Anyone who knows Ray Bradbury knows that he has a lifelong love of animation. The legendary author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles has contributed to numerous animation-related books and was an early supporter of ASIFA-Hollywood. He’s even dabbled in the medium itself, writing the 1962 Oscar-nominated animated short [...]

Even some fans of UPA, who have rushed out to buy the new, long-awaited DVD collection of their classic theatrical cartoons, might not know that Walt Disney had a particular name for the upstart studio staff: “Those Communists up the river.” The river in question was the Los Angeles River, [...]

Just when you start to think the old rumors about hidden dirty jokes in Disney animated features have died down, they get passed on to a new generation. This was proven to me recently at an event I attended in which animation’s Renaissance man, Tom Sito, was speaking to a [...]

While the late Edward Bernds (1905-2000) was not a toiler in the toon trenches himself, he was on the periphery of the television cartoon industry in the 1960s. Chiefly known as a writer and director for the Three Stooges, Bernds guided the last incarnation of the trio—Larry Fine, Moe Howard [...]

Unlike many toonheads, I’ve long been fascinated with the cartoons of Robert McKimson. McKimson was part of the Warner Bros. animation troika in the post-war years, along with Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, and the director behind the classic characters Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil. Yet even today, though [...]