Best Comic: More TerryToons Background Artwork

Monday, January 27, 2014

More TerryToons Background Artwork

As promised, another post on the amazing background artwork from the Terrytoon studios, created for their theatrical animated shorts from the 1940s. Beside Mighty Mouse, they had several other funny characters that became pretty succesful, like the magpies Heckle and Jeckle and Gandy Goose and Sourpuss.

Paul Terry had been producing a series of theatrical animated shorts starring Farmer Al Falfa since 1915. It was in the Mannie Davis directed short The Talking Magpies in January 1946 that introduced Heckle and Jeckle. Between 1946 and 1966 the duo starred in 52 theatrical shorts. As with the Mighty Mouse cartoons, these were all directed by either Connie rasinksi, Eddie Donnelly or Mannie Davis. In 1979 Lou scheimers Filmation picked up the characters for their TV show The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. Again, production numbers as used around the studio, were provided on the artwork in the top left corner, the relevant scene numbers in the top right corner, above the pegholes.

Four backgrounds from Heckle and Jeckle short Cat Trouble, released on April 11, 1947:

Three backgrounds from the Heckle and Jeckle short The Intruders, released on May 9, 1947:

Below a series of background artworks created for Terrytoons Gandy Goose shorts. Between 1939 and 1955, the studio created at least fifty of these animations. Now, for those of you unaware of Gandy, first off heres some great original cover artwork with the funny fella by one of the Terrytoon studio members (Gandy was usually accompanied by Sourpuss, but he wasnt included in this gag):

Below are three backgrounds from Gandys war time era short Camouflage (written by John Foster and directed by Eddie Donnelly) which was released on August 27, 1943:

More war time era shorts! Here are three backgrounds from Mopping Up from 1943:

Below two more backgrounds from 1943 short Scrap for Victory:

Below a background from The Last Roundup The Beerbarrels are used in this scene by Hitler (portrayed as a pig) and Mussolini (portrayed as a monkey) to hide behind when Sourpuss and Gandy are shooting up their mountaintop castle: