Animation Artifacts &Articles on Animation &Commentary 15 Jan 2009 08:52 am
Scrapbook Bullwinkle
- When I was young, there was little in print about animation. So I kept my eyes open for every newspaper or magazine piece I could find about the subject and I put it in a scrapbook I kept.
The Flintstones debut, the opening of 101 Dalmatians, Mr. Magoos 1001 Arabian Nights, Gay Purr-ee, Dick Tracy, The Wonderful World of Color were all projects that generated some publicity – not like you see today, but some. I collected all I could find.
That scrapbook is in storage somewhere, and I won’t find it for a while. However, I do have a couple of pages that seem to have fallen out. This covers the premiere of The Bullwinkle Show on NBC – just prior to Disney’s World of Color show. None of it is pertinent to anything, and all of it is in lousy condition. Regardless, here are a few pieces including the only review I could find – from the NYDaily News. Remember there was no internet, no way to research papers outside of the ones your parents brought home or you could find in the library. This was all material that I had access to.
In advance, I apologize for the condition of these images. They were well read within a roughly assembled scrap book, and they have seen the battlefield of use.
This article (above & below) comes from an issue of TVGuide just prior to the start of The Bullwinkle Show in primetime. Jay Ward fashioned a big and entertaining publicity campaign to get his show on TV and to keep it there. The article discusses this PR aspect of the show.
You can get more information from Keith Scott‘s excellent book,
The Moose That Roared.
(Click any image to enlarge to a readable size.)
This negative review came from The NYDaily News.
Most of it is legible here.
The gold, for me, came one Sunday in the Westchester edition of The Daily News.
My family was on its regular Sunday summer outing at a New Jersey beach. I came upon the article and spent most of the day reading and rereading it in the sun. I didn’t realize that Sal Faillace was just a local boy with a local news story.
Years later, I got to assist Sal at Phil Kimmelman‘s PK&A studio. I can remember that he animated a bouncing basketball with NO stretch or squash. A hard circle moving “bouncing” around the screen. I was disillusioned in Sal’s work until I actually saw it on film. He really had somehow captured the weight and feel of the basketball without the obvious approach most animators – including myself – would have taken.
I’m sorry I didn’t really spend much time talking with him or asking him about his work at Gamma Productions in Mexico.
