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| Formerly | Industrial Film and Poster Service (1941–1945) |
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| Industry | Animation |
| Predecessor | Screen Gems (theatrical shorts, 1921–1946) |
| Founded | 1941; 85 years ago (1941) |
| Founders | Zack Schwartz David Hilberman Stephen Bosustow |
| Defunct | January 1, 2000; 26 years ago (2000-01-01) |
| Fate | Closed; assets purchased byClassic Media |
| Successor | DreamWorks Classics (television productions) Columbia Pictures (theatrical shorts) Warner Bros. Animation (Private Snafu andGay Purr-ee) |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Robert "Bobe" Cannon John Hubley Henry G. Saperstein |
United Productions of America, better known asUPA, was an Americananimation studio and laterdistribution company founded in 1941 asIndustrial Film and Poster Service by formerWalt Disney Productions employees. Beginning with industrial andWorld War II training films, UPA eventually produced theatrical shorts forColumbia Pictures such as theMr. Magoo series. In 1956, UPA produced a television series forCBS,The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show, hosted byGerald McBoing Boing. In the 1960s, UPA produced syndicated Mr. Magoo andDick Tracy television series and other series and specials, includingMister Magoo's Christmas Carol. UPA also produced two animated features,1001 Arabian Nights andGay Purr-ee,[1] and distributed Japanese films fromToho Studios in the 1970s and 1980s.
Universal Pictures currently owns the majority of the UPA library after their acquisition ofDreamWorks Animation in 2016. The theatrical shorts, which were released byColumbia Pictures, are still owned by that studio (via parent companySony Pictures Entertainment).
UPA was founded in the wake of theDisney animators' strike of 1941, which resulted in the exodus of a number of long-timeWalt Disney Animation Studios staff members.[2] Among them wasJohn Hubley, a layout artist who was unhappy with the ultra-realistic style of animation that Disney had been utilizing. Along with a number of his colleagues, Hubley believed that animation did not have to be a painstakingly realistic imitation of real life; they felt that the medium of animation had been constrained by efforts to depict cinematic reality.Chuck Jones' 1942 cartoonThe Dover Boys had demonstrated that animation could freely experiment with character design, depth, and perspective to create a stylized artistic vision appropriate to the subject matter. Hubley,Bobe Cannon, and others at UPA, sought to produce animated films with sufficient freedom to express design ideas considered radical by other established studios.
In 1941, Zack Schwartz,David Hilberman, andStephen Bosustow formed a studio called firstIndustrial Film and Poster Service, where they were free to apply their new techniques in film animation. Finding work (and income) in the then-booming field of wartime work for the government, the small studio produced a cartoon sponsored by theUnited Auto Workers (UAW) in 1944.Hell-Bent for Election was directed byChuck Jones and was produced for the reelection campaign ofFDR. The film was a success, and it led to another assignment from the UAW,Brotherhood of Man (1945). The film, directed by Bobe Cannon, advocated tolerance of all people. The short was innovative not only in its message but in its very flat, stylized design, in complete defiance of the Disney approach. With its new-found status, the studio renamed itselfUnited Productions of America (UPA).
Initially, UPA contracted with theUnited States government to produce its animation output, but the government contracts began to evaporate as theFBI began investigatingCommunist activities inHollywood in the late 1940s. No formal charges were filed against anyone at UPA in the beginnings ofMcCarthyism, but the government contracts were lost as Washington severed its ties with Hollywood.[3]
UPA entered the crowded field of theatrical cartoons to sustain itself and gained a contract withColumbia Pictures. Columbia had historically been an also-ran in the field of animated shorts, and it was not satisfied with the output of itsScreen Gems cartoon studio. The UPA animators applied their stylistic concepts and storytelling to Columbia's charactersThe Fox and the Crow with the shortsRobin Hoodlum (1948) andThe Magic Fluke (1949), both directed by Hubley. Both were nominated forAcademy Awards, and Columbia granted the studio permission to create its own new characters. UPA responded, not with another "funny animal", but a star that was a human character, a crotchety, nearsighted old man.The Ragtime Bear (1949), the first appearance ofMr. Magoo, was a box-office hit, and UPA's star quickly rose as the 1950s dawned.
With a unique, sparse drawing style that contrasted greatly with other cartoons of the day, not to mention the novelty of a human character in a field crowded with talking cats, mice, and rabbits, theMr. Magoo series won accolades for UPA. TwoMagoo cartoons won theAcademy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons):When Magoo Flew (1954) andMagoo's Puddle Jumper (1956).
UPA scored another hit withGerald McBoing-Boing (1950), based on a record byDr. Seuss.Gerald McBoing-Boing won UPA the Academy Award in 1950; UPA cartoons would receive a total of fifteen Oscar nominations between 1949 and 1959. In December 1950, UPA announced plans for a feature-length film based on the work of cartoonist and humoristJames Thurber.[4] The film was to combine live action and animation and was tentatively titledMen, Women and Dogs, but it was never completed.[5] (Only one of the Thurber pieces intended for this feature,The Unicorn in the Garden, was eventually released as a short subject.)[6] Shorts such asThe Tell-Tale Heart andRooty Toot Toot featured striking, sophisticated designs unlike anything offered by competing studios. The "UPA style" began to influence significant changes at the other major animation studios, includingWarner Bros.,MGM,Famous Studios, and even Disney, ushering in a new era of experimentation in animation.
In 1955, Steve Bosustow secured a CBS contract for UPA to produce a television series (The Boing-Boing Show akaThe Gerald McBoing Boing Show),[7] which premiered in December 1956. Supervised by Bobe Cannon, this production offered an array of styles and brought then-new talent to the studio, such asErnest Pintoff,Fred Crippen,Jimmy Murakami,Richard Williams,George Dunning,Mel Leven,Aurelius Battaglia, andJohn Whitney, among others. However, audiences did not embrace UPA's experiment in television entertainment; as a result, the show vanished from the airwaves in 1958. Further, as the major Hollywood studios began cutting back and shutting down their short film divisions in the late-1950s and early-1960s, UPA was in financial straits, and Steve Bosustow sold the studio to a producer namedHenry G. Saperstein. Saperstein turned UPA's focus totelevision to sustain the studio. UPA adapted Mr. Magoo for television and produced another series based on thecomic stripDick Tracy. UPA was forced to churn out cartoons at a far greater quantity than the studio had done for theatrical releases or even the CBS television series. With the greater workload, quality languished, and UPA's reputation as an artistic innovator faded.
UPA's style oflimited animation was adopted by other animation studios, especially by television cartoon studios such asHanna-Barbera Productions. However, this procedure was generally implemented as a cost-cutting measure rather than an artistic choice that UPA originally intended. A plethora of low-budget, cheaply-made cartoons over the next twenty years effectively reduced television animation to a commodity, partly popularizing the notion of animation as being made only for children rather than a medium for any age group to enjoy (with the exception of shows likeThe Flintstones), and notoriously going against UPA's original goal to expand the boundaries of animation and create a new style for the medium.
One bright moment in the UPA television era came withMister Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962), which inspired the format of Magoo's next television endeavor, the 1964 seriesThe Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo.Christmas Carol captures the spirit of Charles Dickens's 1843 book and is considered a holiday classic, ranking alongsideA Charlie Brown Christmas andHow the Grinch Stole Christmas!.[8][9]
UPA produced only two full-length feature films in their tenure: a 1959 feature starring Mr. Magoo entitled1001 Arabian Nights, directed by ex-Disney animatorJack Kinney; andGay Purr-ee in 1962, written byChuck Jones and his wife Dorothy and directed by a friend of Jones,Abe Levitow.
Saperstein kept UPA afloat in the 1960s and beyond by abandoning animation production completely after the animation studio closed permanently in 1970 and sold off UPA's library of cartoons, although the studio retained the licenses and copyrights on Mr. Magoo, Gerald McBoing-Boing and the other UPA characters. This led to UPA contracting withDePatie–Freleng Enterprises studio to produce a new animated series calledWhat's New Mr. Magoo? in September 1977.
Columbia Pictures retained ownership of UPA's theatrical cartoons. The studio's TV cartoon library was licensed by Classic Media in New York, and then in 2007 merged into Entertainment Rights in London.
In 1970, Saperstein led UPA into a contract withToho Co., Ltd. of Japan to distribute its "giant monster" (seekaiju andtokusatsu) movies in America. Theatrical releases, and especially TV syndication, of the Toho monster movies created a newcult movie market for Japanese monster movies, and long-running television movie syndication packages such asCreature Double Feature exposed the Toho movie monsters to young American audiences, who embraced them and helped them maintain their popularity throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
When Toho began producing a new generation of monster movies in the late 1980s, beginning withGodzilla 1985, UPA capitalized on its Toho contract and helped introduce the newkaiju features to the Western world.
Because of its long association with Toho, UPA is better known to cult-movie fans today as Toho's American distributor rather than a pioneer of animated cartoons, but the legacy of UPA is an important chapter in the history of American animation. UPA continued to license the American library ofGodzilla movies through to 2017 when the rights were transferred toJanus Films. UPA's contract with Toho also resulted in Saperstein producingWoody Allen's first feature film,What's Up, Tiger Lily?.
Henry Saperstein died in 1998. On January 1, 2000, UPA shuttered its operations, with the assets sold by the Saperstein family, which would later result in the founding ofClassic Media by May 2000.[10] On July 23, 2012,DreamWorks Animation purchased Classic Media for $155 million and, as a result, UPA is now owned by DreamWorks Animation, which would be acquired byNBCUniversal in 2016. Although DreamWorks Animation (and later,Universal Studios) now owns the ancillary rights to most of the UPA library, UPA itself (with DreamWorks Animation/Universal) continues to hold the licensing rights toMr. Magoo, and Saperstein was executive producer toDisney's unsuccessful live-action featureMr. Magoo in 1997.
Classic Media/Sony Wonder began issuing theMr. Magoo TV cartoon series onDVD in 2001, beginning withMr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (which received a Collector's Edition Blu-ray/DVD combo pack in 2010). In 2011, Shout! Factory (with Classic Media) released theMr. Magoo: The Television Collection set which contained all Mr. Magoo television productions (except forMr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, for which the DVD copy from the 2010 Blu-ray release was issued by itself). In 2013, Shout! (with Sony) released theMr. Magoo Theatrical Collection containing all the Mr. Magoo theatrical shorts and the full-length feature1001 Arabian Nights (which was also released through Sony's MOD program in December 2011). The set was originally set for release on February 14, 2012 but then delayed to June 19, then December 4, then delayed to sometime in 2013. It was delayed so that the shorts could be restored from high quality sources (plus newly discovered elements added).
TheJolly Frolics Collection was released on March 15, 2012 throughTurner Classic Movies' website. Extras included audio commentaries and an introduction by film criticLeonard Maltin.
UPA Pictures' legacy in the history of animation has largely been overshadowed by the commercial success and availability of the cartoon libraries ofWarner Bros.,MGM andDisney. Nonetheless, UPA had a significant impact on animation style, content, and technique, and its innovations were recognized and adopted by the other major animation studios and independent filmmakers all over the world as UPA pioneered the technique oflimited animation.[11] Although this style of animation came to be widely used in the 1960s and 1970s as a cost-cutting measure, it was originally intended as a stylistic alternative to the growing trend (particularly at Disney) of recreating cinematic realism in animated films.[12] UPA was also a central influence on the foundation of theZagreb School of Animated Films in the 1950s. Animators inYugoslavia were heavily impacted by UPA's work onThe Four Poster (1952), alive-action film with animation directed byJohn Hubley,[13] in his final project at UPA.[14]
BothGerald McBoing-Boing andThe Tell-Tale Heart were inducted into theNational Film Registry.[15]
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