| A Pioneering animator who helped shape Disney |
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The history of animation is known to the general public by two names: Disney and Warners. Ask any 'man on the street' what they know about animation and inevitably these studios or their characters will be invoked. The contributions by the artists and management of these studios is immeasurable and their praises should be sung, but not so loudly as to drown out the accomplishment and contributions of other studios and artists, particularly those that became of age or began during animation's Golden Age. You can view of course the technical accomplishments of the Fleischer Studios and the entertainment of MGM but this article will look at the particular accomplishments of one man and one studio who happened upon each other at the right time and changed animation.
John Hubley was born in 1914 in Wisconsin. One can only assume that he spent the long Wisconsin winters with pen and paper in his hand as it wasn't long (1935) before he found himself working as a background artist on 'Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs'. As Disney ramped production up on Snow White, he hired in a large group of new animators and artists. These were essentially the first people to be hired into the company, all of the previous employees, for the most part, had started with Walt or been involved with the studio in it's early inception in some way. These 'original' employees felt a loyalty to Disney and a complete faith in the direction he was leading animation. This complete injection of Disney was not something so easily shared by the newer employees. Many of these new artists had been college trained and had studied the fine arts unlike their studio bred counterparts; they felt that there were more ways into which animation could (and should) expand and grow.
These differings of opinions all came to a head in the spring of 1941 when over 300 Disney employees went on strike. Ostensibly the strike came about due to Disney's intermittent payment practices, but it is hard not to believe that some of the workers did not see this as an opportunity to 'rebel', to make a statement, against the Disney system.
The strike and its final settlement had major repercussions in the Disney Studio and throughout Hollywood as well; one of the consequences was the scattering of many members of the Disney staff. John Hubley was one of these movers. While not one of the visible leaders of the Disney Strike, many of the thoughts and theories concerning animation that Hubley had were shared by those strike leaders and as they left, he was only too happy to move to the Screen Gems studio (located at Columbia Pictures).
Joining Screen Gems in 1941, Hubley found many of his old Disney cohorts. The studio was being run by Frank Tashlin, a former Disney writer who had hired in many strikers and victims of the strike, many of whom had left Disney for artistic reasons more than anything. There was a prevailing belief that the further Disney strove for realism in his films, the more he violated the basic aesthetics of animation. A cartoon was after all, drawings on a flat piece of paper. By adding dimensions and depth, Disney was moving the medium away from its natural origins. It was a direction that many artists here felt was wrong and wished to correct. Tashlin was a very hands off manager which worked perfectly in a group such as the one assembled at Screen Gems. They were given the freedom to really experiment and explore all of the ideas and techniques which previously they had regulated to the privacy of their drawing books.
Not long after Hubley's arrival, Dave Fleischer was brought in to take over for Tashlin. At this point in his career, Fleischer seemed to be more interested in things other than animation which allowed the artists at the studio to continue their 'experiments'. When Fleischer was brought in, one of his first acts was to give John Hubley a promotion from layout artist to director. While involving himself more and more in the production of a picture, Hubley came to realize that the further you pushed a design forward, the stronger the emphasis grew on the writing. It was a thought that would drive Hubley's work for the rest of his life.
With the talent and cooperation assembled, there is no telling how high the Screen Gems studio could have climbed. As WWII entered America though, it was a question that would go unanswered. As World War II started, many areas of the Government (particularly the Armed Forces) set up film units in Hollywood to produce instructional and informational shorts to be shown to their 'employees'. In 1942 John Hubley joined the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit (FMPU). It was a diverse group run by Rudy Ising (of MGM) and included such artists as Frank Thomas (of Disney). The diversity of recruits into the FMPU worked well for the animators as it forced them to become completely involved in the filmmaking process. For the first time, animators had to assume a variety of tasks, one day you might be doing fill-ins, the next you were working layouts and on the third day you were washing cels. This work helped the artist to get a complete, hands on understanding of how an animated film really worked. It also gave the animators a chance to really get together and exchange ideas and theories and opinions about where the medium was headed.
In March 1942, Hubley contributed some of his ideas to an issue of The Animator, an industry publication.
"A progressive, intelligent approach to animation, and realization that it is an expressive medium, is imperative if we want to keep animated cartoons from stagnating. Development and growth of animation is dependent upon varied, significant subject manner presented in an organized form, evolved from elements inherent in the medium. Among the least understood of these elements are the graphic ones. In spite of the fact that animation is almost entirely concerned with drawings, drawings which must function in both time and space."
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