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In Remembrance: Norman McCabe
Norm McCabe, the last of the directors from Warner Brothers' “Golden
Age of Animation” who worked on the classic short Porky In
Wackyland (1938) in addition to scores of other cartoons, has
passed away on January 18, 2006. He was 94.
Born in England in 1911, McCabe was raised in the United States. He
joined Warner Brothers Studios in the mid-1930s. He was first
attached to director Frank Tashlin’s unit as an animator, but moved
over to work under director Robert Clampett in 1938. It was with
Clampett and fellow animator Izzy Ellis that McCabe helped to create
the classic cartoon Porky In Wackyland, whose almost surreal
sense of humor helped to mold the direction of Warner Brothers’
cartoon output for the next two decades. McCabe continued to work
with Clampett for the next three years, animating a total of 12
Porky Pig cartoons.
When cartoon director Tex Avery left Warner Brothers in 1941 to join
MGM Studios’ cartoon division, Clampett took over Avery’s animation
unit. Since McCabe had already co-directed two Porky Pig shorts with
Clampett – The Timid Toreador (1940) and Porky’s Snooze
Reel (1941) – he was given the reigns of Clampett’s old unit.
McCabe’s solo cartoon directorial debut was Robinson Crusoe, Jr.
(1941).
However, McCabe’s run as a director for Warner Brothers was
short-lived. In 1943, he was drafted into the Army, where served in
the Army Air Corps Training Film Unit. In his two years as a
director at Warner Brothers, he produced only 11 cartoons. Some of
his cartoons – The Ducktators (1942), Confusions Of A
Nutsy Spy and Tokio Jokio (both 1943) – contained topical
jokes about World War II and the Axis powers that would be
considered politically incorrect today.
After World War Two, McCabe turned to working on commercials and
educational films. He returned to animation in 1963, helping to
animate the main title credits for Blake Edwards’ comedy The Pink
Panther. The following year, McCabe joined up with director Friz
Freleng to work on cartoons at Warner Brothers Studios and on the
Pink Panther cartoon shorts being released through United Artists.
McCabe would help animate a total of 22 Pink Panther cartoons, from
the series’ first, Oscar-winning installment Pink Phink
(1964) to In The Pink (1967).
In 1967 McCabe moved over to television, working as an animator on
several cartoon series. In 1972, he returned to theatrical
animation, serving on the crew of Ralph Bakshi’s feature Fritz
The Cat. McCabe would continue to work on theatrical short
cartoons for Freleng’s animation studios for the rest of the `70s.
In the 1980s, McCabe returned to Warner Brothers animate new
material for the cartoon anthology movies Bugs Bunny’s Third
Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982) and Daffy Duck’s Movie:
Fantastic Island (1983).
After serving as an animation director on The Transformers: The
Movie (1986), he helped animate a trilogy of new Daffy Duck
theatrical shorts - The Duxorcist (1987), Night Of The
Living Duck and Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters (both 1988).
McCabe was awarded the Golden Award from the Motion Picture Screen
Cartoonists in recognition of his fifty years in the animation field
in 1985. In 2000 he won the Windsor McCay Award at the ASIFA-Hollywood’s
annual Annie Awards. |
