From Songfilms to Telecomics: Vallée Video and the New Market for Postwar Animation

Introducing Vallée Video

After a successful career spanning more than two decades in radio, film, recorded music and stage entertainment, in February 1948, singer Rudy Vallée announced he was also entering the new medium of television, launching a Tele-Art Film Productions company (Vallée’s TV pix, 1948) with ‘especially-made film productions of excellent and entertainment-compelling quality, made at a cost within the reach of the particular station or sponsor’ (Tele-Art Film Productions, 1948). Television set owners, he explained, ‘expect . . . to be able to view something of interest and something compelling’, to which end Vallée would offer 3- to 5-minute ‘songfilms’ – musical shorts combining ‘a fine story, with the best vocal delivery, a fine musical background, and fourth and foremost, the finest form of illustration’, with hand-drawn sketches of scenes suggested by the lyrics. Rechristening his company Vallée Video a month later, Vallée quickly expanded his programming beyond these initial songfilms, recruiting the services of animation houses and freelance artists whose contributions during his company’s short run from 1948 to 1952 ranged from title art and animated commercials to full-length cartoon series (New Vallée Video firm incorporated, 1948).

One of hundreds of independent production companies that dotted the postwar US television landscape in the 1940s and 1950s (Anderson, 1994: 56; Boddy, 1990: 69–70), Vallée Video offered employment opportunities for animators impacted by shrinking markets within the theatrical film sector and embraced new production styles that would soon dominate mid-20th century US television animation. While activities for most of these producers are sparsely documented, extensive records for Vallée’s are preserved in his personal papers at California’s Thousand Oaks Library, with surviving film elements at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Supplementing these materials with trade press coverage and records from related Los Angeles-area archives, we use Vallée Video as a case study for exploring broader economic and aesthetic practices within the shifting mid-20th century animation industry. While the work of more celebrated animation studios such as United Productions of America are well-known, smaller telefilm producers like Vallée also made frequent use of animation labor and embraced new stylistic tendencies that soon spread throughout the industry. However, rather than marking a definitive break with prewar styles from the 1920s and 1930s, we argue that the production styles pursued by new television companies represented a blend of pre- and postwar techniques whose forms and effects warrant close historical study. ¹

While animation historians traditionally restricted their focus to the theatrical sector, recent decades have spawned growing scholarship on animated work for television and its broader webs of intermedial influence. Early work by Leonard Maltin (1987: vii), for instance, opted to ‘confine its boundaries to the American theatrical cartoon’, as histories ‘encompassing independent, sponsored, industrial, and television work, deserve book-length studies of their own’. Tackling Maltin’s challenge, Hal Erickson (2005) and David Perlmutter (2014) offered dedicated, book-length analyses of television cartoons from the 1950s through the present, while recent studies by Maureen Furniss (2016), Giannalberto Bendazzi (2017), and Dan Bashara (2019) pursue synthetic approaches that trace industrial and stylistic transformations across both large and small screens, and place them in the context of broader shifts in modern art and design. Scholars within the neighboring field of television studies (Gray, 2006; Mittell, 2004) have shown a similar concern with animation’s broader cultural and creative contexts, while attention in both fields has expanded beyond series-level productions to include interstitial matter ranging from title art to commercial advertisements (Cook and Thompson, 2019; Spigel, 2008, 2016). Applying this contextualist, cross-media approach to our analysis of Vallée’s operations, we document his growing efforts to recruit animation workers originally trained in the theatrical sector and show their contributions to production work ranging from photography on Vallée’s early songfilms to title illustrations and cartoon commercials for live action productions, as well as full-length ‘telecomics’ series that constituted some of the first made-for-television cartoons.

Discussions of stylistic tendencies in postwar animation have emphasized what Bendazzi (2017: 6) calls the ‘new style’, characterized by a shift from full to limited animation that restricted movement from frame to frame, and from well-defined three-dimensional character drawings with rounded lines and careful edge shading to more angular and roughly sketched two-dimensional drawings. As Furniss (2016: 211) notes, this style was ‘less expensive to produce’ and proved ideal for accelerated television production schedules, but was also ‘still stylish’ and partook of broader modernist experiments with minimalism and abstraction, whose reach Lynn Spigel (2016) and Bashara (2019) have shown included everything from modernist painting and print advertising to quotidian architecture, furniture, and fashion styles. This embrace of modern design was prevalent throughout Vallée’s productions, but just as Spigel (2008: 10) notes that modern art itself ‘was not one thing, but a series of conflicting styles, theories, and practices’, modernist tendencies in Vallée’s animations existed alongside and at times in tension with elements of a more traditional, prewar style. While illustrations for Vallée’s early productions employed techniques associated with prewar life drawing, his company also embraced limited animation and more minimalist drawing styles that it touted as both cost-savers and signs of aesthetic distinction. From songfilms to telecomics, Vallée Video exemplified the ascendant role of small-screen exhibition in the postwar animation market and the hybrid styles that characterized this transitional regime.

Industrial context: Tracing the mid-century animation profession

While the 1940s produced growing numbers of professionally trained animation workers, a contraction in the market for theatrical shorts yielded diminished employment opportunities and encouraged flows of creative labor into the newly opened television sector. During the teens and twenties most animators started as newspaper cartoonists (Barrier, 2003: 16, 19), but by the 1940s they entered the field with professional art school educations that included extensive training in both classical life drawing and modern design. Among the first such animation programs was that of the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, which in 1937, after several years of offering informal instruction for Disney animators (Crafton, 2013: 153–159), announced a new course of study in ‘animation cartooning’ that promised ‘a great future in animation’ to those seeking Hollywood employment (Chouinard Art Institute catalogue, 1938–1939). Taught by Disney animators in the school’s Motion Picture Arts program, these classes promised to produce ‘better trained talent’ who ‘not only know drawing in its most creative sense’ but also had a keen ‘grasp of story values’ (Chouinard Art Institute scholarship competition in the School of Motion Picture Arts scholarship, 1938–1939), cultivating an ability to express ‘humor, pathos, tragedy, whimsey, all forms of emotion’ through comprehensive study in both classical and modern art (Chouinard Art Institute catalogue, 1938–1939). With similar programs developed by schools from the Chicago Art Institute to the Art Students League of New York, animators by the 1940s boasted new professional credentials and sensibilities, cultivating what Bashara (2019: 168–175) calls a ‘design gaze’ that amplified narrative pleasures through a ‘focus on the visual elements of the film’s surface – backgrounds, color compositions, odd arrangements of shapes’ and elevated animation beyond the status of mere cartoons. ‘Although they drew funny ducks and bunnies for a living’, explains Tom Sito (2006: 178), they now ‘considered themselves artists first’.

This shift in professional training coincided with growing labor movements that won workers significant gains but also strained existing studio-era production practices. As Michael Denning (1997: 405–422) notes, the 1930s film industry gave voice to Popular Front sentiments not only in its creative content, but also in labor actions that included unions for screen animators. Initially represented by the Commercial Arts and Designers Union on the East Coast and Federation of Motion Picture Crafts in Hollywood, animators formed the independent Screen Cartoonists Guild (SCG) in 1938, which after a successful Disney strike in 1941 became the main union for animators nationwide until 1952 (Sito, 2006: 85, 74, 97). Founded with the mission to ‘advance the economic well-being of its members’, ‘improve the quality of animated cartoon productions’, and ‘raise the standards of artistic production within the industry’, SCG boasted members in departments ranging from ‘story [to] animation, including assistants and inbetweeners, inkers and painters, lay-out men . . . background, camera test cameramen, directors, assistant directors, cell washers . . . checkers and colour-co-coordinators’ (SCG, 1939). While SCG actions doubled and tripled salaries over pre-union years (SCG, 1951), studios slashed production outputs by as much as 50 percent (Barrier, 2003: 375) and pursued massive layoffs, with Disney alone shedding several hundred animators in 1941 and dismissing half of its remaining workforce after another SCG-negotiated pay raise in 1946 (pp. 374, 388). New ownership rules yielded further contraction, with studios’ forced divestiture of theatre holdings under the Paramount Decision of 1948 (Gomery, 2008: 93–96) removing guaranteed exhibition outlets for animation companies that had signed studio distribution deals or become outright subsidiaries, encouraging more conservative production models that favored occasional features and package films over a steady stream of shorts (Barrier, 2003: 367–402; Sito, 2006: 214–216).

Television’s rapid growth in the late 1940s created added competition but also new opportunities. The number of licensed stations jumped between 1948 and 1952 from only 16 to over 100, with set ownership rising from less than 1 percent to over one third of US households (Sterling and Kittross, 2002: 827, 864). While posing a growing threat to film attendance, the medium also created a new market for studio back catalogues, with producers like Walt Disney (Anderson, 1994: 146–148), independent distributors like United World (Hoyt, 2014: 133–139), and makers of sponsored films (Hughes, 2017) successfully reviving properties with depleted theatrical exhibition value. The 1950s also spawned a series of original television productions, with companies like Terrytoons and UPA becoming prominent suppliers of made-for-television cartoons who provided employment to members of ‘the Disney diaspora’ (Barrier, 2003: 374) and dozens of other displaced studio animators. As Furniss (2016: 122) notes, while theatrical markets declined, the postwar period witnessed a proliferation of ‘new production houses that were dedicated solely to television’, including not only better-known producers of cartoon series but also smaller companies like Storyboard, Playhouse Pictures, and Pacific Title and Art Studios that specialized in titles and effects work (Spigel, 2016: 34–35). As our analysis shows, Vallée Video made ready use of both external production houses and freelance animation labor, exemplifying television’s capacity to offset contraction within the theatrical market. Yet, aesthetic practices by Vallée’s company also significantly departed from those pursued for theatrical production, calling into focus much broader shifts in production styles that were soon embraced throughout the US television industry.

Sell me a songfilm: First forays into television animation

Vallée’s songfilm concept began under the auspices of Tele-Art precursor, Tele-Stills and Tele-Pic Ltd, created in July 1947 for the purpose of ‘conceiving, designing, preparing, selling and/or renting black-and-white and colour photographic stills for use in connection with television programs, with or without accompanying narration’ (Certificate of Business under fictitious name, 1947). This concept quickly evolved into a series of short films set to popular music, with drawings by Columbia Pictures costume artist and Vallée’s then-girlfriend, Mary Ann Nyberg (Notes on the preparation of sketches . . ., 1947; Vallée, 1975: 299). Replacing Tele-Stills with Tele-Art Film Productions in February 1948, Vallée announced he now would focus exclusively on these ‘songfilms’, drawn by Nyberg and photographed at his home studio in Hollywood (Vallée starts program, 1948; Vallée works on tele, 1948). While Vallée initially conceived these films as a series of still images showcasing Nyberg’s drawing talents, after forming Tele-Art successor Vallée Video in April 1948, he began hiring external animation studios to reshoot them with added camera effects, embracing emerging techniques of limited animation that would soon become staples of Vallée Video productions and television animation at large. While footage survives for only one of these songfilms (These Foolish Things, 1948), we reconstruct their visual style through a combination of scripts, shot lists, published descriptions, and original artwork – using what Hannah Frank (2019) describes as a ‘frame by frame approach’ as a means of ‘looking at labour’ and foregrounding the otherwise hidden material practices pursued by mid-century animation workers.

Early songfilm promotions at first invoked a slideshow model, casting them ‘as a refinement of the old illustrated slide[s]’ or ‘old-time magic lantern technique’ used by song-pluggers in film theatres (Phonograph records must inevitably be a large proportion . . ., 1948; Vallée starts 1st tele pic, 1948). Similar to small-screen musical shorts of competitors such as the Soundies Corporation (Hose, 2007), Snader Telescriptions, (Kelley, 2018), or Vis-o-Graph Corporation – for which Vallée had briefly served as president – songfilms were pitched to record companies and music publishers as ‘a terrific plug’ that would boost their revenues (Vallée, 1948a, 1948b). ² Production of up to 10 films per week was anticipated (Murcott, 1948), with national distribution expected by 1950 (Ad Club panel, 1948; Rudy Vallée dipping into television field, 1948). Suggested uses ranged from filling dead air between programs to packaged reels for Top 40 shows, replacing their boring shots of ‘record[s] spinning [or] the back of the disc jockey’ with ‘interesting and intriguing’ images that brought ‘the meaning and the idea of the [songs] . . . to life’, even though ‘there may be no actual movement, as in a cartoon’ (Script for broadcast over KTLA-TV, 1948). Despite these marketing efforts, Vallée found no investors and completed only three of his intended songfilms, then quickly shifted to embrace emerging techniques of limited animation after initial test screenings met with poor reviews.

Vallée began production on his first songfilm, Pinto Ben, in summer 1947 – a performance of a song-poem, narrated by Vallée, based on the 1915 Mutual film with William S Hart about a loyal cow pony trampled in a stampede. By February 1948, a 16mm colour Kodachrome version was completed along with a second, black-and-white songfilm, Snowflakes, featuring Vallée’s reinterpretation of the Mary Mapes Dodge song with original music by Frederick H Cowan (Tele-Art Film Productions, 1948). Both productions were filmed in Vallée’s home studio by Auricon inventor Walter Bach (Pinto Ben title cards, 1948; Titles for ‘Snowflakes’ original version, 1948a), then shown in February trade screenings (Vallée’s TV pix dubbed with vocals, 1948), with Pinto Ben also screened at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences a month later (first video production, 1948). By this time, production had also begun on another black-and-white songfilm, These Foolish Things, which was set to the popular Decca recording by Bing Crosby (Rudy Vallée tackles video, 1948) and broadcast over Los Angeles station KTLA in May (Vallée will preem first tele picture, 1948). With a production style described as a series of ‘stills depicting scenes appropriate to the song . . . fad[ing] into another’ (Vallée’s TV pics dubbed with vocals, 1948), the original films employed relatively static imagery. Pinto Ben, for instance, had a 5-minute runtime with 30 seconds of opening credits, followed by 25 images faded up and held onscreen several seconds before fading out again or cutting directly to the next image. Starting with a tighter shot of a rider’s hand on Ben’s head, the film fades to a long shot of the two corralling cattle onto a train for market, then fades in and out of tighter shots on the train with longer takes running from 7 to 17 seconds; however, the pace quickens once the cattle are unloaded and begin to stampede, with takes as short as three seconds and direct cuts between images of cattle rushing toward the camera, closeups of the rider flattened against his horse, and a battered Ben leaping the gates to deliver his rider to safety. Longer takes return for the closing minute, fading up and down on bloody cattle, then on Ben’s own broken body as he expires with head cradled in his rider’s hands (Pinto Ben shot list, 1948). These illustrations exemplified life-drawing techniques taught at schools like Chouinard, with careful attention to animal anatomy, detailed drawings of cowboys’ hands and faces, clothing fabrics rendered in fine inkpoint, and subtle washes used for edge shading on folded sleeves, curves of equine haunches, and contours of human faces (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Pinto Ben (1948). Conceived in 1947 and completed in 1948 under the auspices of Vallée Video precursor Tele-Art Film Productions, Pinto Ben was Vallée’s first ‘songfilm’ production. The film consisted of a series of still drawings by illustrator Mary Ann Nyberg, which were faded up and down as Vallée read verses, backed with music, from the eponymous song-poem based on the film starring William S Hart. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

Unfavorable critical response prompted Vallée to re-evaluate this initial production style. Academy members judged Pinto Ben ‘adequate for motion picture projection’, but ‘too “busy” for television’ due to the ‘amount of detail in [its] sketches’ (First video production, 1948). Reviews of These Foolish Things similarly reported that its delicately inked objects and faces appeared ‘grey and largely undistinguishable’ on home screens and panned its static shots for producing an unpleasant ‘slide effect which allows for no action and deadens interest immediately making Crosby’s vocalizing interminable’ (Tele review, 1948). The life drawing techniques valorized for theatrical animation, in other words, were now cast as distinctly untelegenic, and a greater degree of visual dynamism deemed necessary for small-screen presentation. In response, Vallée switched to 35mm stock for improved image and sound quality, commissioned Nyberg to draw extra scenes for more frequent cuts and faster pacing, and hired external production houses Sixteen Screen Service and Five Star Productions to reshoot the film with added camera movements (Vallée, 1948c, 1948d). ³ In Snowflakes, these effects included zooms in and out on a cloud from which the film’s titular snowflake descends to rest on the face of woman who gently wipes its melting remains from beneath her eye (Snowflakes shot list, 1948) (Figure 2). Surviving test footage for These Foolish Things includes numbered shots of remembered objects and places named by the singer, with closeups of his lover’s face and a burning cigarette for each refrain, ‘These foolish things remind me of you’. Camera effects include a slow tilt down from the cigarette across a shredded love letter, zoom in on a sailing ocean liner, tilt up from an outstretched hand to the wraithlike figure of the departed lover, and pan across her remaining personal effects piled next to the door (These Foolish Things Remind Me of You, 1948) (Figure 3). Eschewing traditional cel animation on the grounds that costs could rise as much as tenfold, Vallée argued his camera effects ‘brought [the films] to life’ while remaining ‘well within the budget of the smallest station’ (Pinto Ben press release, 1948; Vallée, 1948b). ⁴

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Figure 2.

Vallée’s second songfilm, Snowflakes (1948), was set to a reinterpreted version of a song by Mary Mapes Dodge and Frederick Cowen. Black and white ink drawings by illustrator Mary Ann Nyberg showed an anthropomorphic snowflake’s descent from the clouds onto a woman’s face. Camera movements such as zooms in and out on clouds and pans across treetops were completed by external effects house, Five Star Productions. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

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Figure 3.

Vallée’s third songfilm, These Foolish Things (1948), was set to music from the Decca recording by Bing Crosby, with filming performed by Sixteen Screen Service. Surviving footage includes numbered shots showing the intended order, with cuts between a man contemplating a photograph of his lost lover and his recollections of her hands and face. Black and white sketches by Nyberg were designed for intended camera movements such as slow pans across and tilts up and down the otherwise still drawings. Motion Picture Collection, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

Exploring options for further illustrated songfilm production during fall 1948, Vallée speculated that, since ‘Disney has recently dropped a great many [animators]’, and these individuals could now ‘be secured with their equipment at about one-twentieth the price Disney would pay them’ (Vallée, 1948e), they might be hired to add further camera movement to These Foolish Things, or create holiday-themed songfilms of popular Decca recordings such as Fred Waring’s ‘The Night before Christmas’ or Loretta Young’s ‘The Littlest Angel’. However, the transition from Tele-Art Productions to Vallée Video shifted resources increasingly toward live action productions, while stalled rights negotiations with Decca (Kapp, 1948) and Nyberg’s termination of their relationship in early 1949 (Nyberg, 1949; Parker, 1949) effectively ended further work on illustrated songfilms. ⁵ Nonetheless, Vallée continued to pursue limited animation for productions from commercials to cartoon series, while importing new illustrators from the theatrical film sector who embraced more minimalist drawing styles.

Foregrounding the interstitial: Mixed messages in commercials and illustrated title art

Transitioning from a supplier of musical shorts to a full-service programming outfit, Vallée Video swiftly expanded into live-action content. In September 1948, the company announced it was ‘now busily engaged in the production of . . . half-hour comedy-dramas written, directed, enacted and photographed exclusively . . . for TV’, and had completed its inaugural film, College Days (Heigh-ho video, 1948). Starring Vallée as a college bandleader who wins the affections of the football coach’s daughter and leads his team to victory, the film was pitched as the first in a longer series that would feature different casts and subjects. However, this new emphasis on live-action content by no means signaled a disinvestment in animation labor. As Sito (2006: 223) notes, title and special effects houses increasingly turned to television after World War II and, as Spigel (2016) shows, were largely staffed by displaced studio animators. Cartoon commercials also proliferated, fueled by production models funded through commercial sponsorship and advertising sales, and drawn by animators whose menageries of corporate mascots were direct ‘descendants of the workings of Walt Disney’s and the Warner Brothers’ imagination’ (Samuel, 2001: 24–6). For his live action programs, Vallée relied heavily on these external companies for title work and commercial inserts, hiring ex-studio talent whose work retained traces of an earlier prewar style but also displayed new, postwar tendencies tailored to the small screen.

For title art, Vallée employed both freelance workers and established effects houses whose labors are preserved in a surviving College Days work print (1948) and compiled Vallée Video title reel (Vallée Video Production Titles, 1949). College Days titles featured caricatures by Disney artist Roy Williams, who trained at Chouinard, worked in Disney’s storyboard department, and gained later fame through appearances on The Mickey Mouse Club (Wood, 1956: 103). ⁶ Drawings were done in traditionally broad strokes and rounded lines, with strong dramatic qualities reflective of Williams’s Chouinard training – from coaches supervising football players in the midst of huddles and passes to cartoon versions of Vallée and love interest Lorry Raine seated on a blanket – setting up key themes and characters for the story to follow (College Days, 1948). However, many also included grotesque distortions of the human form and evinced what Spigel (2016: 33) describes as a ‘modern (often whimsical) style’ manifested in an ironic stance and playful incorporation of story elements into title letters. In Williams’s opening card, for instance, the ‘C’ in ‘College Days’ is formed by a cheer squad captain leaping through the air with unnaturally arched back, while subsequent cards depict the writers as diminutive schoolchildren laboring beneath the stern gaze of a towering professor, a camera operator on tip-toes thrusting his lens at a busty brunette, and Williams himself as a hunched, apelike figure in a beret and artist’s smock, pondering his name in the credit line while rubbing his oversized chin (College Days, 1948) (Figure 4). Similar tendencies are evident in titles for Vallée’s (1949) production, At Home with Pansy the Horse, the first in an intended series (Vallée, 1949) based on Andy Mayo’s vaudeville act featuring comic quips by two men in a horse costume (Mayo and Van Savage, 2002). ⁷ For titles, Vallée hired Ray Mercer, whose production house had worked on studio and sponsored films since the 1930s (What’s new in equipment, 1952) and went on to do titles for popular shows like Wild Bill Hickok and Fireside Theatre (Ray Mercer and Company advertisement, 1952a, 1952b). While three-dimensional renderings of Pansy with long shadows and careful edge shading evoked a classical, prewar style, drawings of her limbs splayed at impossible angles incorporated more grotesque elements, while those of her strutting proudly beneath Vallée’s name as producer, or of a jockey driving her onward under the name of the film’s director, engaged in a more whimsical commentary with reflexive modernist undertones (Vallée Video Production Titles, 1949).

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Figure 4.

For title art on his live action film, College Days (1948), Vallée hired Disney artist Roy Williams, whose illustrations fused story elements with the design of the title lettering and offered tongue-in-cheek commentary on the larger production process. Motion Picture Collection, UCLA Film and Television Archive. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

For his commercials, Vallée contracted with Five Star Productions, which by spring 1949 claimed over 1,000 television and theatre advertisements and half a dozen children’s cartoons (Five Star Productions advertisement, 1949), plus several sponsored films and effects work such as the flight scenes for Columbia’s Superman series (Five Star Productions advertisement, 1948). ⁸ Planned commercial work included sample advertisements for both College Days and a second live-action series with humorous stories adapted from the Reader’s Digest column, ‘Life in These United States’. In both cases, commercials were to be an extension of the Let’s Visit America! theatre advertisements that Five Star had designed for Coca Cola, which Vallée explained were 40-second spots placing the product within ‘a particular state and its industry or attractions . . . done in a cartoon style, with a touch of whimsy and comedy’ (Vallée, 1948f). ⁹ While negotiations with Reader’s Digest faltered prior to production, Vallée’s demo reel for College Days included the 40-second Five Star advertisement, ‘Let’s Visit America: Alabama on Parade!’ (College Days, 1948), created by former Disney animator Howard Swift under the guidance of executive producer Harry Wayne McMahan. ¹⁰ Explaining Five Star’s method in a 1949 trade article that he expanded for a later guidebook, McMahan highlighted the use of static characters to reduce costs and speed throughput, while substituting offscreen narration for slower and costlier ‘lip-synch dialogue’; however, since television privileged ‘the visual, supplemented by the aural’, maintaining visual interest was also essential, and ‘a series of 7 or 13’ spots on a unified theme would ‘avoid monotony’ from watching the same advertisement repeatedly (McMahan, 1949). Citing theatre advertisements as a ‘handy neighbor’ and instructive model, McMahan offered his Coke campaign as an example, which used a new state for each advertisement while maintaining a consistent ‘“Coca Cola is everywhere” theme’ (McMahan, 1957: 211).

McMahan’s technique is evident in College Day’s ‘Alabama on Parade’ insert (Figure 5). Moving from a continental map of the United States with a cartoon train racing across it to an aerial view of the state and illustrations of its key industries and landmarks, the spot then proceeds through shots of a couple on a garden path holding bottles of soda as an offscreen narrator explains that Alabama is known not only for its tourism and agriculture, but also for its abundance of Coca Cola. Cutting to an image of a Coke bottle perched atop the globe with the company’s iconic Sprite Boy leaning out from behind it, an explosion then fills the screen to take the spot into its end slate, while the announcer exhorts the viewer to ‘enjoy the pause that refreshes with Coke!’ (College Days, 1948). ¹¹ While the opening cartographic shots employ a classic Disney style reminiscent of scenes from Dumbo, the section on state industries and landmarks marks a stylistic pivot point. Realistically rendered images of a blacksmith with rounded muscles and careful edge shading are followed by curved figures of more fanciful but stylistically congruous anthropomorphic vegetables that recall the Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939) and similar productions but stand in stark contrast to a third shot, which features a barely completed outline of the state mansion drawn in the style of an unfinished background sketch. The garden scene stages further departures from the life-drawing techniques of the prewar period, with vaguely defined flowers and trees painted in barest detail, while the realistic curves of the earlier blacksmith are abandoned for the strolling couple in favor of angular outlines without edge shading or finer ink work. Fades, wipes, and irises add visual interest, but the advertisement uses no character animation and relies entirely on still images except for the explosion, which radiates outward in jagged, concentric circles rendered at a reduced frame rate. In the course of 40 seconds, Five Star’s advertisement thus heralds not only Coca Cola’s global product reach but also an equally portentous movement from a classical animation style to the stylized minimalism championed by McMahan and his contemporaries. As Vallée stepped up his programming operations, his commitment to this style continued, expanding beyond the interstitial spaces of title cards and commercial inserts to original cartoon series.

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Figure 5.

In addition to their camerawork on his songfilms, Vallée also hired Five Star Productions to create cartoon commercials for his live-action productions. A surviving workprint for College Days (1948) includes a sample advertisement in the style of Five Star’s Let’s Visit America theatrical advertisement series for the Coca Cola Company. Straddling prewar and postwar drawing styles, the advertisement mixes traditional, well-defined character drawings with clear outlines and rounded lines (see top panels) with postwar styles done in rougher sketches with sharper lines and sparser detail (lower panels). Motion Picture Collection, UCLA Film and Television Archive. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

Tele-Comics and the rise of made-for-television cartoons

In addition to employing studio animators for effects work on his songfilms and production of titles and commercials for his live action programming, Vallée also explored possibilities for an original television cartoon series, turning again to Disney workers for assistance. By December 1948, a pilot was in development (Vallée Video, 1952), and in January 1949 Vallée Video announced that it had ‘wound its first in a series of 15-minute cartoon films for television’. Titled Tele-Comics, the program included four 3-minute cartoons with room for three 1-minute commercials, in an intended five-a-week format (Vallée Video asks $7,500 weekly, 1949). Billed as the creation of Cal Howard, ‘one of the top animators, formerly with Walt Disney’, who contributed to and ‘supervises the over-all production’ (Tele-Comics catalogue description, 1949), the series continued the songfilm technique of using still images in the style ‘of the comic strips as they appear in your daily papers’. Camera effects were added for visual interest, while dialogue and offscreen sounds helped convey needed narrative information. ¹² A pilot episode was produced, though no print survives; however, original artwork and shooting scripts enable detailed reconstruction, revealing continued embrace of limited animation but also vestiges of a prewar style that worked in tension with emerging postwar techniques.

Vallée’s was one of several telecomics series developed in the late 1940s that all bore striking stylistic affinities. Launched by Disney artist Dick Moores in March 1945, Telecomics, Inc. of Hollywood announced production of ‘quarter-hour comic-strip serial type films’ in 1946 (Allied Arts, 1946) and, by 1947, had completed a pilot with fellow ex-Disney artist Jack Boyd to screen for prospective buyers (Comic strips in stampede to tele fold, 1947). Hiring Hollywood agent James Saphier, the company secured a network contract in 1950 for a daily 15-minute program of four cartoons titled NBC Comics (Wile, 1950), with Saphier as producer (Madden, 1950). ¹³ NBC touted the series as cheap but compelling entertainment that eschewed character animation for a cost of only $1,400 per episode, but through ‘sound effects, camera panning, zooms [and] closeups . . . bring[s] the static comic strip to a level which is at once exciting and suspenseful’ (Madden, 1950). ¹⁴ A separate New York-based Telecomics, Inc. was also launched in March 1945 by Stephen Slesinger (Slesinger forms two 16mm companies, 1945), who sought to leverage his syndicated newspaper comics through televised series produced in a similar style. Announcing plans in April 1947 for 150 5-minute episodes of a series based on Zane Grey’s King of the Royal Mounted, Slesinger described this style as incorporating ‘special optical effects, camera movements, fades, dissolves and wipes which give the semblance of animation without using expensive animation technique’ (Air-tele package deal for comic strip signed by Ayer, 1947), and showcased his method in a special Christmas Eve broadcast over CBS stations several months later (Slesinger will televise cartoons in new mode, 1947). While the exact origins of Vallée’s series are unknown, he actively tracked Slesinger’s progress and pursued techniques for his own Tele-Comics similar to both Slesinger and Moores. ¹⁵

Cartoons for Vallée’s series included ‘Joey and Jug’ (the adventures of two circus clowns, drawn by former Fleischer and MGM animator Arnold Gillespie), ‘Sa-Lih’ (a sultan’s son’s quest to expose a plot against his father, by AJ Metcalfe), ‘Rick Rack, Special Agent’ (crimefighting tales by former Disney animator Miles Pike and ex-Fleischer, Disney, and MGM artist Peter Burness) and ‘Brother Goose’ (stories from Mother Goose’s unsung sibling, drawn by Howard). ¹⁶ Shooting scripts for each cartoon contain detailed audio cues and information on use of accompanying illustrations, with Metcalfe’s drawings assigned specific shot numbers and Howard’s scripts including field guides and camera directions. Each cartoon was created from four to eight source drawings, with closeups, zooms, cuts and dissolves used to isolate salient details that were backed with recorded dialogue, music, and sound effects. ‘Rick Rack’, for instance, starts with theme music and an opening announcement, then cuts from Rick in the office of the police chief to a local bank with sounds of crowd noise, then to a counterfeiter escaping in a cab with a background of street noises, then back to the announcer to close (‘Rick Rack’, 1948b) (Figure 6). Joey and Jug, who prank a circus elephant by soaping his water trough, incorporates sounds of splashing and gasping, as well as the two clowns running, which supplement the dialogue to focus narrative attention and suggest offscreen action (‘Joey and Jug’, 1948b) (Figure 7). Among the four, ‘Rick Rack’ is visually distinctive, with sharply angled character outlines, heavily stylized shadows, and only the slightest hints of facial features in keeping with its noir theme (‘Rick Rack’, 1948a). The other three cartoons use rounded lines and expressive faces familiar from Disney and Fleischer animations, from the swooping turban and furrowed brow of Sa-Lih’s father to Joey and Jug’s billowing clown costumes and painted mouths or Brother Goose’s puffy eyebrows and shiny round nose (‘Brother Goose’, 1948a; ‘Joey and Jug’, 1948a; ‘Sa-Lih’, 1948a). These illustrations also employ careful shading and line work, from delicate highlights on jewels and gold chains in ‘Sa-Lih’ to detailed woodwork on the water trough in ‘Joey and Jug’ or the titular character’s home in ‘Brother Goose’ – vestiges of prewar drawing styles that stand at sharp odds with the limited animation techniques used to set these stories in motion.

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Figure 6.

‘Rick Rack’, the first cartoon in Vallée’s Tele-Comics (1948), was created by former Disney artists Miles Pike and Pete Burness. Original artwork shows Rick being assigned a counterfeit case by the police chief, followed by the counterfeiter changing bad bills at a local bank. No character animation is employed, with the same drawings instead photographed at different shot scales with various camera movements, backed with music, dialogue, and sound effects. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

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Figure 7.

The opening instalment of Tele-Comics ‘Joey and Jug’ cartoon, created by former Fleischer and MGM animator Arnold Gillespie, featured the misadventures of two circus clowns as they soap an elephant’s water trough and stand back to enjoy the results of their prank. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

To speed production and control costs, the same images were photographed at different camera distances, with analytical editing used to break down salient aspects of scenes and stage conversations between characters. Sa-Lih’s conversations and reaction shots, for instance, are created from just four drawings of its main character, facing up or down to the left or right, and only one drawing of each of his three interlocutors, which are cut together in conventional shot/reverse shot editing style (‘Sa-Lih’, 1948a, 1948b) (Figure 8). Howard’s cartoon opens with shots of an initial drawing of Brother Goose’s distant hilltop abode, with children Jacky and Judy running with their dog Smack in the foreground, plus a second, more detailed drawing of the home at larger scale. Starting with a tighter shot of the first drawing showing only the house, the film zooms in and dissolves to the second drawing of the house in closeup, then cuts back to the first drawing to now show the children, followed by tighter shots of each child as the narrator introduces them by name. A third drawing of Jacky knocking on Brother’s Goose’s door uses an overlay of a closed door that covers an underlying drawing of the door open with the host peering out, while two additional drawings show Judy and Smack laughing, and Smack in various poses on the ground. Once the children reach the house, shots cut from Jacky knocking on the closed door while looking away at Judy to tighter shots from the drawing of Judy and Smack that show them each laughing, followed by closeups of Smack rolling on the ground. The viewer is brought in on the joke with a cut back to the shot of the distracted Jacky, with door overlay now removed to show it open and Jacky rapping Brother Goose on his large nose (Figure 9). A closing exchange with Jacky apologizing to Brother Goose is created through alternating shots of each figure from a final drawing of them facing each other, employing the same shot/reverse pattern used in ‘Sa-Lih’ (‘Brother Goose’, 1948a, 1948b).

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Figure 8.

Drawings for the third Tele-Comics cartoon, ‘Sa-Lih’, by AJ Metcalfe, included notes on intended shot order, with lines of dialogue from a corresponding shooting script and instructions to reuse drawings for multiple shots written in alongside the images. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

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Figure 9.

The final Tele-Comics cartoon, ‘Brother Goose’, was drawn by former Disney animator Cal Howard, who was also credited with overseeing production on the series as a whole. Featuring stories by Mother Goose’s lesser-known sibling, the opening instalment follows characters Judy and Jacky as they arrive at Brother Goose’s home and knock on his front door. The shooting script includes field guides for the animators indicating which areas of the final layout were to be photographed for each shot, as well as instructions for placement of an insert designed to be overlaid on another drawing to allow its reuse in multiple scenes. Rudy Vallée Papers, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks Library. Reproduced with permissions from the Rudy Vallée Estate.

While the more radical potential of the telecomics style was carefully modulated through use of familiar prewar drawing techniques and classical Hollywood editing patterns, as with Vallée’s illustrated songfilms and animated commercials, its minimalist aesthetic served as both an economizing measure and sign of televisual distinction. The product of a new market for animated works, this embrace of limited animation was enabled by shifting industrial conditions in the postwar film and television industries that encouraged flows of animation labor across sectors and opened new spaces for aesthetic experimentation. Analyzing Vallée’s own creative output in close-up, from songfilms to telecomics, enables enriched understandings of shifts in mid-century animation, revealing on-the-ground strategies used by producers within the burgeoning US television industry to shape and navigate this postwar transition.

Conclusion: Drawing new lines for mid-century animation history

Demonstrating television’s role as an employment pipeline for animation workers facing market contraction in the theatrical sector, Vallée Video productions also reveal the medium’s participation in broader stylistic transformations. Stylistic norms for television animation, as we have elaborated above, were influenced by a combination of economic factors, labor relations and professional sensibilities. Economically, the expansion of the nascent television industry enabled existing animation studios to reposition themselves in response to financial downtowns in the theatrical market, while also creating openings for independent telefilm producers like Vallée. Seeking to capitalize on broadcasters’ need for a steady supply of inexpensive programming content, Vallée Video was one of many companies to employ displaced animation workers in jobs ranging from camera effects to title art, commercial production and original cartoon series. These workers benefited from the labor actions of SCG and other unions, which won them growing professional recognition, and they enjoyed formal training at art schools like Chouinard that shaped their sensibilities, giving them foundational skills in classical drawing while also exposing them to broader modernist influences. The embrace of limited animation and minimalist drawing styles by companies like Vallée’s was driven in part by the economic need for swift product turnaround at low price points, but Vallée’s concomitant bids for aesthetic distinction were not merely empty marketing gestures. Rather, his steadfast celebration of animators’ talents and innovations also spoke to real gains in their creative status during the 1940s and affinities with emerging aesthetic trends that cut across postwar arts and culture.

While academics have traditionally treated different media as separate and discrete areas of study, examples such as Vallée’s remind us that media history is always porous, and boundaries between different media systems can never be assumed on any a priori basis. In addition, while periods of industrial transition often yield fertile grounds for aesthetic experimentation, new styles do not emerge cut from whole cloth but are formed, instead, through an aesthetic intermingling of multiple, co-present and often competing stylistic tendencies. Finally, while US television history is often told in broad strokes emphasizing larger network-level activities, the terrain of early television production was in fact a highly variegated one, with hundreds of smaller specialty houses and freelancers operating in complex and variable combinations that demand closer consideration. Observing these principles of media-agnosticism, stylistic hybridity and micro-historical analysis, our study of Vallée Video has highlighted the porousness between and labor flows across postwar entertainment industries, the coexistence of multiple and at times conflicting stylistic tendencies within Vallée’s productions and the need for close analysis of the dynamic and flexible labor structures that characterized the emerging markets in which Vallée and his contracted artists and production houses participated. Straddling multiple media and shifting regimes of production, cases like Vallée Video afford opportunities for enriched understanding of industrial and aesthetic transformations in mid-century animation whose impact on popular media culture was felt for years to come.