Animation Artifacts &commercial animation &Story & Storyboards 24 Oct 2012 06:13 am
Goulding/Elliott/Graham Storyboards
- Goulding, Elliott, Graham was a company made up of comedians, Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott (“Bob & Ray”) and designer/director, Ed Graham. After the Piels Bros beer account did so well, Bob and Ray realized that they should have a larger piece of the pie, so they set up their own studio to produce commercials that featured their voices and their writing talents. This was an instant success which soon dissipated until the studio closed only two years later.
But they had a nice run. Vincent Cafarelli, obviously, had a good time at the studio (he’d left assisting at UPA to work there). In his collection of animation artifacts, there’s a folder of storyboards for commercials they’d made. I’ve put together a number of these boards and will show them here. I do notice that the writing is interesting (compared to any commercial on the air today) and the design is often exceptional. I hope you agree.
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A model of the two characters in this spot.
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I can only assume this is an ad for some kind of
“Oreo”- like cookie. The sell is so soft that I can’t
even figure out the client. Doesn’t sound successful.
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There’s no doubt that Len Glasser designed this.
It looks just like a character he later did for Ernie Pintoff.
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The only spot for Piels, in the collection, is obviously
this short ID – probably 10 secs. long.
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We’ve seen a number of these Tip-Top Bread spots.
They were certainly a primary client for the company.
These boards were in with the Goulding-Elliott-Graham material,
actually was done at Gifford Studios (Lou Gifford & Paul Kim).
Vince has a lot of these folders in his collection improperly labeled.
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on 24 Oct 2012 at 8:05 am 1.Bill said …
Wow, what a find, these timeless boards are beautiful, feels like we are looking at the finished spots! Is there any way to connect authorship/names to panels and dialogue?
on 24 Oct 2012 at 8:46 am 2.dilly said …
Beautiful simplicity. Is it true Hanna & Barbera’s early MGM work pitching T&J inspired the design reformation that came in the 50s?
on 24 Oct 2012 at 10:24 am 3.Michael said …
The first Tom and Jerry cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot, was one of the last films produced by Rudolph Ising. Ising was on the way out and historians seem to feel that he probably had little to do with this film. However, I see some key elements which would lead me to believe that he actually was more involved than thought.
This film and even the ones that followed, wherein Ising was gone from the production, belie any thought that Hanna and Barbera could have pitched anything more progressive than this series we see on film. I’d doubt they had little to do with what would come in later years. The success (including MGM’s first Oscar) just encouraged more cat and mouse films like Little Roquefort out of Terrytoons and Herman & Katnip out of Paramount. Perhaps they also inspired the Fox and Crow series out of Columbia which developed into UPA in the hands of director/designers like Hubley, Klynn and Engel.
on 24 Oct 2012 at 12:03 pm 4.Mike Kazaleh said …
The storyboard with the chefs is actually from one of their spots for Anderson’s Pea Soup, a California company that is still in business.
on 24 Oct 2012 at 12:52 pm 5.Michael said …
Thanks, Mike. I’ve relabeled it. I actually have a storyboard for another Anderson’s Pea Soup. I’ll be posting that in another two weeks.
on 24 Oct 2012 at 3:55 pm 6.Amid said …
Can I have a redo on Cartoon Modern?
on 24 Oct 2012 at 6:14 pm 7.Michael said …
Boy, I’d love it Amid. There’s so much great art out there. You don’t need a redo, you need a part 2.
on 24 Oct 2012 at 9:45 pm 8.RPall said …
As the fourth most knowledgeable Bob and Ray expert available ,I can say that Lawrence Fechtenberger was a continuing character in the B&R stable during the 50’s and 60’s. Their characters faux sponsor was often “chocolate cookies with the white stuff in between them†They were not popular enough to have Einbinders Fly Paper back then. The text of the storyboard is similar to one of the bits they did with the characters.
It is possible Bob & Ray were considering animating their shows instead of doing the live action version they did try. Thanks so much for this glimpse.
on 26 Oct 2012 at 8:04 pm 9.black friday 2012 said …
Exceptional post but I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this
subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Kudos!
on 26 Oct 2012 at 9:24 pm 10.RPall said …
Black, I hope you are requesting that Michael add more text as I would also enjoy more information on the boards and do not want to intrude into this interesting blog.
If you want further B&R info, this weekend I am meeting for the first time with the #3 expert. I will discuss this with them. Sorry to keep you in anxiety.
R
on 27 Oct 2012 at 1:08 am 11.Michael said …
Unfortunately, I don’t have much more to add. The art in Vince Cafarelli’s archives is just a collection that I’m sorting as to which studio they may have cme from. But I don’t know much moer. If I can recognize a Len Glasser style, I’ll say so, but I don’t have much more to go on. Wish I did. As a matter of fact, with some of this material you’d be surprised at how much the readers out there can offer. Just by posting it, I learn a lot.
on 17 May 2013 at 5:41 pm 12.RPall said …
My apologies, but I was hit by Sandy the day after my last post and lets say it was interesting to be able to speak to my neighbors while standing in my attic. I asked them if I could have my roof back.
Now that things have settled down I will try to dig up some of the shows that may match these boards.
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on 05 Oct 2014 at 3:35 pm 14.bill ballard said …
In the late 1970s I got CIBA (pharmaceuticals) to hire Bob and Ray to do a few one minute radio spots for our potassium supplement, which we titled simply “Bob and Ray for Slow K”
At that time we were supporting PRN. (Physician’s Radio Network), which was a closed circuit network available only via a special radio provided to doctors.
Bob and Ray ad libbed the continuity for which they created their own brand of hilarious situations featuring fictitous characters.
Because of the FDA rules at the time, we were not able to tell the audience what Slow K was intended for. But of course, only doctors had access to the radios.
Although I was nominally the writer and producer of the spots, the only “writing” I did was naming the show. I’m sorry to say that none of those recordings exist. PRN went bust and there was no need for scripts.
PS B&R were crazy-funny even during the back-and-forth in the control room. Even the suits couldn’t stop laughing.