Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery (; February 26, 1908 – August 26, 1980) was an American animator, film director and voice actor. He was known for directing and producing animated cartoons during the golden age of American animation. His most significant work was for Leon Schlesinger Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cartoon department, where he was crucial in the creation and evolution of famous animated characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd for Warner Bros. and Droopy, Butch Dog, Screwy Squirrel, The Wolf, Red Hot Riding Hood, and George and Junior for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
He gained influence for his technical innovation, directorial style, and brand of humor that appealed especially towards adults. Avery's attitude toward animation was opposite that of Walt Disney and other conventional family cartoons at the time. Avery's cartoons were known for their dark humor, sarcasm, irony, surreal, and sometimes sexual tone in nature. They focused on visual gags, meta humor, physically impossible gags, social satire, surrealist humor, rapid pacing, racial stereotypes, and violent slapstick occurring around brash, outlandish characters who broke the fourth wall, stating that cartoons are meant to do anything.
Early life and education
Avery was born to Mary Augusta "Jessie" (née Bean; 1886–1931) and George Walton Avery (1867–1935) in Taylor, Texas, a suburb of Austin. His father was born in Alabama and his mother was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi.
Avery graduated in 1926 from North Dallas High School. A popular catchphrase at his school was "What's up, doc?", which he later used for Bugs Bunny in the 1940s. Interested in becoming a newspaper cartoonist, he took a three-month summer course at the Art Institute of Chicago but left after a month.
Tex Avery's major inspirations were comedians such as Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and especially The Marx Brothers; the latter of which was inspiration for Bugs Bunny. He was especially inspired by Winsor McCay, Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer, Max Fleischer and Walt Disney in terms of animation field. He additionally liked the works of newspaper comic strip artist Virgil Partch, mainly praising his surrealist gags.
Animation career On January 1, 1928, Avery arrived in Los Angeles. He spent the next few months working in menial jobs. According to animation historian Michael Barrier, these jobs included working in a warehouse, working on the docks at night, loading fruits and vegetables, and painting cars. He began his animation career when hired by Winkler Pictures as an inker, inking cels for animated short films in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series; he was one of numerous new hires, including director Walter Lantz, after creators Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks departed the company. After his co-workers, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, proposed taking over the series to Universal Pictures executive Carl Laemmle, Laemmle instead assigned Lantz to operate an in-house animation studio; Avery followed Lantz to the new studio. He was again employed as an inker, but moved rapidly up the studio's hierarchy. By 1930, Avery had been promoted to the position of animator.
Avery continued working at Universal into the early 1930s. He worked on most of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons from 1931 to 1935 and is credited as an animator. He later claimed to have directed two cartoons during this time.
Accident to eye During some office horseplay at Universal, a thumbtack or paper clip flew into Avery's left eye and caused him to lose sight in that eye. Some speculate it was his lack of depth perception that gave him his unique look at animation and bizarre directorial style, but it did not stop his creative career. The incident is described in some detail by Barrier, based in part on old interviews with Avery. Part of the typical crude horseplay at the Universal studio was using a rubber band or a paper spitball to target the back of a colleague's head. An animator called Charles Hastings decided to take the game one step further, by using a wire paper clip, instead. Avery heard one of his colleagues telling him to look out. He reacted by turning around. Instead of the back of his head, the paper clip hit Avery in his left eye. He instantly lost the use of his eye. Avery subsequently had surgery to have the damaged eye removed and replaced with a realistic glass prosthetic.
From inker to storyboards As an animator, Avery worked under director Bill Nolan. Nolan reportedly delegated work to Avery, whenever Avery had to animate a sequence. Nolan's instructions for a scene involving Oswald being chased by bees were reportedly simple. He would describe in which direction Oswald was running ("right to left") and for how many feet. The rest of the details were left up to Avery. Avery started handing out work to other animators working under Nolan.
Avery wanted still greater control over the creative process and served as a de facto director for a couple of films. Based on Avery's recollections, here is a description of how this happened. He was submitting sight gags for use in the short films. Some of them were used in the actual films, and some funny ones were left out. He wanted to somehow get all his gags in the finished film. So, he asked Nolan to let him create the entire storyboard for a film. Nolan instructed Avery to not only draw the storyboard, but also to work on the timing and the layout on his own. Avery completed two films using this process. An older Avery recalled that both films "were terrible", though they got accepted for release.
Avery was reportedly displeased with his salary and had started giving up on his work. After about six weeks of substandard work, Avery left with Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland and Cecil Surry, angering Lantz.
"Termite Terrace" Later in 1935, Avery applied for a job at Leon Schlesinger Productions. Avery reportedly managed to convince producer Leon Schlesinger that he was an experienced director, a false claim. In Avery's own words:
By 1935, when Avery was hired, the Schlesinger studio had only two full-time, regular film directors: Friz Freleng and Jack King. Avery became the third regular director. The staff of the Schlesinger studio had become too large to be housed in a single building at the Warner Bros. backlot on Sunset Boulevard. The new Avery unit of the studio was granted their own building, a five-room bungalow. The unit staff dubbed their quarters "Termite Terrace", due to its significant termite population.International Animated Film Society "Termite Terrace" later became the nickname for the entire Schlesinger/Warner Bros. studio, primarily because Avery and his unit were the ones who defined what became known as "the Warner Bros. cartoon".
Avery was granted exclusive use of four animators: Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Sid Sutherland, and Virgil Ross. The first cartoon produced by this unit was Gold Diggers of '49 (1935), the third Looney Tunes film starring Beans. The film had a Western setting and cast Beans as a gold miner; it featured a great amount of tongue-in-cheek humor not found in most prior Looney Tunes shorts. Also featured in the film was a redesigned Porky Pig, making his second appearance. The Avery unit was assigned to work primarily on the black-and-white Looney Tunes instead of the Technicolor Merrie Melodies, but was allowed to make color Merrie Melodies beginning with Miss Glory from 1936. Avery was also noted to be the first to stray away from using song breaks in color cartoons starting with the 1937 short Uncle Tom's Bungalow, later saying that "We were forced to use a song, which would just ruin the cartoon. You'd try like a fool to get funny, but it was seldom you did."
Avery stopped using Beans following Gold Diggers of '49, but continued using Porky as a star character. According to Michael Barrier, Beans was more of a straight man. However, Porky had to be redesigned again. The early Porky was decidedly "piglike" in appearance. In Michael Barrier's description, Porky was very fat, had small eyes, a large snout, and pronounced jowls. He was like a porcine version of Roscoe Arbuckle. Starting with Porky the Rain-Maker (1936), his fourth animated short starring Porky, Avery introduced a cuter version of Porky. The new design gave Porky more prominent eyes and a smaller snout. The jowls were replaced by chubby cheeks. Porky's body now had a rounder shape; its defining trait was not fatness, but softness. Barrier notes that the new design by Avery departed from the "Disneyish" realism in the previous drawing style. Porky became a less realistic pig and looked more like a cartoon character.
According to Martha Sigall, Avery was one of the few directors to visit the ink and paint department — where he would answer questions and was always in good humor — as he liked to see how his cartoons were developing. When some of the artists humorously criticized the wild action in his animated shorts, Avery would take time to explain his rationale.Sigall (2005), p. 48-49 He recalled that under Schlesinger's leadership, the animators had a great deal of liberty, and were subject to very little censorship.
Creation of Looney Tunes stars Avery, with the assistance of Clampett, Jones, and the new associate director Frank Tashlin, laid the foundation for a style of animation that rivaled Walt Disney Productions as the leader in animated short films, and created a group of cartoon characters that are still known today. Avery, in particular, was deeply involved. He crafted gags for the shorts, sometimes provided voices for them (including his trademark belly laugh), and held such control over the timing of the shorts that he would add or cut frames out of the final negative if he felt a gag's timing was not quite right.
Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) introduced the character of Daffy Duck, who possessed a new form of "lunacy" and zaniness that had not been seen before in animated cartoons. Daffy was an almost completely crazy "darn fool duck" who frequently bounced around the film frame in double-speed, screaming "Hoo-hoo!" in a high-pitched, sped-up voice provided by voice artist Mel Blanc, who, with this cartoon, also took over providing the voice of Porky Pig. Avery directed two more Daffy Duck cartoons: Daffy Duck & Egghead and Daffy Duck in Hollywood. Egghead was a character inspired by comedian Joe Penner and first appeared in Avery's Egghead Rides Again.
Little Red Walking Hood first introduced the early character of Elmer Fudd as a character mostly taking part of some running gag. Elmer in this early form had green clothes, a brown bowler hat, and a pink nose. He was also named "Elmer" on the lobby cards for "The Isle of Pingo Pongo" (1938), his second appearance, Cinderella Meets Fella (1938), his third appearance, and was fully called "Elmer Fudd" on screen in "A Feud There Was" (1938), also his fourth appearance. Elmer even appears on early merchandise and in the early Looney Tunes books in 1938 and 1939. He was later promoted as "Egghead's Brother" on the Vitaphone Release Sheet for Cinderella Meets Fella because Elmer was also voiced by Danny Webb in his Joe Penner voice that was also used for Egghead.
Ben Hardaway, Cal Dalton, and Chuck Jones directed a series of shorts that featured a Daffy Duck-like rabbit, nicknamed "Bugs," created by Hardaway. Like most directors, each put his own personal stamp on the characters, stories, and overall feel of a work; and each of these cartoons treated the rabbit differently. The next to try out the rabbit, known around Termite Terrace as "Bugs' bunny", was Avery. Since the recycling of storylines among the directors was commonplace, A Wild Hare was a double throwback. Avery had directed the short Porky's Duck Hunt featuring Porky Pig, which also introduced Daffy Duck.