Hannah Barber Biography

Bill traveled to the white "Lincoln Continental". Joe is on a brand new, shining black “Cadillac”, the last model every year. Joe was a tanned brunette, Bill was a blonde. Joe wore only custom -made costumes, ties with his own initials and the same cufflinks. Bill had nothing close. Bill was a stubborn businessman who loved strict orders. Joe was more malleable and funny: he had people and had a fantastic sense of humor.

Screenwriter Tony Benedict always subtly felt the characters: two more dissimilar people than Hannah and Barber, it would be difficult to find. Probably, circumstances turned out differently, they would never have met at all. Fortunately, fate is a strange thing, and she pleased that two boys from different parts of America at one time be carried away by the same. He was the only brother of six sisters.

Father was engaged in construction throughout the country, so Little Hannah had to get used to crossings from childhood. The mother was a creative person: she wrote poems and essays, and also regularly included the radio to children, where the plays written by their aunt were transmitted. These people could not sit idle for a minute - so Bill grew the same. He actively participated in the scout movement and walked to the end through life with the slogan “Be ready!

Probably, the boy had been accepted for a day for more than 24 hours, because in the evenings he still managed to run to the cinema and vigilantly watch films with Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. But especially Hannah was delighted with the cartoons about the Felix cat, which were broadcast before each session. And then he struck the year of great depression, the collapse of the banking system and human hopes.

Bill's family was disastrously lacked by Bill's family - and the young man had to quit college, where he studied at a journalist to go to work. Father helped with work - arranged for the construction of a cinema in Hollywood. But, when the building was ready, it turned out that no one else needed one builder: Hannah tried to get at least somewhere, but everywhere he met a refusal.

Fortunately, his sister contributed to his career. Marion Hannah just found a new boyfriend - Jack Stevenson. For a long time dreaming of returning to drawing, Bill grabbed onto a proposal for cooperation. There he heard the news: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Aising, former Disney animators, plan to create their own studio. Harman and Aising listened to an enthusiastic young man and took him ...

a cleaner. For a long time in this honorary position, he did not last: a week later, the used personnel began to wash off the valuable raw materials from the celluloid in those days in the consumption of the same time, and after a couple of weeks he headed the schedule. Having a little understanding the production of cartoons, Bill began to offer ideas and jokes, many of which went to production.

Not only artistic experience was useful, but also musical: for a smooth drawing of the movements of the characters, Hannna developed his own system for calculating the number of personnel, based on the blows of the metronome. Large production capacities allowed the beginner animator to do what his first work was not enough for: to create his own short film. Three years later, Bill introduced a nine -minute cartoon "Until spring" to the court of senior colleagues.

This is a color tape in which terrible gnomes work in an underground workshop to speed up the onset of heat. Everyone liked the film - so much so that when MGM broke the contract with Harman and Aising in the year, the head of the animated department, Fred Kuimby, invited Hannah to remain as a director and screenwriter. In the office where he was to work, a newcomer was already sitting-dark-haired and smiling ...

Joe Barber Joe Barber grew in New York, in the area called Little Italy. He was born on March 24, that is, was almost a year younger than Hannah. There were much fewer children in his family - only three, but more money. His father Vincenzo owned a network of hairdressers, so they did not experience a lack of a lack of money. The disadvantage was felt in some more important. As if in contrast to Hannah and his noisy, funny and friendly family, Joe Barber grew up in an atmosphere of constant quarrels and scandals.

Vincenzo could not boast of a flexible character, and even liked to bet on the races. And where is the gambling, there is a drink - and, having suffered a defeat, he tore the anger on his wife and sons, not sparing his voice and household items. In order not to fall under a hot hand, the children hid from the father under the bed. Fortunately, he left his family when Joe was fifteen years old.

It is possible to at least distract for a short while, the boy began to draw. And he did it unexpectedly well: at the Catholic school, the nuns were even entrusted with the talented pupil to illustrate the Bible. At the usual school, where Joe transferred the themes of the drawings in a year more diverse. Once, during a boring music lesson, he began to draw a portrait of a classmate, beauty and clever Stefani Bates with a pencil.The girl really liked the result - and the sketch became a ticket for a date.

The work of the barber delighted not only young ladies: he sent paintings for contests and often won, painted for a school newspaper. Seeking to be at home as little as possible, was carried away by the theater and sports: first with jumps in height, and then boxing. In boxing, he achieved such significant successes that the world nearly lost Barber-animator to find Barber-Boxer: at 16 he was offered to start a sports career and promised to thousands a year.

Joe thought to agree: he could have accumulated college for study and make an offer to his beloved girl not Stephanie Bates. In m, a year after graduation, he saw a cartoon of Walt Disney in the movie “Skeleton Dance” - a terrible but dashing short film, one of the “horror stories” beloved by children. Something clicked in the young man’s head: he realized that he still loves to draw and dreams of reviving his drawings.

But where to start? The entrepreneurial Barber reasoned that it was better to start with the main one, and therefore, without thinking twice, he wrote Walt Disney himself with the question: “How to become an animator? To his surprise, Disney - Disney himself! He promised to call the young artist - but, of course, he did not call. However, Barber was no longer stopped: he began to go to drawing lessons at the Pratt Institute and the League of New York Artists.

In these lessons, he met Willard Bovski, the leading animator Fleischer Studios, known for the stories about Betty Bup and the sailor of the hit. It was a successful meeting: Joe showed his caricatures, and he immediately offered a talented young man to work. At first he painted ready -made images, but after three days he was entrusted with circling the characters in mascara.

Encouraging from a speedy increase lasted exactly until the moment Barber did not find out that his colleague was stuck in this position for three years and received only $ 35 a week. The next day, Joe quit and went into the independent Van Beuren Studios, which produced low -budget short films. The cub in the cartoon Cubby Bear was suspiciously similar to one very popular mouse there a young man fed in animation: he soon received the position of a nozzle, and later the leading animator.

For three years, he released a series of Cubby Bear cartoons about a bear, which remotely resembles Mickey Mouse and Rainbow Parades, an anthology with different heroes, including with a cat Felix. Then he once again changed the studio and created a couple of mediocre films. Finally, in the year, one of his colleagues whispered to him that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was opening the animated department.

Joe decided to try - and the head of the new department Fred Kuimby was happy to hire a young artist. At first, there was little work in the new department, and once, bored in the office in a couple with a neighbor, Barber asked the same question ... There is a dog in almost every dog’s creation of the Hanna-Barber studio-sometimes as the main character, as in the “Psa Haklberry”, sometimes on the sidelines, as in “Jetsons”.

All because Bill Hannah believed: a show without a dog will be “toothless”. But without cats, he could well do, although Tom brought him seven Oscars! What could be more commonplace? It is difficult to argue with MGM animators: the idea was really far from new. But Magic, contrary to everything, happened: in the year the episode “Cat receives a kick” “For what the cat was punished” conquered the screens of cinemas.

The distributors wrote the studios, wondering when she plans to release more of these “delightful cartoons”, and Fred Kuimby, who first reacted to the tape skeptically, caught Joe and Bill in the corridors with an exclamation: “Hey guys, make a few more cartoons about mossy cats! Their fame was so great that the first episode received the nomination for Oscar as the best animated film.

But the main victories were waiting for them ahead: the cat and the mouse had to get as many as four figurines in a row, from for a year. Perhaps the point was in amazing animation - by the way, Barber was responsible for her, and Hannah was engaged in the technical aspects of production and voice acting. Perhaps in unpretentious, but mental plots: a dynamic comedy, where there is not a single remark, even those who still do not know how to speak.

Or maybe the reason for success was covered in something invisible, intangible-in the atmosphere of comfort and carelessness that the funny confrontation of the cat and the mouse gives. Nothing bad can happen to them: no matter how Tom dreams of eating Jerry, everyone understands that these two are nowhere without each other. Without suspecting it, Hannah and Barber created a story at all times: simple, understandable and kind.

Admit it, you also remember the scenes where Tom is trying to play the “Hungarian Rapsodia” of the leaf and at the same time beats the piercing rodent with keys on the head?

And their chase through the festive table, lined with appetizing drawn dishes? And the mommy is two-piece? By the way, this is what she looks like! Over the 17 years, the issues of Tom and Jerry came out - and everyone was successful. In some ways, Jerry even walked around another famous cartoon mouse.In the year, he appeared in the comedy musical “Raise the anchors”, on the same screen with a living actor.

It is good that there was another mouse in the reserve - and she coped with the role brilliantly. The animation was combined with field shooting: Kelly sang, danced and quite convincingly held his hands with Jerry. Jerry in “Raising the Anchors” became the ruler of the whole kingdom in the year, the studio secured success, creating underwater scenes with animated characters for the musical to “conquer the La-Channel” and the directorial debut of Kelly, the film-anthology “Invitation to the dance”.

For episodes with the Sinbad More, Joe and Bill not just inserted cartoons into the tape, but made a whole drawn world in which the heroes had to be. The last work of the duet for MGM was the touching and not at all children's short film “Testament to Humanity” this was an unexpected post-apocalyptic story: the old mouse-pastor, sitting in a destroyed church, tells the mice from the church choir that people once existed on the ground.

Only these strange creatures loved to fight more than anything else - and in the end they destroyed each other ... The “will of humanity” also received a nomination for an Oscar: it seemed that the animation department of MGM was flourishing. However, in fact, his sunset was nearing: the golden age of Hollywood was drawing to an end, the studio made films that guarantee more profits.

The cartoons that were broadcast in the cinema before each session began to forget: the production of new episodes was more expensive than the endless repetition of the old, for example, one new series of Tom and Jerry cost 40 thousand dollars.