Wild minds The artists and rivalries that inspired the golden age of animation

Reid Mitenbuler

Book - 2020

"In 1911, the famed cartoonist Winsor McCay debuted an animated version of his popular newspaper strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland. Loosely inspired by Sigmund Freud's research on dreams, the film was one of the very first of its kind. McCay is largely forgotten today, but his work helped unleash the creative energy of animators like Otto Messmer, Max Fleischer, Walt Disney, and Chuck Jones. Their origin stories, rivalries, and sheer genius, as Reid Mitenbuler skillfully relates, were as colorful and subversive as their creations--from Felix the Cat to Bugs Bunny to feature films such as Fantasia--which became an integral part of American culture over the next five decades. Before television, animated cartoons were often "lit...tle hand grenades of social and political satire" aimed squarely at adults. Early Betty Boop cartoons included nudity. Popeye stories slyly criticized the injustices of unchecked capitalism. Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were used to explore hidden depths of the American psyche. "During its first half-century," Mitenbuler writes, "animation was an important part of the culture wars about free speech, censorship, the appropriate boundaries of humor, and the influence of art and media on society." During WWII it also played a significant role in propaganda. The golden age of animation ended with the advent of television when cartoons were sanitized to appeal to a growing demographic of children and help advertisers sell sugary breakfast cereals. Alongside these stories, Mitenbuler incorporates the surprising contributions of Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), voice artist Mel Blanc, composer Leopold Stokowski, and many others whose talents influenced the world of animation. Illustrated throughout in both black-and-white and color, with rare drawings and photographs, Wild Minds is an ode to our lively past and to the creative energy that would inspire The Simpsons, South Park, and BoJack Horseman today"--

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Subjects
Genres
Animated films
Published
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Reid Mitenbuler (author)
Edition
First edition. First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition
Physical Description
xviii, 411 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780802129383
  • Prologue: "Make Us Another"
  • Chapter 1. "Slumberland"
  • Chapter 2. "Fantasmagorie"
  • Chapter 3. "The Artist's Dream"
  • Chapter 4. "The Camera Fiend"
  • Chapter 5. "Cherubs That Actually Fly"
  • Chapter 6. "This Place Is Full of Sharks"
  • Chapter 7. "How to Fire a Lewis Machine Gun"
  • Chapter 8. "Being Famous Is Hard Work"
  • Chapter 9. "I Love Beans"
  • Chapter 10. "Bad Luck!"
  • Chapter 11. "Giddyap!"
  • Chapter 12. "That's Money over the Barrelhead"
  • Chapter 13. "It Became the Rage"
  • Chapter 14. "I Have Become a Ghost"
  • Chapter 15. "The Formula"
  • Chapter 16. "Looks Like You're Having Fun"
  • Chapter 17. "Are You a Sailor?"
  • Chapter 18. 'You Can't Top Pigs with Pigs"
  • Chapter 19. "Max Fleischer Killed Dan Glass"
  • Chapter 20. "I'll Make Money"
  • Chapter 21. "That Goddam Holy Grail"
  • Chapter 22. "We Can Do Better Than That with Our Second String"
  • Chapter 23. "Highbrowski by Stokowski"
  • Chapter 24. "Law of the Jungle"'
  • Chapter 25. "Okay, Go Ahead"
  • Chapter 26. "That Horse's Ass!"
  • Chapter 27. "A Tough Little Stinker"
  • Chapter 28. "Greetings, America!"
  • Chapter 29. "How Is It Spelled?"
  • Chapter 30. "They Can Kill You, but They're Not Allowed to Eat You"
  • Chapter 31. "And It's Going to Be Clean!"
  • Chapter 32. "Silly Rabbit..."
  • Chapter 33. "Flesher"
  • Chapter 34. "Well, Kid, This Is the End I Guess"
  • A Note on Sources and Acknowledgments
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Image Credits
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Mitenbuler (Bourbon Empire) casts the creators of animated cartoons as characters themselves in this rollicking history of the first 50 years of animation. The author tracks animation as a medium and an industry from the early 20th century to the 1960s, when cartoons moved from the theater to televisions and animation "changed almost overnight." The book begins with the "restless" Winsor McCay, a famous New York Journal cartoonist who had a lasting impact on better-known animators (Walt Disney among them), but was "all but forgotten by the time of his death." Meanwhile, directors Bob Clampett (who "pushed the limits of absurdity and aggressiveness") and Chuck Jones ("sly and mischievous with a dirty sense of humor") made up a mid-century "pirate crew" that brought such characters as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig to the silver screen. Household names like the Walt Disney Company get plenty of ink, but so do such edgier competitors as Fleischer Studios, formed before Disney and all but wiped out when legal trouble threatened its famed Betty Boop. In snappy prose, Mitenbuler writes a history rich with personalities. This Technicolor tour de force is impossible to put down. Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas Creative Management.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Entertaining history of early cartoon animation. Demonstrating impassioned research and technical know-how, Mitenbuler presents a series of historical anecdotes that, sequenced together, bring to life one of the world's most beloved art forms. When Winsor McCay, creator of the "Little Nemo" comics, debuted his first moving drawings in 1911, he jolted an entire industry to its feet. During the next few decades, a network of feuding production studios emerged, each trying to one-up the other with their inventiveness and intellectual properties. It was a cutthroat business, often leaving animators at odds with their executives. Otto Messmer, for example, the artist behind Felix the Cat, was frequently overlooked while his producer, Pat Sullivan, basked in fame and merchandising success. A rivalry brewed between Walt Disney, whose new animation studio wowed audiences with shorts like the "The Skeleton Dance" (1929), and Max Fleischer, the man behind the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons and inventor of technical marvels like the rotoscope. Mitenbuler chronicles the debut of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and the unusual production of Disney's 1940 music-animation hybrid Fantasia while also giving ample time to the rambunctious crew behind Looney Tunes and the various hijinks on the Warner Brothers lot. The narrative crackles with captivating charm, adding color and nuance to a cast of familiar cartoon faces. The author is skilled at exploring historical context and tracks how most turns in the industry were reactionary, shifts in response to not just popular trends, but to labor politics, the Great Depression, and World War II. In the words of a Disney memo on his studio's core philosophies, "we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real unless we first know the real." Mitenbuler, too, proves adept at this tenet and, like a one-man animation department, effortlessly renders both celluloid and background. A finely drawn history of a critical period in the history of animation. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.