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.

Joe Montell's Mars

Some opening backgrounds from the great John Sutherland industrial film “Destination Earth.” Joe Montell handled all the backgrounds from layouts by Tom Oreb and Vic Haboush. I believe Oreb did the Martial scenes and Haboush the Earth ones. Sorry they’re so small and fuzzy.



Montell had been a background artist for Tex Avery at MGM until the Avery unit closed in 1953. He went on to Hanna-Barbera and then worked for Jay Ward in Mexico. You can read more about Montell’s career HERE.

A Devil of a Cartoon

The devil disguises himself as a tycoon at a swank dinner between a business baron and John Q. Public in “The Devil and John Q,” a 1952 John Sutherland anti-Communism short.

Here are some poses as the devil (devil = Godless Communism) tries to con the pair into keeping profits high (“and keep labour right under our thumb”), then reacts to John Q’s counter argument about high prices causing inflation. See the eye stretch as the businessman is shocked.



Variety explained a little about Sutherland’s operation at the time this short was made. MGM had released six of Sutherland’s shorts before their deal was quietly ended. The last Sutherland cartoon put into theatres by Metro was “Inside Cackle Corners” as of November 10, 1951. This story was published on February 28, 1952.

Industrial Film Prod’n Booms For Sutherland
In an expansion of industrial film activities, John Sutherland Productions is prepping a 45-minute feature for National Carbon Co., and a 30-minute feature for Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Co. Carbon Co. picture will be filmed in color, on subject of industrial public relations, and is for use by its sponsor both on TV and before groups. Kaiser film will be in 16m Kodachrome, and combo live-action and animation.
Sutherland is now doing final editing on an animated film turned out in Technicolor for the NY Stock Exchange, tagged “What Makes Us Tick.” Two additional Technicolor animation shorts also are being started for program which Metro in the past has released. First is “Dear Uncle,” dealing with taxes, and second, “The Devil and John Q,” on inflation.
Three previous shorts in this series received awards from Freedom’s Foundation in Valley Forge, for achievements showing the American way of life. Trio included “Make Mine Freedom,” which won the award in 1949; “Albert in Blunderland,” 1950 winner; and “Why Play Leapfrog,” 1951 winner.

The animation in this short was handled by Arnold Gillespie, Emery Hawkins, Bill Higgins and Russ Van Neida. There’s a great opening theme with blaring trumpets by Les Baxter. Sutherland seems to have had a stock company of voice actors around this time. Frank Nelson is terrific as the devil. I don’t know who is voicing John Q, but you can hear Bud Hiestand, Herb Vigran and someone I’m pretty sure is Harry Morgan (as Abe Lincoln) on the soundtrack.

Ism!

No sooner did the John Sutherland studio cancel its contract with United Artists because of its inability to make a profit on cartoons than it signed a deal with Harding College for three animated educational shorts (Variety, Jan. 17 and 29, 1947). But the studio wasn’t out of the theatrical cartoon business yet.

MGM was looking to save some money, too, and announced in early February 1948 it would release the first in the series of Sutherland shorts, “Make Mine Freedom,” and that it would use part of its Technicolor commitment on the prints. The cartoon went into national release on March 10th. The film received the ringing endorsement of the American Legion’s Americanism Commission (Variety, May 28, 1948) and won the Freedom Foundation’s Achievement award in 1949. The cartoon wasn’t subtle. It was a denouncement of Communism and a celebration of Capitalism, with worker, management and politician working together for the betterment of America.

The first Sutherland cartoons look like a cross between Lantz and Columbia designs, with much of the animation on twos, like in a Warners cartoon. But the poses and some of the animation is great to look at because of the quality people Sutherland picked up from other studios. Here are a few of the neat little poses on Professor Utopia, as he pushes his “Ism” as a cure-all for the ills of labour, management, government and farmers. There’s a nice little bit of animation where he lets go of the bottle of Ism only two catch it before it falls too far.



There are no credits on this cartoon, but former MGMers Carl Urbano and George Gordon were directing at the studio. Gerry Nevius (Disney) and Ed Starr (Columbia) were the early layout and background artists and Arnold Gillespie (MGM), Emery Hawkins (Warners), Armin Shaffer (assistant, Disney) and Bill Higgins (assistant, MGM) were among the Sutherland animators around 1950 or so. Ignore internet sources that claim Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had anything to do with this cartoon; it was made by Sutherland’s staff.

Sutherland didn’t cheap out on voice talent. There are at least a half dozen actors in this cartoon, with Frank Nelson as Dr. Utopia. Bud Hiestand narrates and if I’m correct, you can also hear the voices of Billy Bletcher, Stan Freberg and John Brown, among others. Voice historian Keith Scott has pointed out Hiestand narrated a number of Sutherland’s propaganda shorts.

MGM released five more Sutherland shorts after “Make Mine Freedom,” but the second-last one caused a controversy. “Fresh Laid Plans” cost $80,000 to produce and was released on January 21, 1951. Some felt it was an attack on U.S. government aid to agriculture.Weekly Variety of March 21st reported:

Metro Won’t Yank Cartoon In Farm Rap
Metro is sticking to its guns in releasing “Fresh Laid Plans,” cartoon short over which has developed a political controversy. M-G distribution vice-president William F. Rodgers stated in N. Y. yesterday (Tues.) the distrib has no intention of withdrawing the one-reeler from circulation.
Recognizing the uproar which “Plans” has caused, Rodgers issued a formal press statement identifying the M-G position.
He asserted: “‘Fresh Laid Plans’ is fifth in this series of patriotic cartoons which we have released. It was submitted to us by Harding College as were its four predecessors, and we released it because, like the others, we believed it to be interesting and entertaining to moviegoers.
“As a matter of fact we had received such favorable comment on the other cartoons, all of which dealt with similar subjects in the public interest, that our acceptance of ‘Fresh Laid Plans’ was routine.” “Plans” and other four shorts which Rodgers referred to all were produced in Hollywood by John Sutherland, for Harding. M-G serves only as the distributor, as it would with any other indie producer with whom it enters a releasing pact.
Touching off the fireworks in the “Plans” instance, however, is the fact the short has been interpreted in some quarters as treating of Government agricultural planning in satirical fashion. Carrying this thought still further, Alfred D. Stedman, farm editor of the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, questioned whether handling of the short might mean that a “big segment of the movie industry is going to bat to knock the Government out of agriculture.”
Stedman further branded “Plans” as a “one-sided editorial in pictures" and declared its purpose was to sway public opinion in a hotly-contested farm issue.
'Hits at Price System'

Editor alleged the short hits specifically at the farm production and prices system advanced by Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan, known popularly as the Brannan Plan. Also linked in the pic's production is the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which granted funds to the college for its lensing. Denials of the Stedman charges have been made by a spokesman for the Foundation, who said the film had neither the intent nor effect of satire, and by Sutherland. Producer said he merely tried to “point out the impossibility of planning our lives from a central authority.”
Other four cartoons made by Sutherland who, incidentally, formerly was associated with Walt Disney, were: “Make Mine Freedom,” dealing with free enterprise; “Meet King Joe,” concerning the capital-labor relationship; “Why Play Leap Frog,” focusing on prices and wages, and “Albert in Blunderland,” a satire on the Russian system. Three others now are in preparation, centering respectively on profits, taxes and inflation. M-G’s pacts with Harding have been on a single-pic basis. Distrib. has made no commitments for the future, as yet.

A week later, the ACLU backed Metro, saying it was concerned about censorship, and that Sutherland should be “free to express himself, and those who want to see the film, despite protests against it, should be free to do so.” But perhaps the controversy made MGM skittish. It waited 11 months to release one more Sutherland cartoon, “Inside Cackle Corners” (November 10, 1951). And that was the end of it. Sutherland continued making industrial films and TV commercials. MGM contented itself with Tom and Jerry.

Fun Fifties Cars

I love the designs in “Destination Earth.” It’s a mid-1950s propaganda cartoon for the oil industry made by the John Sutherland studio. Tom Oreb and Vic Haboush were brought in as designers.

The cars are parodies of the long, huge-finned vehicles that were de rigeur in the auto industry in the second half of the decade. Here are a few of them. The second one has Buick’s portholes and the fifth is based on the M.G., which were becoming popular then.



Part of a shot of a neighbourhood.



And here are more cars with neat character designs. Dig that crazy beatnik, Daddy-O!



Here’s a car at a gas station. A typical American family is inside. Wait! Where’s dad? Probably hard at work at the office after a four-martini lunch.



Look at all those happy, stylised people, thanks to big oil companies. Thanks, Corporate America!

Fred Finchley's Stylised World

Like a lot of studios, John Sutherland adapted to changes in animation as the 1950s wore on. There was a lot of MGM squash-and-stretch, one-drawing-per-frame animation in Sutherland’s industrial shorts in the late ‘40s. But with the rise of UPA in the ‘50s, designs and some of the movement became minimal. Fortunately, Sutherland dealt with well-heeled corporate clients, so I imagine he didn’t have to worry about costs and, therefore, his artists could concentrate on design and animation.

“Working Dollars” was made for the New York Stock Exchange in 1956. Even through these lousy screen grabs (oh, for a decent, restored version), you can see the flat style the studio was going for. I like the gopher munching on the money saved in a tin can underground. I wonder if that was a Bill Scott joke; he co-wrote the cartoon.



The layouts are by Bernie Gruver, who worked at Ray Patin and later at Playhouse Productions and for Bill Melendez, with backgrounds by Ed Starr, a long-time Sutherland employee who had come from the Screen Gems (Columbia) studio. The animation is by Emery Hawkins, George Cannata and Jim Pabian, who all seemed to bounce from studio to studio. Former MGM animator Carl Urbano is the director. Marvin Miller provides the voices. And although Sutherland did produce fully-scored cartoons, this one uses Jack Shaindlin’s stock cues from the Langlois Filmusic library.