Terrytoons

From The TV IV

Terrytoons

Founded	1929
President	Paul Terry (1929-55) Bill Weiss (1955-67)
Notable Works	Farmer Al Falfa Gandy Goose Mighty Mouse Heckle & Jeckle Deputy Dawg The Mighty Heroes

Terrytoons was a studio in New Rochelle, New York that produced animated cartoons for theatrical release. Its founder and chief was Paul Terry.

Paul Terry founded the studio in 1929 with Frank Moser, with Audio-Cinema studios providing funding and workspace in the Bronx. Terry and Moser worked with no pay until Audio-Cinema recouped its investment on the first films, released by Educational Pictures.

The cartoons were haphazardly animated and very bizarre, populated generally by mice. It was assembly-line animation with Terry regulating the films with tight budgets and gauging a cartoon ready by how high the stack of animation was. Farmer Al Falfa was the studio's first regular star, and the films in general relied mainly on background music over dialogue. The themes of the cartoon were formulaic and repetitive, with usually no coherent direction. Sometime later in the 30s, 20th Century-Fox took over distribution of the cartoons.

This pretty much continued after Terry broke ground on his own studio in 1934, and many one-shot cartoons were churned out under formula alone. Two films featuring an imperiled heroine, Fannie Zilch, were created, and the villain in the films, Oil Can Harry would be revived later. Terrytoons graduated to color films in 1938, one of the last studios to do so. Gandy Goose and Dinky Duck would be born during this era. It was in 1941 that Terry would capitalize on the success of Superman, which the Fleischer studio brilliantly animated, by creating Super Mouse, which would eventually become Mighty Mouse. It was in the late 40s Mighty Mouse films that Oil Can Harry would be revived as a villainous cat. Through the 40s, the Terry cartoons were so bland and listless that theaters would run a Terrytoons film last in a program just to clear the auditorium. As bad a reputation as Terrytoons had, it did garner two Academy Award nominations (1941's All Out For V, the 1945 Mighty Mouse cartoon Gypsy Life). In the late 40s, the studio brought in Jim Tyer, an expatriate animator from Paramount's Famous Studios. Tyer's slapdash style of animation has been widely acclaimed as inherently hilarious for its sheer lack of quality control.

Heckle and Jeckle, two mischievous magpies, would be created in 1946 and would become the studio's second biggest stars. In the 1950s, Little Roquefort (a mouse) and the Terry Bears would emerge. In 1955, Paul Terry sold the Terrytoons studio to CBS for $1 million and retired, turning the reins over to financial chief Bill Weiss. CBS immediately capitalized by launching Mighty Mouse Playhouse on Saturday mornings, showcasing Mighty Mouse cartoons, and Barker Bill's Cartoon Show Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Colgate Toothpaste sponsored Mighty Mouse's show. In 1956, Terrytoons films were spotlighted in the summer series CBS Cartoon Theater, hosted by Dick Van Dyke. That series begat The Heckle And Jeckle Cartoon Show.

In 1955, CBS brought comic strip artist and former UPA staffer Gene Deitch to give the studio a creative kick in the pants. He created the Terrytoons "smiley-box" logo (pictured above) and he churned out some cartoons that critics actually liked with characters like John Doormat, Clint Clobber, Flebus, Gaston Le Crayon, and his classic TV star Tom Terrific. However, Weiss wasn't thrilled about the Terry studio becoming a renaissance art house, choosing instead to fall back on the same old. It was said that he wanted Deitch out from day one. In 1959, Deitch left to helm a Czechoslovakia studio that would make made-for-TV Popeye cartoons and theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Terrytoons films released to theaters took on the appearance of made-for-TV budgeted efforts, and the studio created their first all-cartoon made-for-TV effort, The Deputy Dawg Show. Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle appeared in cartoons that made their earlier efforts look like Disney made them. Other characters from the 60s included Lariat Sam, Possible Possum, James Hound, Sad Cat, the Martian Moochers, and the Mighty Heroes. Ralph Bakshi, who started as a cel inker at the studio and took it upon himself to become an animator then a director, would make most of these cartoons and would create the Mighty Heroes for CBS's Saturday morning line-up. After that, the Terrytoons studio shut down. Bill Weiss farmed out two pilots for CBS in 1967--The Ruby Eye Of The Monkey God and Sally Sargent were animated by the Fred Calvert studio. Neither pilot sold, and they would both go into the Mighty Mouse package in syndication. The Fred Calvert studio was commissioned in 1970 to animate Mighty Mouse for Zestabs children's vitamins commercials, using original animation and reusing and altering animation from classic Mighty Mouse films.

CBS sold the Terrytoons library to Viacom International in 1971. CBS, Paramount and Viacom would all become under the same roof in the 90s, then Viacom would divest itself of the other entities in the new millenium. CBS would reacquire the Terrytoons library as a result. Some theatrical cartoons made in the 1960s as well as some TV cartoons would get theatrical releases through the early 1970s.

Roster of Terrytoons theatrical characters with two or more shorts (production tenure)

Character(s)	From	To	Notes
Farmer Al Falfa	1931	1946
Kiko The Kangaroo	1936	1937
Fannie Zilch and Oil Can Harry	1935	1937	Oil Can Harry revived as cat for Mighty Mouse cartoons
Puddy The Pup	1936	1938
Gandy Goose	1938	1955
Sourpuss	1938	1951	Mainly co-starred with Gandy Goose
Dinky Duck	1939	1957
Nancy	1941	1941	Comic strip character by Ernie Bushmiller
Mighty Mouse	1942	1961	as Super Mouse, 1942-44
Heckle and Jeckle	1946	1966
Dimwit	1953	1957	stand-alone cartoons (had co-starred with Heckle and Jeckle)
The Terry Bears	1951	1956
Phoney Baloney	1954	1957
Little Roquefort	1950	1955
The Dingbat	1949	1952	First appeared in Gandy Goose cartoon
Half Pint	1951	1951
Good Deed Daly	1956	1956
Clint Clobber	1957	1959
Gaston Le Crayon	1957	1959
John Doormat	1957	1958
Hector Heathcote	1959	1963
Silly Sydney	1958	1963
Hashimoto	1958	1963
Foofle	1959	1960
Luno	1963	1964
James Hound	1966	1967
Astronut	1964	1966	First appeared on Deputy Dawg TV show; cartoons were released to theaters through 1971
Sad Cat	1965	1966	Cartoons were released to theaters through 1968
Duckwood	1964	1964	First appeared on Deputy Dawg TV show
Possible Possum	1965	1966	Character of Macon Mouse first appeared as Mischa Mouse on the Deputy Dawg TV show; cartoons were released to theaters from 1968 to 1971
The Martian Moochers	1966	1966