A Cast of Friends

Rating:
Summary: Cartoons, Ltd
Review: This ghosted autobiography is recommended to anyone interested in how the Hollywood animation industry of the golden age adapted to the labour-intensive demands of television. As one half of the Hanna-Barbera team that created Tom and Jerry for MGM in the forties and pioneered low-budget, high-output TV animation in the fifties, Bill Hanna has much of interest to say about the economic aspects of an artform that, during this period, was largely transformed by commercial concerns. However, if lively insight into the creative process is what you're looking for, this book is not for you. Hanna is essentially a business man, with his partner Joe Barbera apparently handling the creative side. The pleasure he takes in relating the building of H-B as a successful studio makes satisfying reading, but one often has the impression that he could have been involved in virtually any business -- it just happened to be animation. Therefore, the decline in quality from the early H-B TV shows onward is defended on the grounds that numerous jobs were created by the new conveyor-belt process, while the comparatively bland nature of so much latterday Saturday morning product (the early TV shows are great in their way) is justified on the grounds that it is "wholesome" (a favourite word), as if cartoons should only be made for young children. Hanna's philosophy is probably acceptable within the context of H-B's juvenile TV work, but falls down when he tries to present it as a continuation of the MGM shorts, where Tom and Jerry's more universal appeal was based partly on the artistry and expense with which their adventures were presented and partly on the fact that their relationship was the antithesis of wholesome -- violent and antagonistic to the end (and certainly not one of Hanna's "cast of friends" in spite of the uncharacteristic picture of them on the cover). I've previously found it hard to reconcile the high standards and complexity of the Tom and Jerrys with the worst of latter-day H-B, yet, between-the-lines, this honest account helps to explain the connection. It also acts as a reminder of how commercial demands can upend even the most successful of artistic ventures.