God Bless You Guys on yer website!!
Hokey Smokes — a QUICK reply from someone on a web site! jeez! Not a trend, I assure you, Brian! Of course, thanks for responding. And you have the very same enthusiasm as on the web site — another rarity!
Well, by golly, you have NOT endured the slings and arrows of outrageous journalism. My advice is, stay as you are! Don’t get into writing for publication, if you are indeed happy and are making money at something else. Appears you are doing very well for yourself. So you are a smart guy!
Oh wow! I must not have written clearly. Ha! No, I don’t recall WT (Walter Tetley) in any Disney cartoons. And I know he was not the guy in the live action “Absent Minded Professor.” (AMP) I know that. Heh. Guess I wasn’t plain enough. What I mean to say was I thought at the time that WT was the guy who played the cop in AMP. But years later, I found out it was another guy. And I can’t recall his name. So enough of that for now. I’ll check out AMP from the video store some time, and give you the guy’s name.
What else? Yes, June Foray, is a very pretty lady. When I intvd her I told her that the first time I heard her was on the Stan Frieberg satire record about the McCarthy Hearings, called “St. George & the Dragonette” or some such title. I told June that I imagined her a dark haired, brown eyed gal. Wow, I was 180 degrees out of phase on that one! There is a wonderful lady here in Minneapolis who does voices also, Muriel Shulman. I told her many times she should be in Hollywood. But alas, her family is here. So, that is a star-crossed thing! Muriel reminds me of June in that they can turn those voices on at the drop of hat in conversation!
Since I sent your e-mail, I also read on your web site about June Foray and Paul Frees. If you go to Barbera’s book (or is it Hannah’s) Heh. One or the other wrote a book about a year before he died. So that would be humm? Maybe up to three years back, I am guessing. In the book, are a whole bunch of photos. There is a photo of a YOUNG Paul Frees in the HB voice studio along with the other voice talent on some production. Gad, he looked young!
If you haven’t read that book by H or B, please read it. It talks about their life-long struggle trying to sell their cartoon series. Not at all a charmed life. They were hang-in-there-schleppermen type salesman who happened to be gifted cartoonists/storytellers. For they were unique in that they WROTE and also DREW their own stuff. I can think of no other such combo. Oh yah, Disney came up with the storylines, so the bio goes. But then he gave the massive job of cartooning to his labor pool of artists.
I love the way that H or B tells their story! One of my favorite books. As I have been there myself, trying to sell my photography/writing/voice talent to the swine as well. And by golly, that is what we wind up doing —
casting our pearls before swine!
Well, at 62 1/2, I am into moviemaking. Don’t care if I make a dime. Costs me hardly anything as I am shooting on videotape, running movies on local cable access, and we all have a good time. Have a really talented bunch of actors. Oh yeah, and if I got lucky, like going through the eye of the needle, and may a $ zillion, I will be also very happy! I’d give most of it to my actors.
Got two short movies done. Am working on a feature length, with another feature length in the works. Meanwhile, I still write for a living. Am old enought for $oc$ecurity and have an army pension going right now. So, I figure by birthday 63 in the fall, I’ll take $$ and not worry much about other income. (Maybe).
(My e-mail doesn’t have a spell check! And heck, I am not writing e-mail for $ anyway!)
Jim S
NaturaLite Pictures
writer/producer/director
Well, you’re very kind, indeed. I am trying, very hard to walk the fine line of promoting excitement, about the people, whom we are writing about, and maintaing an air of humbleness, and humility, at the same time. I guess few people will think badly of me, if ONCE IN A WHILE, I include an email as praiseworthy as yours. Thanks so much.
I have even discussed the tone of the web page, with my partner, Greg, and asked him for advice, if he cares to give it. I do worry that, if I take strides to be TOO HUMBLE, the web page will lose the spirit of excitement, fun, enthusiasm and breath of fresh air, that I seek, so much, to project.
What I am trying to do, here, is inject, into others, some of the same type of happiness, and just plain FUN, that that our various subjects injected into my own life. As adults (and I think most of our readers probably are adults), I also think it is really NEAT to have the chance to escape from the seriousness of reality, and focus on things of nostalgia……..and even from our childhood.
Of course, as you already know, we are trying to stimulate discussion and teach, with some of our articles and paraphernalia on the site (if you have not already listened to Daws Butler’s voices, in his taped letter to me——on page 3 of that part of our site—–you are in for a real treat! This is definitely a combination of factual material and sheer, GREAT ENTERTAINMENT!).
I like to think of myself as a bit like the great Jay Ward and Bill Scott. Their philosophy was that, whatever they did, it needed to be FUN. They refused to cave in, to the trend of the very late 60s, and beyond, which sought to force them to sacrifice the quality of their work, in order to TEACH children a moral lesson………They did not want to “water down” their work, by having to make a didactic slant, first and foremost, in their scripts.
Rather than cave, they simply refused to produce any more animated series, after GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE. They also were more than happy, to stop making Cap’n Crunch commercials, in the early to mid 80s, when the censors, and “powers that be”, insisted on taking away so much of their artistic freedom.
For a quite a few years, “the powers that be”, let Ward and Scott do whatever they wanted in their Cap’n Crunch commercials (despite the fact that they would not leave them alone, in a regular cartoon series). Things gradually got worse and worse, however, over the years. Most of this information, I learned on my own. I have to credit Keith Scott, however, who penned, THE MOOSE THAT ROARED, for the information about the Cap’n Crunch commercials.
Anyway, I may be a little different, from Ward and Scott, in that I like to combine teaching and fun……….But I still hold, fast, to the philosophy, that LAUGHTER and SHEER DELIGHT, must also be of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE, for us. I have tried to develop this web page, in the same way that I look at life………..
Ironically, it was Greg Jones, my partner, who introduced me to the ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGONETTE piece……….Oh, I had known of it, for over 25 years, but I had never actually HEARD it………Greg had a copy of this very funny piece, and he played it for me. I remember that June Foray played a completely BURNED and TOASTED woman, who was still alive!! Greg had also been the one who apprised me of Tetley’s greatest claim to fame, in THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE.
You’ll have to email me back, and give me the name of that Hanna-Barbera book. You mentioned that I really HAD TO READ IT, but you did not mention the title. I would be more than happy to read it! What is the name?
In Keith Scott’s THE MOOSE THAT ROARED, he trumpeted Jay Ward cartoons, to the heavens, to the point of being disappointed with almost all other animation producers (at least that’s how it seemed to me). I have to disagree with him, when it comes to Hanna-Barbera. I loved THE FLINTSTONES, THE HUCKLE-BERRY HOUND and YOGI BEAR shows.
They may have had a completely different flavor, than the cartoons of Jay Ward, but they were still quite good. Just because their style, was different from Jay Ward, that does not mean that they were inferior. I thought that some of THE FLINSTONES episodes were positively GREAT—–in some cases EVEN BETTER than Jay Ward. I will admit that, Hanna-Barbera’s later cartoon series were not very good, AT ALL, comparatively speaking.
You certainly have a very young spirit, for 62…….though we have had other readers, in their 50s and 60s, who seem to have the same youthful heart, as you. I guess that it is only natural, on a website such as ours, that people, who visit it, REALLY ARE, young at heart! I certainly hope, that when I am 62, 63………OR EVEN 83……..that I will not be a whole lot different, from now, and will still have the ability to let that inner child out.
You are also to be commended for your outlook on art for art’s sake. If I were in your shoes, I, too, would be much more interested in producing something wonderful, and of good quality, than making a buck or pleasing a FAT CAT.
Brian