Obituary: Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz, animator: born New Rochelle, New York 27 April 1900; twice married; died Los Angeles 22 March 1994.

WALTER LANTZ, the American animator who made a woodpecker - and the world - laugh, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 93. His achievements in animated cartoons never quite nudged those of Walt Disney or the Warner Brothers crew from the top deck, but were always welcomed by the movie-going masses who wanted little more than a six-minute spot of slapstick as filling in their double-feature sandwich. His incredible 60-year career took him from lowly office boy to chief of his own studio, and was finally acknowledged with a special Academy Award in 1978.

Walter Lantz was the son of Francesco Lanza, an Italian immigrant to the New World, and was born in 1900. Walter worked in his invalid father's grocery shop until he was 15, then became one of the office boys on William Randolph Hearst's New York American. By night he attended the Art Students League, but his real tuition came from watching Hearst's cartoonists at work in the art room, turning out the daily strips of 'Happy Hooligan', 'Krazy Kat' and the rest.

Hearst loved strips and one day decided to open an animation studio to publicise his characters. He put a promising young cartoonist in charge, Gregory La Cava, a man so talented that in time he became one of Hollywood's top comedy directors. 'It seemed a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new business,' Lantz recalled. 'Besides, my pay went up from five to ten dollars a week]' Cartoon films were still small-time stuff in 1916.

'There were about six of us, and none of us knew anything about animation. We wanted to get a little more life and feeling into our characters. I got an old Charlie Chaplin movie and projected it on the wall, one frame at a time. Then I traced each frame . . . then flipped them like a flicker book. That's how I learnt to draw movement and get the kind of broad action that I still use in my cartoon films today.'

This was Lantz speaking at the International Festival of Animation at Zagreb in the summer of 1972, whither he had been invited as the star guest. Silver-haired and smiling, accompanied everywhere by his wife, the actress Grace Stafford, the very voice of Woody Woodpecker, he was courteous, charming, and the friendliest tycoon you could ever hope to meet.

'Our characters moved very stiffly. We animated them like human beings, from the joints. Then Gregory Cava had an idea. He conceived what we came to call 'hosepipe animation'. He eliminated elbows and knees] Arms and legs became rubber tubes - they were flexible. If Happy Hooligan wanted to reach across and pick up a pie, his body would stay put and his arm would stretch out like elastic]' This simple but revolutionary invention took cartoon films into a new world, changing moving comic strips into incredible fantasy that could only happen in films. The art of animation was once and forever born.

Hearst closed his cartoon studio in 1918, and Lantz moved to Raoul Barre's studio to work on Bud Fisher's 'Mutt and Jeff' films, then joined the pioneer of the animation studio system, John R. Bray, animating on further adventures of Hearst comic characters, 'Happy Hooligan' and 'Judge Rummy'. He was once again working under La Cava, and after that budding genius departed for Hollywood, was moved up, first to studio manager, then as supervisor of all Bray's cartoon production.

In 1923 Bray decided to revive one of his earlier characters, 'Colonel Heeza Liar', a boastful explorer inspired by Teddy Roosevelt. Lantz, in charge, devised an idea that was frankly based, in concept rather than method, on Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series. This combined cartoon figures with live actors - and, as live actor, Lantz played himself.

This comedic experience enabled Lantz to surface, after Bray's studio closed, in Hollywood as gag-man to Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies. He introduced animated gags into the live-action shots, and Sennett howled with mirth to see the cross-eyed Ben Turpin flying wildly through the air in animation following an explosion.

In 1927 Walter joined the other Walter, Disney, to work on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a series released through Universal. When Disney walked out after a salary dispute, Lantz talked 'Uncle' Carl Laemmle, the Universal mogul, into giving him a chance to continue the series. Impressed, Laemmle advertised his new cartoon chief on 9 April 1929, and it began an association that continued, with a year's break, through to 1972.

The new talkie revolution was upon Hollywood, and Lantz's first job was to add music and sound effects to Disney's last six silent 'Oswalds'. Then, sharing direction chores with his old buddy Bill Nolan, he made the first colour/sound cartoon, the opening sequence for Universal's mighty musical epic The King of Jazz (1929). It was Lantz's first and last colour film for some years, as Disney sewed up the right to use Technicolor. However, when Lantz was finally able to use colour, for the first in a new series christened 'Cartune Classics', he was immediately nominated for an Academy Award. The film was entitled Jolly Little Elves (1934).

A delightful parade of Cartunes followed but it was not until September 1939 with A-Haunting We Will Go, that all Lantz films were converted to colour. Music continued to play an important part in his films, however, first with Cartunes, then with the rowdier 'Swing Symphonies', which often used star singers on the soundtrack: Ella Mae Morse's record hit 'Cow Cow Boogie' (1943); Jack Teagarden's 'Sliphorn King of Polaroo' (1945).

The creation of a star cartoon hero seemed to elude Lantz for some years but he hit the spot in 1939 with the lovable Andy Panda (Life Begins for Andy Panda, inspired by the Andy Hardy series). Then came his really great success, a star for the faster-moving Forties, a wild, wacky and wonderful Woodpecker named Woody. This zany madcap battered his way into an Andy Panda picture called Knock Knock (1940), with a hearty cry of 'Guess Who-oo?' The anarchic Woody was Lantz's answer to Warner Brothers and their Daffy Duck - and, small wonder, they had the same cartoonist creator, Ben 'Bugs' Hardaway, who had joined the Lantz studio. The disruptive bird was eventually tamed down, given a girlfriend and a set of nephews a la Donald Duck, and wound up starring in 194 films, plus extra segments devised for the later Woody Woodpecker Show (1957), a television series which Lantz presented like some beaming uncle. Woody, originally voiced by Mel Blanc, later by Grace Stafford (Mrs Lantz), had a signature song which became top of the 1948 Hit Parade and was nominated for an Oscar, thanks to its liberal use of Woody's hysterical 'Ha-ha-ha-HAH-ha]'

Woody, of course, dominates the Lantz output, but mention must be made of Inspector Willoughby - the deadpan detective, Chilly Willy the pocket-sized penguin (created by Tex Avery), and the one stereoscopic cartoon he made, Hypnotic Hick (1953). The last Lantz cinema short was Bye Bye Blackboard, made in 1972 and starring ('guess who?') Woody Woodpecker.

(Photograph omitted)