Patrick McNamara wrote:
>>*Peggy Charren - Peggy Charren spearheaded a major movement (via her
>
> She may have led it, but it was parents (primarily mothers) who pushed for
> it. The Comic Book Code also greatly contributed to this idea.
It was her half-formed bill that briefly shackled network animation's
range of allowable subjects, and stuck us with nothing but
"Doug"/"Recess" schoolkid clones for most of the entire 90's, before the
industry eventually learned to ignore her...
>>*Fred Calvert - Fred Calvert is the man who was chosen to finish "The
>>Thief and the Cobbler" (or "Arabian Knight" as it was theatrically
>>released as in the United States in 1995) after Richard Williams was
>>fired from his 20+ year pet project.
>
> I had the impression the task was assigned to him. It's hard to say if it
> even would have been finished if Williams held onto it.
One could argue that Richard "The age of weirdo 70's indies" Williams
ain't exactly on the A-list either...
>>*Michael Eisner - Eisner gained a reputation during his time as the
>
> I understand he also use to program ABCs Saturday morning back in the 70s.
> He single-handedly destroyed Disney animation. They've yet to be the
> animation studio they were before everything was shut down.
Any mention of Eisner must make mention of a certain other executive
behind the throne--
An executive with no animation background whatsoever, who was handed the
post-Ron Miller reins of an animation division in trouble and told by
Eisner "It's *your* problem now"...
And who, twelve years later went on to take credit for half of Disney's
hits, and stealing most of the others for another studio--whose
animation job he'd gotten on the strength of claiming credit for "Lion
King"--before making the (albeit misquoted) sweeping pronouncements that
instrumentally CAUSED Eisner to singlehandedly destroy Disney animation.
There is no Eisner history without Jeffrey Katzenberg. No cel studio
would have been destroyed in 2002 without Shrek or Sinbad.
The two execs will be forever linked in historical destiny.
>>*Leon Schlesinger - Schlesinger's independent animation studio would
>>
>>*Fred Quimby - Quimby was the producer in charge of the old Metro-
>>
>>*Paul Terry - Paul Terry was the founder of the Terrytoons animation
Okay, we'll give you that last one... ;)
> They don't sound much different than any other businessmen. They may not
> have had much of a budget to begin with so they can't be blamed for being
> cheap. Staff alone could easily cost $10,000 a week or more. It would
> require a look at the accounting books to say for certain how cheap they
> were being.
Schlesinger at least stuck up for the Terrace when they did have a hit--
Rule was, if it mde money, do another one like it, and that was about
the extent of creative bullying as they got.
That said, I see a few historical names conspicuous by their absences:
- Don "One neurotic puppy" Bluth
- A race-paranoid black Disney animator named Clarence Muse, later
discharged by Disney, who took out his disgruntled-employee frustrations
by running to the NAACP and claiming that a certain 40's Disney animated
at the time was "racist".
- John K....Most hated? We'll let history decide, while we're waiting
for an entire 90's/early-00's generation of animators to get over their
"spastic retro-kitsch" phase, and figure out what's actually funny again.
Derek Janssen (and if it wasn't for Macek's "Dunbine" dubbing, I
wouldn't understand what the heck was going ON, from the original dialogue!)
ejanss1@
verizon.net
