Animation director, co-creator of Tom and Jerry, The
Flintstones, Yogi Bear and other characters. Born Melrose,
New Mexico, July 14, 1910. Died Los Angeles, March 22, 2001,
aged 90.
William Hanna has a few things in common with Walt Disney.
Like Disney, he was (by his own admission) "never a
good artist", yet he co-founded an empire based on
animated cartoons which has proven consistently popular
for over 60 years. Hanna and Joseph Barbera formed one of
the most consistently successful partnerships in show business
history.
Again like Disney, they were innovators. Hanna-Barbera
Studios, staffed with some of the top animators and writers
in the business, would not merely follow television trends,
but continually shape them, ensuring that every generation
from the baby boomers onwards can claim to have grown up
with their work. They produced "The Huckleberry Hound
Show" in the fifties; "The Flintstones" and
"Scooby Doo" in the sixties; "Dynomutt"
and "The Superfriends" in the seventies; "The
Smurfs" and "Go-Bots" in the eighties; and
the feature film "Once Upon a Forest" in the nineties.
In all, they produced over 80 animated television shows,
comprising 3,000 episodes.
Hanna had entered the animation business through a friend,
working for pioneer animator Leon Schlesinger. In 1930,
after Schlesinger took his studio (and most of his staff)
to Warner Bros, Hanna signed on with Harman-Ising Studios,
writing songs and working in the story department.
Harman-Ising set up shop at MGM, where Hanna directed his
first short, "To Spring", in 1936. At MGM, he
met Joseph Barbera, a talented animator whose drawings compensated
for Hanna's own weaknesses in that field. Their first collaborative
effort, "Puss Gets the Boot" (1940), introduced
the characters of Tom and Jerry. It was a great success,
leading to an Oscar nomination and a series of cartoons
featuring the spats between a frustrated cat and a cheerful
mouse. "The writing-directing team," wrote critic
Leonard Maltin, "may hold a record for producing consistently
superior cartoons using the same characters year after year,
without a break or change in routine."
Over the next 17 years, Tom and Jerry would win seven Oscars,
and the characters would even mix with live-action stars,
dancing with Gene Kelly in "Anchors Aweigh" and
swimming with Esther Williams in "Dangerous When Wet".
When not devising new cat-and-mouse fights, the Hanna-Barbera
team co-directed several other MGM shorts, with Hanna supplying
personality and comic timing, and Barbera providing ingenious
gags and proficient artwork.
Tom and Jerry continued in their merry way until 1957,
when - like many studios - MGM closed down their animation
unit to focus on television. Unemployed, the two animators
pooled their resources to form Hanna-Barbera Studios, making
cartoons exclusively for television using a "limited"
animation style. According to "Ren & Stimpy"
creator John Kricfalusi (a Hanna-Barbera alumnus), "They
saved everybody's job. They started doing cartoons for $3,000
instead of $30,000 by using less cels per second."
Hanna-Barbera introduced this budget system in "The
Ruff and Reddy Show" (1957), about a dog and a cat
who happen to be good friends. Though produced in colour,
the show was made on a shoestring, allowing them the time
and expenses to churn out several episodes a year. The elaborate
visual gags of their cinema cartoons were replaced by a
humour based around wit and sophisticated stories, while
drawings were fairly basic, sometimes to the indignation
of critics. "The Flintstones" was described by
The New Yorker as "an inked disaster", and Hanna-Barbera's
detractors still accuse them of cheapening rather than saving
the artform.
In general, however, their work was recognised as an exciting
addition to the medium. "The Huckleberry Hound Show"
(which also introduced the "smarter-than-average"
Yogi Bear) became the first cartoon to win an Emmy, surprising
many by attracting a substantial following among adults.
The best was to come. "The Flintstones", which
began its seven-year run in 1960, took the concept of a
suburban sitcom and moved it to the Stone Age, complete
with animal-driven machinery and newspapers carved in stone.
With its clever scripts, it was the first (and until "The
Simpsons", the longest-running) prime-time animated
series. Now in syndication, barely a minute goes by when
it is not being shown somewhere in the world. (It inspired
their later series "The Jetsons", about a Space
Age family, and the short-lived "The Roman Hollidays",
about ancient Roman suburbanites.)
Meanwhile, Hanna kept in touch with youth trends through
his own children (and later, grandchildren). As they grew
older during the sixties, he focused on the teen market,
branching out from proven comedy series such as "Top
Cat" and "Wally Gator" to straight-faced
action cartoons like "Jonny Quest" and "The
Herculoids". The catchy theme songs, characteristic
of Hanna-Barbera Productions (and usually co-written by
Hanna), took the next logical step with numerous cartoons
based around rock bands ("The Catanooga Cats",
"Josie and the Pussycats", "Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kids").
Meanwhile, the cult comedy-adventure series "Scooby
Doo, Where Are You?" (1969) aimed to capture, in Hanna's
words, "the sound as well as the look of the period
in all of its flower power". Nonetheless, it would
prove timeless, becoming television's longest-running cartoon
series.
By the 1970s, when the studio was sold to the Taft Corporation,
Hanna-Barbera were producing eight half-hour shows a week,
courtesy of 2000 staff, and generating huge amounts of merchandise.
During its history, the studio would win eight Emmies, including
the prestigious Governor's Award in 1988.
Hanna remained an indefatigable presence in the studio,
even playing a cameo role in the popular (but critically
maligned) live-action "Flintstones" movie (1994),
on which he was also executive producer. A few months ago,
due to poor health, he stopped working at the studio.
"He was one of the most dynamic production persons
I've ever known in my life," said Jean MacCurdy, president
of animation at Warner Bros (which now owns Hanna-Barbera).
"We all learned so much from this man."
He is survived by his wife Violet and by two children,
as well as by his inseparable creative partner, Joseph Barbera,
who shared his energy, and still chairs Hanna-Barbera Studios
at the age of 90.
