Watching Jerry Beck and Martha Sigall on History Detectives last night prompted me to dig up this photo of Bob Clampett’s unit in 1938 I found on eBay in 2007 (I don’t own the photo, I only have this scan from the auction). I sent it to Jerry back then, and he had Martha ID just about everyone in the photo. I thought I had lost this in one of my many crashes (I’m speaking in terms of both computers and servers), but lo and behold, here it is, with Martha’s IDs reposted.
TOP ROW (L to R): Bob Cannon, Leahdora DaSilva, Ernest Gee, Izzy Ellis, Bob Clampett, George Jordan, Helen Curry, Dick Thomas, Kay Vallejo, Lu Guarnier, Dick Jones (Chuck’s brother, partially hidden), Dorothy Worth, Mary Tebb, Silvia Rogers, Vannie Baker, Virginia Slaughter, Onita _______ (Martha couldn’t recall her last name) and Unknown.
SITTING (L to R): Sid Farren, John Carey, Jack MacLaughlan, Vive Risto and Leon Redman.
As an added supplement, please enjoy an amazing offering from these fine people. This was the last cartoon Chuck Jones did actual animation for on at the studio, handling the scenes with the rooster turning out to be a holy terror and Daffy doing the lion tamer shtick.
Who was doing Clampett’s layouts?
Interesting that Norm McCabe missed the photo shoot.
I haven’t finished watching that segment of History Detectives yet (only watched about ten minutes or so because I didn’t have time yesterday to finish), but it was sure insightful anyway. Thanks to you, I’m going to go finish it when I get home from school so I can see the parts with Jerry Beck and Martha Sigall.
Was Bob McKimson animating for Clampett at this time or was he doing work for another director like Friz Freleng? I definitely know that he animated for several units long before he was made a director himself. I also don’t see him in the photo shoot.
Hey Roberto,
McKimson didn’t work for Clampett until he got the former Avery unit in 1941. McKimson was working with Jones in 1938. There is some great insight on McK’s working relationships with all the directors in Barrier’s book.
It seems that after ‘Porky in Wackyland’, Clampett’s black-and-white Porkys seem to miss something. I can’t put my finger on it, but it makes them lack that craziness you see in his earlier ones.
Nice.
Speaking of which, can you repost the (only?) McKimson interview conducted in the ’70s?
I will if I can find it. McKimson did a few interviews. You should ask Mike Barrier to post the one he did, one I’ve never read.
I noticed the lack of Norm McCabe here as well, and Warren Foster (he would have joined the Schlesinger Studio in 1938 but probably in the later half).
I know that Cannon, Carey, and Ellis were animators at the time, Gee was a writer, and Thomas was a background painter but do you know the jobs of some of the others?
Thad, if you can’t find your copy of the McKimson interview, I’ll send you it (my library has the book that contains it).
Paul, Risto was an animator and Sid and Lu were assistants. I don’t know about the others. Dick Jones bounced around a bit. There’s something amusing about him being in Clampett’s unit.
Sid, Mary Tebb and George Jordan are referenced in ‘Prehistoric Porky’ along with the animators and writers.
Are you talking about McKimson’s interview in the Peary book?
“Who was doing Clampett’s layouts?”
Technically, no-one, since the studio didn’t have any dedicated layout artists until John McGrew was given that role in Jones’s unit in 1939-40. Due to the niceties of how the Robert Clampett-Ray Katz studio was set up however, the background painter in that unit worked separately from the unified background department that Schlesinger had in this period, and effectively did the layout artist’s job as well (probably in conjunction with Clampett himself).
Therefore, Clampett’s initial layout-background guy would have been Elmer Plummer, who worked in the unit until Porky in Wackyland, IIRC. After that, it was Richard H. Thomas all the way through to Bob McKimson taking over the unit.