Robert McKimson - Career

Career

Born in Denver, Colorado, McKimson spent ten years getting an art education. He then went to work for Walt Disney. He stayed with Disney's studio for two years and then went to work for the Romer Grey Studio located in Altadena, California, a would-be animation shop started by the son of Western author Zane Grey, and financed by Zane Grey's wife. Several cartoons were animated at the Romer Grey Studio, but due to the ruin of Grey's fortunes after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, none were ever released. Most never made it to camera.

After the Romer Grey Studio shut down, McKimson was hired by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, first doing the ink-and-paint duties for the very first Looney Tunes, then becoming inbetweener before becoming an animator by 1931. At that time he had an accident that gave him a concussion. As a result, he was able to visualize better, thus increasing his production and animation. He was the head animator and go-to guy in the late 1930s at the studio, which overwhelmed him. Eventually he worked exclusively with Bob Clampett. He was offered a directorial position by Leon Schlesinger in 1937, but declined, allowing the position to go to animator Chuck Jones. He accepted his own directorial position in 1944, when Frank Tashlin left Warner Bros. to direct live-action films.

McKimson created characters like Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil, as well as directing every Hippety Hopper/Sylvester pairing. He also created Speedy Gonzales for the 1953 short Cat-Tails for Two and directed many others periodically (along with Freleng and other directors) for the remainder of his theatrical career.

McKimson's first directorial work, Daffy Doodles (at least his first released directorial work, though it was for the most part a Frank Tashlin cartoon; he cut his actual directorial teeth on a Seaman Hook wartime cartoon for military audiences in 1944), wherein Daffy draws moustaches on all the pre-drawn (and even some natural) faces in his sight, was released in early April 1946.

In 1953, the Warner Bros. cartoon studio laid off most of its staff for a period of six months. After the studio reopened, Freleng and Jones quickly re-assembled their respective units, but McKimson discovered every member of his previous team, apart from Pierce and background painter Dick Thomas, refused to work with him again. At the start of this period, McKimson animated on three of his own shorts, The Hole Idea, Dime to Retire, and Too Hop to Handle. (in fact, he was the sole animator credited on The Hole Idea) Soon, McKimson assembled a new team of artists, including layout man/background painter Robert Gribbroek and animators Warren Batchelder, Ted Bonnicksen, and George Grandpre. Tom Ray, Russ Dyson, and Keith Darling helped at various points.