Animation in the United States in the television era

The first major animation studio to produce cartoons exclusively for television was Hanna-Barbera Productions. When MGM closed its cartoon studio in 1957, Hanna-Barbera began producing cartoons directly for television, finding an audience in the evening "family hour" time. The first animated series from Hanna-Barbera were NBC's The Ruff & Reddy Show and the first-run syndication entry The Huckleberry Hound Show, each of which followed a format of three shorts, each the approximate length of a one-reel short film. However, the studio hit its stride in 1960s with ABC's The Flintstones, the first half-hour animated sitcom. Like many of its immediate successors it was originally aired during prime time when the whole family would be watching television. The Flintstones was the first of several prime-time animated series from Hanna-Barbera, which included The Jetsons, Top Cat, and Jonny Quest. But after the end of The Flintstones in 1966, Hanna-Barbera largely turned its efforts to the growing market for Saturday morning cartoons, outside of isolated series for first run syndication in the 1970s such as Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.

Hanna-Barbera was notorious for using common tropes in its series. Its original series of the late 1950s through mid-1960s all featured anthropomorphic animals, usually an adult (who would in turn impersonate a well-known celebrity) and child, interacting with the humans of their environment. After the immense success of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, which premiered on CBS in 1969, the next decade of Hanna-Barbera's animated output would follow that show's formula: a group of teenagers solving mysteries or fighting crime, usually with the help of a wacky animal or a ghost. The many incarnations of Scooby-Doo ran uninterrupted on CBS and then ABC for 17 seasons. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hanna-Barbera turned to adaptations of prime time sitcoms. It was not until The Smurfs in 1981 that H-B once again had anything successful outside the Scooby template; it, in turn, led to derivative series (The Snorks and Paw Paws). The late 1980s and early 1990s saw Hanna-Barbera join the numerous studios producing younger and junior versions of cartoon characters for the Saturday morning cartoon market, such as The Flintstone Kids and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.

One of the problems with producing animation for television was the extremely labor-intensive animation process. While theatrical short subjects were previously produced in six-month cycles or longer, network television needed a season of 10-20 half hour episodes each year. This led to a number of shortcut techniques to speed up the production process, and the techniques of limited animation were applied to produce a great number of quickly-produced, low-budget TV cartoons. Hanna-Barbera also used limited animation for artistic reasons: with smaller, low-resolution screens, the company's namesakes reasoned that a limited style that focused on dialogue and close-up shots with bold outlines worked better than the fully detailed animation used in film shorts, which were designed for large theater screens.[4]

The UPA studio was one of the first victims of the TV-animation market. In 1952, because of his left-wing social activism, John Hubley was dismissed from the studio under pressure from Columbia Pictures (who was itself under pressure from the HUAC). The creative atmosphere post-Hubley was not the same and UPA's theatrical shorts ended in 1959. In order to stay afloat financially, UPA turned to television to sustain itself. The TV versions of Mister Magoo and Dick Tracy were not successful and did nothing to reverse the studio's financial decline. In spite of the 1962 animated feature Gay Purr-ee (distributed by Warner Bros.), which featured the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet and a Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg song score, and the beloved animated special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, UPA was shut down in 1964.

The Jay Ward studio, producer of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, used limited animation in its series, but compensated with its satire of Cold War politics and popular culture and its off-beat humor. Like the earlier Crusader Rabbit, the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventures were multi-part serials. The Ward studio also produced George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, and Tom Slick. It later produced a series of popular television commercials for Quaker Oats cereals Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake. Another company that used the same animation studios as Jay Ward did was Total Television, most famous for The Underdog Show. Total Television and Jay Ward animated productions were often mixed and aired together in syndication, leading to the two companies' shows to sometimes be confused with each other.

Filmation, headed by Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott, was another television animation studio that arose in the 1960s. Filmation was most famous for its acquisition of licenses to produce animated series based on other media; it was one of the few companies to keep all of its animation within the United States and did not use the aesthetics of limited animation preferred by Hanna-Barbera and UPA; instead, Filmation productions relied on heavy usage of stock footage, rotoscoping, limited voice casts (Scheimer himself provided many voices) and a balance of licensed animated series with lower-budget, live-action ones (such as The Ghost Busters and Uncle Croc's Block) to stay financially solvent. After a string of success lasting well into the 1980s, Filmation dissolved in 1989.

One of the most infamous users of limited animation was Cambria Studios, which invented and patented a process known as Syncro-Vox, implementing it beginning in 1960. While the process resulted in an extremely economical, quick and inexpensive product (thus making it ideal for television), it had a fatal flaw that prevented it from being taken seriously: the process involved inserting the moving lips of the voice actor over a still frame of a character's mouth. The result was that Cambria's cartoons (Clutch Cargo, Space Angel and Captain Fathom) contained hardly any animation at all, and were effectively pictures (albeit well-drawn ones that were of greater detail than other producers') with words. Cambria switched to a more mainstream limited animation process with The New Three Stooges in 1965, but went out of business shortly afterward.

In the 1960s, Walt Disney's current animated films (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, the live-action/animated combo Mary Poppins, and The Jungle Book) generated hefty revenue for the studio, as did the regular reissues of earlier animated films. Poppins, in particular, won five Academy Awards (and received with the studio's first Best Picture nomination) and topped the 1964 box office charts while launching the film career of its star, Julie Andrews, who won an Oscar. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, now on NBC, became a Sunday night television institution that kept Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto in the public consciousness long after their theatrical cartoon series had ended. The anthology series ran until 1983. In 1961, Walt helped to establish the California Institute of the Arts. The founding of the institute was both a philanthropic gesture and a savvy investment by Disney, as the school provided plenty of creative talent for the company in the years to come. In 1966, the studio brought A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh characters to the screen for the first time in two of four animated featurettes (the second of which, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, won an Oscar, the last Walt Disney received).

The Disney empire was rocked to its core when Walt died from lung cancer on December 15, 1966. While the studio tried to remain true to his vision (a common catchphrase of the time was "What would Walt do?"), the level of popularity and acclaim the studio received in earlier years eluded it in the 1970s. The theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World (the latter having opened in 1971) ended up contributing more to the bottom line than the film division. Additionally, many veteran animators either retired or died, so the studio had to find ways to replace them. In 1973, Eric Larson started a training program for new animators.

The studio's post-Walt animation fare consisted of the features The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, the featurettes It's Tough to Be a Bird, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!, The Small One, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, and Mickey's Christmas Carol, and the live-action/animation hybrids Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete's Dragon. Some of the films got mixed reactions from critics; Robin Hood, in particular, was widely criticized for re-use of animation from earlier films (especially in the production number "The Phony King of England"), but this was done because the film had fallen way behind schedule.[5] Still, all of these films were successful and many of them received Academy Award nominations (with two wins, one for the short Bird and another for the special effects in Bedknobs). Additionally, in keeping with Walt's original intentions, the first three Pooh featurettes were compiled into the 1977 feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

The most devastating development since Walt's death occurred in September 1979, when studio animator Don Bluth led a walkout of himself and 11 of his supporters (a large chunk of the studio's animation department at the time), including Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy. Fed up with the status quo at Disney, he and his acolytes left to start his own studio, which produced the short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat and the feature film The Secret of NIMH.[6] Disney entered the 1980s facing an uncertain future, despite the respectable $39,900,000 gross and some good reviews for The Fox and the Hound.[7]

Warner Bros. shut down its animation studio completely in 1963, and the directors of Termite Terrace went their separate ways. Friz Freleng co-founded DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies from 1964 to 1967. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts reopened the studio from 1967 to 1969, but the low-budget cartoons produced were not popular with critics or audiences then or now. The new characters introduced during the Seven Arts period, such as Cool Cat, Bunny and Claude, Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit, and Merlin the Magic Mouse, never caught on, while the Termite Terrace cartoons remained perennial television favorites through syndication and Saturday morning airings throughout the remainder of the 20th century.

In 1961, Chuck Jones moonlighted as a writer on the UPA feature Gay Purr-ee. When Warner Bros. distributed the film the following year, they discovered that he had contributed to the film in violation of his exclusive contract and fired him. Jones teamed with Les Goldman to form Sib Tower 12 Productions, later renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts, to work with MGM on the Tom and Jerry series in the mid-1960s; his shorts were not as popular as the Hanna-Barbera originals but more so than the Gene Deitch shorts produced overseas in the early 1960s. Jones then began producing a number of successful animated TV specials. His most famous special was How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, a 1966 CBS adaptation of the Dr. Seuss story that still remains popular and has been released on video and DVD several times. Jones also produced three animated adaptations of short stories from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, a full-length MGM feature film entitled The Phantom Tollbooth, and the 1970 TV version of Horton Hears a Who!

After leaving the remnants of Termite Terrace behind for good, Friz Freleng and his new partner David H. DePatie went on to produce the Pink Panther cartoons during the 1960s and 1970s, with the cartoons appearing almost simultaneously on television and in theaters through a distribution deal with United Artists. Freleng also produced several TV specials based on Dr. Seuss books throughout the 1970s, including The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax.

In 1981, Friz Freleng retired. The DePatie-Freleng Enterprises studio was sold to Marvel Comics, and it continued under his lead as Marvel Productions. This new studio focused almost exclusively on toy merchandising, and it found a new audience among young viewers with such action oriented cartoons as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and The Transformers.

In 1968, the music of The Beatles and the Peter Max-inspired psychedelic artwork of Canadian-born animator George Dunning came together to create Yellow Submarine. Displeased with the previous animated television series depicting themselves, the Beatles themselves had reservations about the project at first and declined to participate beyond providing a mix of older and original musical recordings. However, they were impressed enough with the finished film to appear in a live action epilogue.

Ralph Bakshi tried to establish an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions in the 1970s.

In 1968, Ralph Bakshi, along with producer Steve Krantz, founded Bakshi Productions,[8] establishing the studio as an alternative to mainstream animation by producing animation his own way and accelerating the advancement of female and minority animators. He also paid his employees a higher salary than any other studio at that time.[9] In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse, a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica.[10][11] Bakshi was quoted in a 1971 article for the Los Angeles Times as saying that the idea of "grown men sitting in cubicles drawing butterflies floating over a field of flowers, while American planes are dropping bombs in Vietnam and kids are marching in the streets, is ludicrous."[12] Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic, a tale of inner-city street life. However, Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund the film because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience.[11] While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place, Bakshi came across a copy of R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat. Impressed by Crumb's sharp satire, Bakshi purchased the book and suggested to Krantz that it would work as a film.[11]

Fritz the Cat was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the MPAA, and is the highest grossing independent animated film of all time.[11] With the success of his second film, Heavy Traffic, Bakshi became the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films released back-to-back.[13]

A few attempts were made to produce independent feature-length animated films in the 1970s. Several of these were decidedly adult-oriented productions from outside the United States, including the Canadian Heavy Metal, the English Watership Down and a live-action/animated version of the Pink Floyd concept album The Wall, all of which received wide release in the United States.

Other films like Richard Williams' Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure were less successful. The industry largely continued to ignore or dismiss animation as something only kids watched on Saturday morning television. A notable exception was a series of films based on the Peanuts franchise, beginning with the 1969 film A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which was both a commercial and critical success; the films were made with the same production team behind the acclaimed Peanuts television specials that were airing throughout the time period, led by Bill Melendez.

Though the dominant Hanna-Barbera Productions launched a phenomenon with the 1981 premiere of The Smurfs on NBC, very little else which they produced in this decade caught on. Adding to this was the financial problems of their owner Taft Broadcasting, which was taken over by Carl Lindner, Jr., owner of Great American Insurance Company, in 1987. Two years later, Tom Ruegger launched an exodus of H-B employees to form a relaunched Warner Bros. Animation division. In 1991, Turner Broadcasting System bought the company and its library.

Other studios' offerings chipped away at the H-B Saturday dominance throughout the decade, such as H-B alumni Ruby-Spears Productions' Alvin and the Chipmunks, Marvel and Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, DiC and Columbia's The Real Ghostbusters, and Film Roman's Garfield and Friends. Additionally, the Saturday morning continued to see attempts to adapt prime time series for animation, some successfully (Happy Days and its spinoffs, Mister T, ALF: The Animated Series), others less so (It's Punky Brewster, The Gary Coleman Show, Little Rosie). After three decades of resistance, Disney finally entered Saturday morning in 1985 when The Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles debuted with significantly more substantial budgets; the first-run syndication success of DuckTales, which premiered in 1987, eventually inspired a whole block of Disney-produced syndicated cartoons which forced competing studios to improve their own production standards to compete.

The 1980s also saw a number of cartoons based on children's toys, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Transformers, My Little Pony 'n Friends, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power, Jem and the Holograms, ThunderCats, and Care Bears. There were even cartoons based on Pac-Man video games and the Rubik's Cube. Some of them even inspired feature films. While many of them were successful with children, shows like these were accused of being glorified toy commercials by parents' groups such as Action for Children's Television. These groups also objected to the level of violence in many of these shows. ACT's efforts to curb these trends resulted in the Children's Television Act, enacted in 1990 and strictly enforced by the FCC starting in 1996.

Throughout this period, Japanese anime production made a limited impact on the North American market. The most notable work were the television series like Battle of The Planets and Star Blazers in the 1970s and Voltron and Robotech in the 1980s. As a rule, the imported series were heavily censored to make them acceptable to parents; Star Blazers and Robotech were partial exceptions. Although their impact on the art in North America was minimal for decades, the distinctive nature of the anime series created a cult following that grew gradually until the 1980s when Star Blazers and Robotech, with their complex storylines and frank depiction of violence, helped create the groundswell that would lead to the major influx of anime popularity starting in the 1990s.

The 1980s also saw the rise of the music video industry, spearheaded by MTV. Artistic experimentation in these short films often resulted in the production of innovative animated sequences that reminded viewers of the potential of animation as something other than Saturday morning cartoons. A number of memorable animated videos were produced during the heyday of MTV, including a-ha's "Take On Me" by British director Steve Barron; Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" with animation by Aardman Animations and Brothers Quay; the groundbreaking computer animated Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" directed by Steve Barron; and The Rolling Stones' "The Harlem Shuffle" with animated sequences directed by Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi).

MTV also had a plethora of wild and experimental animated idents made by uncredited animators.[14]