he actually worked on that shitty ’92 Tom and Jerry movie ? I’ll pay anyone a million bucks to try and point out what Irv did on that film on screen.
“Also, Wizards and Hey Good Lookin’ are pretty terrible.”
Why, Thaddeus, methinks that’s the first time I’ve heard you speak like a philistine. Wizards is a layered, formal tour de force. And Hey Good Lookin’is a fabulous grotesque, (despite the crummy late-coming of Bakshi’s 80’s gone 50’s soundtrack.) “Oh, yyeeeeaaahh… well, where wuz’i lass night, fuck-ahh?”
I can’t say I have a very refined eye in the animator id department, so I couldn’t tell you what has his signature at Bakshi’s either. I suppose your thesis holds.
The ‘why’—
Wizards is a poly-stylistic fete of collage and other modernist avant-garde practices in painting and drawing, run up against the swastika. That is, the ethos of National Socialism which forbade and declared “degenerate” avant-garde practices, put in direct symbolic confrontation in the film. Bakshi’s open citation from masterpieces of Bolshevik (Eisenstein) and Nazi propaganda (Reifenstahl) make Wizards an implicit meditation on mass culture, mass manipulation, mass artforms and totalitarianism. These conceptual oppositions are at play throughout Wizards, and make it more than a lame film of the fantasy-quest-narrative variety.
K., I just don’t agree. While Wizards is indeed an attempt at being profound, it just comes off as dumb and messy to me, particularly with its heavy-handed approach (yes, Hitler was bad, we get it). Its modern equivalent would be Wall-E in my mind. Hey Good Lookin’ is just inane and ugly. I do think Heavy Traffic is one of the best films of the 70s, animated or otherwise, and given the competition during that decade, that’s no small feat.
The point is I find Wizards, formally speaking, extremely interesting. Profundity from a narrative standpoint, or as a moral statement, it may not be. “Hitler was bad” is a rather shallow conclusion to draw from the strengths and tropes I enumerated above, but I respect your positions. Traffic and especially Coonskin are far finer achievements, but I do think Wizards is his last great film, because it’s an art-film masquerading as a mainstream fantasy.
Actually Thad I don’t think there was nessecarily an anti-nazi or anti-hitler stance in Wizards. That old Nazi propaganda footage was just used as a plot device but even then it dosen’t make any sense. How would Hitler inspire anyone in a future of mutants ? In general Wizards is a narative mess. All the main characters were sorely underdeveloped and the ending is anti-climatic. Yes there are some interesting bits here and there, mostly the comedy, but it’s a rather awful film.
WIZARDS owes much of its content to underground comic artist Vaughn Bode. At one point He and Ralph were working turning some of his “Junkwaffle” characters, like Cheech Wizard,Belinda Bump,and a bunch of horny lizards into a feature film. There was a parting of the ways (no details) and the project never happened. After Bode’s untimely death (auto asphixiation) it seems Ralph had a lot of Bode material in his possession, and with a few changes, he made it his own. Now I have no doubt that the basic storyline to WIZARDS was Ralph’s own creation, but there are so many scenes where the dialogue and the layout style are immistakably Bode’s. It doesn’t resemble any of Bakshi’s previous works, but I’m going to draw the line at calling it plagerism.
The only credited work of Irv Spence’s in Bakshi’s LORD OF THE RINGS (that I know of)is the animation of Treebeard. FRom what I remember, he was the ONLY non-rotoscoped character in the entire film.
I’d rather have the clap than watch anything ever made by Ralph Bakshi.* (There–I’ve said it!)
Irv Spence is, indeed, a Jim Tyer with just enough understanding of the system to make his highly distinctive, quirky style fit into The Program.
His animation is always a highlight of any cartoon it’s in (akin to Emery Hawkins’ 1940s work in this respect.) I applaud Spence for finding a way to be an individual in an industry that awarded conformity.
That said, I’m glad we have Jim Tyer and Rod Scribner in 1940s studio animation. Someone had to let their freak-flag fly and stand out from the crowd.
The Irv Spences and Emery Hawkins–those who worked both sides of the street–had it the best, though: they could contribute to the group mind of the Hollywood cartoon but stand out and strut their stuff.
* The 1980s Mighty Mouse show is the sole exception, but that’s really John K’s show, and once he leaves the series, I can’t stand to watch them anymore.
“The 1980s Mighty Mouse show is the sole exception, but that’s really John K’s show, and once he leaves the series, I can’t stand to watch them anymore.”
Really? I found that the show improved leaps and bounds in the second season overall in terms of consistency as well as being funnier overall. I’ll give you that the John K directed segments were amongst the better ones of the very hit and miss first season.
Excellent post. I love Irv Spence’s wild, energetic animation. I too wish he had stayed mainly with Tex Avery, but then again, would the Tom and Jerrys be as good without his animation there?
I think the main difference between Jim Tyer and Irv Spence is that Spence was a better draftsman. Irv Spence, as wild as his work was, was still able to give his characters weight and solidity. Jim Tyer’s work sometimes seems to float. Still valuable to study though, in its sheer cartooniness and energy.
As for Ralph Bakshi, I find he was at his best dealing with urban subject matter and pure cartoon imagery. Fantasy was not his strong point. His fantasy work is his weakest work. Wizards has some nice ideas in it, but he tries too hard to cram them all together, without giving them a solid foundation in either story or characterization. I will agree with Thad that his first three films are his best, by the sheer fact that they do what animation can only do. American Pop and Hey Good Lookin’ follow as the next best. I disagree with Thad on it being ugly and crude. The story is lacking in places, but I found it very funny and entertaining. I liked the characters designs for a lot of the characters because they were so specific. each design was different. Even though it’s rotoscope, I found American Pop to have one of the best storylines out of all of his films. I found it to be a genuinely touching film. Scorn me if you wish, it’s just my opinion.
Nick: I agree with you on Mighty Mouse but I think John’s episodes were the best of the series, especially Mighty’s Benefit.