 Logo used in 1956 | |
| Industry | Animation |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Van Beuren Studios |
| Founded | 1929; 96 years ago (1929) |
| Founders | Paul Terry Frank Moser Joseph Coffman |
| Defunct | December 1972; 52 years ago (1972-12)[1] |
| Fate | Closed |
| Successors | Studio: CBS Eye Animation Productions Library: Paramount Pictures |
| Headquarters | 1929–1930,Long Island, New York, United States[2]
|
| Products | Theatricalanimatedshort films |
| Parent | Viacom (1956–1972) |
Terrytoons, Inc. was an Americananimation studio headquartered inNew Rochelle, New York, which was active from 1929 until its closure in December 1972 (and briefly returned between 1987 and 1996 for television in-name only). Founded byPaul Terry,Frank Moser, and Joseph Coffman, it operated out of the"K" Building in downtown New Rochelle. The studio created many cartoon characters includingFanny Zilch,Mighty Mouse,Heckle and Jeckle,Gandy Goose, Sourpuss,Dinky Duck, Little Roquefort, the Terry Bears, Dimwit, andLuno; Terry's pre-existing characterFarmer Al Falfa was also featured often in the series.
The "New Terrytoons" period of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s produced such characters asClint Clobber,Tom Terrific,Deputy Dawg,Hector Heathcote,Hashimoto-san, Sidney the Elephant, Possible Possum, James Hound,Astronut,Sad Cat,The Mighty Heroes, and Sally Sargent. Also during that time,Ralph Bakshi got his start as an animator, and eventually as a director, at Terrytoons.[3]
Terrytoons shorts were originally released to theaters by20th Century Fox from 1935 until 1973. After Terry had retired, Terrytoons was sold toCBS, which would later purchase the entire library.Paramount Pictures would eventually take theatrical rights ownership of the Terrytoons library in 1994 (which was then already purchased byViacom), and would purchase CBS in 2000. As of 2019, Paramount Pictures has owned the rights to the studio and its library after there-merger of Viacom and CBS.
Terry first worked forBray Studios in 1916, where he created theFarmer Al Falfa series. He would then make a Farmer Al Falfa short forEdison Pictures, called "Farmer Al Falfa's Wayward Pup" (1917), and some later cartoons were made forParamount Pictures.
Around 1921, Terry founded the Fables animation studio, named for itsAesop's Film Fables series, in conjunction with the studio ofAmedee J. Van Beuren. Fables churned out a Fable cartoon every week for eight years in the 1920s.
In 1928, Van Beuren, anxious to compete with the new phenomenon oftalking pictures, released Terry'sDinner Time (released October 1928). Van Beuren then urged Terry to start producing actual sound films, instead of post-synchronizing the cartoons. Terry refused, and Van Beuren fired him in 1929. Almost immediately, Terry and much of his staff started up the Terrytoons studio near his former studio. One staff member during that time wasArt Babbitt, who went on to become a well-known Disney animator.
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Through much of its history, the studio was considered one of the lowest-quality houses in the field, to the point where Paul Terry noted, "Let Walt Disney be theTiffany's of the business. I want to be theWoolworth's!"[4] Terry's studio had the lowest budgets and was among the slowest to adapt to new technologies such assound (in about 1930) andTechnicolor (in 1938). While its graphic style remained remarkably static for decades, it actually followed the sound cartoon trend of the late 1920s and early 1930s very quickly. Background music was entrusted to one man, Philip Scheib, and Terry's refusal to pay royalties for popular songs forced Scheib to compose his own scores.
Paul Terry took pride in producing a new cartoon every other week, regardless of the quality of the films. Until 1957, screen credits were very sparse, listing only the writer (until 1950, solely John Foster; then Tom Morrison thereafter), director (Terry's three main directors wereConnie Rasinski, Eddie Donnelly, and Mannie Davis), and musician (musical director Philip A. Scheib).
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Terrytoons' first distributor wasEducational Pictures, specialists in short-subject comedies and novelties. Audio-Cinema in the early 1930s backed the production of Terrytoons, and distributed the Educational library internationally, except in the United Kingdom and Ireland where the library was distributed by Educational andGaumont-British in partnership with theIdeal Film Company.
TheFox Film company then released Educational shorts to theaters in the 1930s, giving the Terry cartoons wide exposure. Following the merger between Fox Film and20th Century, the newly formed20th Century Fox withdrew its support from Educational Pictures, and the company both backed and distributed Terrytoons. Farmer Al Falfa was Terry's most familiar character in the 1930s; Kiko the Kangaroo was spun off the Farmer Al Falfa series. Most of the other cartoons featured stock generic animal characters and designs, one of which was a scruffy dog with a black patch around one eye; Terry ultimately built a series around this character, now known as Puddy the Pup.
Paul Terry may have realized that Educational was in financial trouble because he found another lucrative outlet for his product. In 1938, he arranged to release his older cartoons through home-movie distributorCastle Films. Educational went out of business within the year, but 20th Century Fox continued to release Terrytoons to theaters for the next two decades. With a new emphasis on "star" characters, Terrytoons featured the adventures of Super Mouse (later renamedMighty Mouse), the talking magpiesHeckle and Jeckle, sillyGandy Goose,Dinky Duck, mischievous mouse Little Roquefort, and The Terry Bears.
Despite the artistic drawbacks imposed by Terry's inflexible business policies, Terrytoons was nominated four times for theAcademy Award for Animated Short Film:All Out for V in 1942,My Boy, Johnny in 1944,Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life in 1945, andSidney's Family Tree in 1958.
The studio was sold outright by the retiring Paul Terry toCBS in 1955, but 20th Century Fox (TCF) continued distribution. The deal closed the following year in 1956, and it became a division of theCBS Films subsidiary.[5] Later, in 1957 CBS put it under the management ofUPA alumniGene Deitch, who had to work with even lower budgets.
Deitch's most notable works at the studio were theTom Terrific cartoon segments for theCaptain Kangaroo television show. He also introduced a number of new characters, such as Sidney the Elephant,[6] Gaston Le Crayon,[7] John Doormat,[citation needed] andClint Clobber.[8]
Before Deitch was fired in 1959, Bill Weiss took complete control of the studio. Under his supervision,Heckle and Jeckle andMighty Mouse went back into production. Besides the three core directors of the Terry era who were still involved as animators and directors, twoFamous Studios stalwarts joined the crew,Dave Tendlar andMartin Taras. Other new theatrical cartoon series includedHector Heathcote,Luno andHashimoto San. The studio also began producing theDeputy Dawg series for television in 1959. Another television production for theCaptain Kangaroo show wasThe Adventures of Lariat Sam, which was written in part byGene Wood, who would later become the announcer for several TV gameshows includingFamily Feud.
Phil Scheib continued as the studio's musical director through the mid-1960s when he was replaced by Jim Timmens and Elliott Lawrence.
The best-known talent at Terrytoons in the 1960s was animator/director/producerRalph Bakshi, who started with Terrytoons in the 1950s as an opaquer,[3] and eventually helmed theMighty Heroes series. Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967 forParamount'sown cartoon studio, which closed its cartoon unit later that year. He would later go on to produceMighty Mouse: The New Adventures for television in 1987, which was also produced by futureRen & Stimpy creatorJohn Kricfalusi.
After the departure ofRalph Bakshi, the studio petered out, and finally closed in 1973. As a result of theFCC banning TV networks from owning cable television andsyndication of television programs,CBS createdViacom Enterprises to handle all network programs beyond TV production and network broadcasting.
On July 4, 1971, Viacom Enterprises spun off from CBS; neither Viacom Enterprises nor CBS had any interest in Terrytoons. The Terrytoons film library was still regularly re-released to theaters by Fox. The studio's one of the last short was an unsold TV pilot calledSally Sargent, about a 16-year-old girl who is a secret agent. Soon afterSally Sargent was completed, Viacom International ended their relationship with Fox and re-releases ceased. Terrytoons’ existence soon came to an end.
Art Bartsch, who kept the studio running after Bakshi left, would soon die along with Connie Rasinski, andBob Kuwahara, reducing the studio to a ghost studio with executive producer Bill Weiss and story supervisor Tom Morrison; Viacom kept the studio open until 1972. By October 1972, Viacom International announced that Terrytoons would leave New Rochelle and relocate to Viacom International's office in New York City. By December 29, Viacom sold the now abandoned New Rochelle studio, and the company's fate was forever sealed.
Weiss continued Terrytoons production from his New York City office with the 1970s Terrytoons cartoons (especiallyMighty Mouse andDeputy Dawg) being syndicated to many local TV markets, and they were a staple of after-school and Saturday-morning cartoon shows for over three decades, from the 1950s through the 1980s, until the television rights to the library were acquired byUSA Network in 1989. However, any new cartoons of the studio's stars came from other studios.[9]
In the late 1970s,Filmation Associates licensed the rights to make the newMighty Mouse andHeckle & Jeckle series from Viacom International. The series wasThe New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle and aired from 1979 to 1980 on CBS.
Bakshi would later produceMighty Mouse: The New Adventures in 1987, which lasted for two seasons. Bakshi and his friendJohn Kricfalusi inspired the staff to try to get as muchJim Tyer-style drawing in the show as possible. Tyer, a stand-out Terry animator of the original cartoons with a unique style, became a strong influence on the artists of the Bakshi series, such as now recognizable writers, artists and animators—Bruce Timm,Doug Moench,Andrew Stanton,Rich Moore,Lynne Naylor,Jim Reardon,Tom Minton, andBob Jaques.
Many of the characters (such as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, and others) were slated to make cameos in the 1988 filmWho Framed Roger Rabbit, but only Oscar the Timid Pig, Looey Lion, and a character resembling Gandy Goose appeared. They can all be seen during the film's finale. They were also planned to appear in the deleted scene of Marvin Acme's funeral.
In 1994, Fox would sell its Terrytoons theatrical distribution to Paramount, which was then purchased by Viacom that same year, and would go on to purchase CBS six years later in 2000.
However, through the years that have followed since the last Terrytoons TV series material in 1988, the rights have been scattered as a result of prior rights issues and the corporate changes involvingViacom and CBS, especially in 2005. SinceCBS Corporationre-merged with Viacom to form ViacomCBS (Paramount Global as of February 2022), reuniting CBS with Paramount, on December 4, 2019, andCBS Films was folded intoCBS Entertainment Group after releasingJexi on the same day, Paramount Pictures now owns the theatrical distribution on behalf ofParamount Animation and CBS Entertainment Group, whileCBS Media Ventures (formed in 2006) owns the television distribution on behalf ofCBS Eye Animation Productions to the Terrytoons film library. However, some Terrytoons shorts are believed to be in thepublic domain and have either been issued on low-budgetVHS tapes andDVDs or have been uploaded on sites such asInternet Archive. On January 5, 2010, the first official release of any Terrytoons material byCBS DVD was issued in the form of the complete series ofMighty Mouse: The New Adventures.
In 1999,Nickelodeon attempted to revive the Terrytoons characters as part of a TV series calledCurbside.Curbside would have been a parody of late-night talk shows with Heckle and Jeckle serving as hosts of the show, along with their assistant Dinky Duck, and would have featured new cartoons featuring Terrytoon characters like Deputy Dawg, Sidney the Elephant, and Mighty Mouse.Curbside features talented voices ofToby Huss andBobcat Goldthwait as Heckle & Jeckle,Dee Bradley Baker as Dinky Duck, Mighty Mouse and Sidney the Elephant,Billy West as Deputy Dawg,Haley Joel Osment as Tom Terrific, and additional voices of Baker, West,Charlie Adler, andRob Paulsen. However, it was never picked up, making it the only Terrytoons show that was never officially released.[10]
Between 2001 and 2002, the Terrytoons characters returned to television in original commercials for Brazilian blue cheese (for what is now America's Dairy Farmers) and fine wine. One such infamous commercial was the Mighty Mouse ad (entitled "Dining With Cheese") dining calmly on cheese in a restaurant, utterly unconcerned with a scene of chaos and terror visibly unfolding in the street outside. That said commercial was then pulled from airing following theSeptember 11th attacks.[11]
In 2004, a supposed live-action/animated hybrid Mighty Mousefilm adaptation was announced forNickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures withSteve Oedekerk ofOmation Animation Studio to produce and direct, but was cancelled and has been indevelopment hell since then.[12] However, development later revived in April 2019 for Paramount Animation with Jon and Erich Hoeber to write the screenplay and bothKaren Rosenfelt andRobert W. Cort to produce.[13] It was later announced that in November 2024, Paramount Animation was associated withMaximum Effort, with its co-founderRyan Reynolds as a producer andMatt Lieberman as a writer.[14]
Among the many licensed Terrytoons products are comic books, mainly published throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The company's characters — including Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Dinky Duck, Gandy Goose, and Little Roquefort — were initially licensed to Timely, a predecessor ofMarvel Comics, in 1942.[15]St. John Publications took over the license from 1947 to 1956,Pines Comics published Terrytoons comics from 1956 to 1959,Dell Comics made an attempt from 1959 to 1962 (and again later from 1966 to 1967), and finallyWestern Publishing published Mighty Mouse comics from 1962 all the way up to 1980.
The lead title,Terry-Toons Comics, was published by Timely from Oct. 1942–Aug. 1947.[16] With issue #60 (Sept. 1947), publication of the title was taken over by St. John Publications, which published another 27 issues until issue #86 (May 1951).[17] The series continued in 1951 (with duplicate issues #85–86) asPaul Terry's Comics, publishing another 41 issues until May 1955, when it was canceled with issue #125.[18]
Timely launched the Mighty Mouse series in 1946. The first St. John Terrytoons comic wasMighty Mouse #5 (Aug. 1947), its numbering also taken over from the Timely run. That series eventually ran 71 issues with St. John, moving to Pines for 16 issues from Apr. 1956 to Aug. 1959, to Dell for 12 issues from Oct./Dec. 1959–July/Sept. 1962, and Western for 17 issues from Oct. 1962 to Jan. 1980 (with a hiatus from Sept. 1965 to Mar. 1979), finally ending with issue #172.
St. John's Terrytoons comics include the field's first3-D comic book,Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring Mighty Mouse.[19] According toJoe Kubert, co-creator with the brothersNorman Maurer and Leonard Maurer, it sold an exceptional 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece[20] at a time when comics cost a dime.
Dell Comics published eight issues of aNew Terrytoons title from June/Aug. 1960 to March/May 1962.
