50s Design Fun From John Sutherland

I enjoy the work (that I’ve seen) of the John Sutherland studio, and I enjoy some of the drawing style used in commercial and some of the theatrical cartoons put out in the 1950s. So I really like the artwork in The Story of Creative Capital, a 1957 Sutherland industrial film.

The layouts are by Vic Haboush, who started with Disney, and the backgrounds are by Joe Montell, who was in the Tex Avery unit at MGM. Both of them ended up at Hanna-Barbera.

Forgive the low resolution, but here are some of the backgrounds.



Montell worked on Avery’s Farm of Tomorrow, by the way.



This particular short has been restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation. You can go HERE and watch the film.

Incidentally, there are three voice actors on this cartoon but only Marvin Miller gets credited. Daws Butler is Alf the Elf and Herb Vigran is Richard Van Winkle. Vigran worked on a number of Sutherland productions. And this post gives me an excuse to divert the topic for a moment and post a couple of photos I have of Marvin Miller.



My thanks to Mark Heimback-Nielsen who posted a note on Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research Facebook page about this short.