No one (and I mean NO ONE) knows classic cartoons better than Mark Kausler. A veteran animator for Disney, Warner Bros., Cartoon Network, Bakshi, Spumco and others, Kausler has also been collecting animation for decades on 16mm and now plans to open his vault to screen selected examples from his archives on a regular basis at the Animation Guild in Burbank.

“The idea behind the “I Love Cartoons” program is to showcase the terrific artistry and passion found in the best hand-drawn and painted cartoon films,” says Kausler. “And when I say “films”, I mean it! The program will be exhibited on 16mm prints!”

“Drawn animation had a rhythmic flexibility and an intensity of facial expression very different from the often doll-like appearance of digitally produced animation. Cartoons occupied a special place between two and three dimensional design, and a direct route from the animator’s heart, through the pencil point, to the screen. I’ve always felt a tremendous empathetic reaction to hand-drawn cartoons. To fully appreciate them, you have to commit something of yourself, your imagination, while viewing them. It’s like appreciating radio programs that built stories and personalities out of sound, cartoons built characters and stories out of LINES.”

The first program, on Friday May 19th, is in four parts:

• The first is a “Newsreel Theater” show, four Hollywood cartoons selected at random – in the style of “Selected Short Subjects” and the old time ’20 Cartoon Matinees’?

• The second part is devoted to television and cartoons created for that medium. We will feature commercials animated by Rod Scribner and Bill Littlejohn, and a Tom Terrific serial called “Crabby Appleton’s Dragon”, drawn in part by Jim Tyer and directed by Gene Deitch.

• Part Three is devoted to cartoon films of Eastern and Western Europe, Tup-Tup from the Zagreb studio in Yugoslavia, one of the “Barnaby” cartoons produced by Halas and Batchelor of England in 1962, The Four Friends, a production of the Soyuzmultfilm studios in Russia and a “Cap’taine Sabord” cartoon from Vichy era France, directed by Andre Regal.

• Part Four is a tribute to the American Western in cartoon form. We’ll feature cartoons that carry the tropes of the B-Western with staging and slapstick never attempted by Roscoe Ates, Smiley Burnette or Leo Carillo.

Mark will introduce each section, discussing the directors, the studios and ill point out highlights to look for in each cartoon.

Admission is free, but seating is limited. Mark your calendar: The first program is May 19th at 6:30pm at The Animation Guild – 1105 N Hollywood Way, in Burbank, CA. See you there!

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Jerry Beck

Writer, cartoon producer and author of more than 15 books on animation history. A former studio exec with Nickelodeon and Disney; currently on the faculty at both CalArts in Valencia and Woodbury University in Burbank, California.

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