Jerry Beck Interview

JERRY BECK AND THE FIFTY GREATEST CARTOONS (?!?!?)

Animation's most celebrated historian and the book which could launch a thousand debates

by Michelle Klein-Häss

It is arguable that Jerry Beck made it safe for adults to say they like cartoons. When he and Will Friedwald came out with the exhaustively researched and scholarly book "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies," there really was nothing like it in the bookstores. And the book that he co-authored with Leonard Maltin, "Of Mice And Magic," is considered the seminal historical overview of animation. And these books are only the beginning of the story. With Carl Macek, Beck founded Streamline Pictures and pretty much introduced American adult audiences to the decidedly non-kiddie oriented world of Anime. He has worked in above-the-line capacities on a handful of animated series, including the current syndicated Baby Huey series for Harvey Comics Animation. He is the one who compiled the excellent Warner Bros. and MGM cartoon videodisc packages for MGM-UA Home Video. And now he's preparing for a new role at the newly-created Nickelodeon Films as advisor on animated projects.

And oh yeah...he has a book out now. A book that might land him in the thick of a lot of controversy. Any book that calls itself "The Fifty Greatest Cartoons" is bound to stir animation fans up. Beck is braced for the inevitable storm.

"A woman named Laurie Stein thought up the concept...she's my editor and also she's a book packager. She comes up with concepts like this one and goes to publishers to sell it....I worked with her on the Looney Tunes book and also on "I Taw I Taw A Puddy Tat," the book I did on Tweety Bird. She went around to various publishers and eventually sold Turner (Publishing) on the concept. She then called me and asked if I could put the text together for it. I wound up taking on a lot of the task of getting illustrations together for the book...I like to have illustrations in a book which not only enhance the text but are also historically accurate. What happened next was that Laurie sent out a poll to all the United States chapters of ASIFA [the international animation society] and to a lot of animation studios and other interested parties. We got back something like a thousand of these ballots, and we compiled a consensus from them. The first fifty of the consensus list made it into the book."

Since the book is the product of a survey, it is not any one person's opinion. Beck took great pains to clear up any misconception that the list might be a statement of his own opinions about theatrical cartoons.

"There are a lot of titles that I myself don't agree with. There are a lot of titles that many people won't agree with. It's a consensus; I don't think that there's going to be anyone out there who will agree with it all. But actually it's pretty fair, all things considered. There are so many people who have come up to me and asked me 'What cartoons are you going to put on your list,' 'How's your book going'...all as if this is my personal opinion. This book is definately not 'Jerry Beck's top 50.'So I said to my editor and to the people at Turner, 'Please, please...change all the paperwork to say that I am the editor of this book, not the author.' It makes more sense that I'm the editor and not the author."

The book features comments from many of the animation community's leading lights, both from the realm of actual animators and from animation critics and historians. Everyone from John K. to Leonard Maltin had something to say about one cartoon or another.

Even though there are fifty cartoons synopsized in this book, Beck suggests that the surface has not even been scratched.

"We have a runner-up list at the end of the book. The thing is, if you did a book listing the hundred greatest cartoons you'd not be able to cover every cartoon worth talking about. If we did a sequel to this book, we'd still leave out a lot of great cartoons. If you just take the Golden Age of Hollywood cartoons, say from 1935 to 1952 or something like that, I would estimate that there are something like 300 great -- and I mean great, not just good -- cartoons."

As well as preparing for his new role at Nickelodeon Films, Beck is now also devoting his attention to a new book project, this time about Famous Studios, the cartoon studio which emerged from the ashes of Fleischer Studios.

"This is a personal project...some people laugh when I tell them I want to do a book about [Famous Studios] but I feel they fill a definite niche in animation history. They've been overlooked. They weren't a great animation studio when compared with Warners or Disney, for example...I've always had a personal interest in the studio, and it's been ignored by animation historians. Granted, it's not Fleischer Studios. They never got nominated for any Academy Awards. But they've done some good work...even a few cartoons I'd rank as being great.

"I've had incredible access to information about the studio...people who worked there, legal papers, illustrations...I have a great deal of information about the studio that nobody else has and I feel a real responsibility to put together a book about them. I'll be interviewing some of the surviving people from Famous, and digging through my files, Paramount's files and the material which is now in the possession of Harvey Comics, where I was working when I was involved in the new Baby Huey series. I've already got some interviews done for it now. In fact, I'm going to be curating a retrospective on Famous for the New York Museum of Modern Art, and it will be screening in early 1995. [It was presented in February 1995...--.\\<-H--] That'll start it all off. I hope to get some of the veterans of Famous to make personal appearances."

So Beck definately has his hands full. And as busy as he is, he still is approached by people in the biz who look to him to answer questions and settle disputes about animation history. In fact, some consider him to be the foremost expert on animation in the United States...a thought which makes him laugh.

"I'm just a fan of animation just like you are...I guess I just became a fan earlier than most people who are now into animation. I just made myself knowledgeable on the subject. I could have become interested in any number of things, but as an artist and a film buff I gravitated to animation. And now something we've all dreamed about has happened...animation has become popular. More people don't just dismiss cartoons as being kid stuff. So I'm now in a position where my knowledge is useful to the industry. It feels good. I feel vindicated."