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Animators and animals: john halas, joy batchelor, and george orwell's Animal Farm

2005; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680500138001

1465-3451

Daniel J. Leab,

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Parts of this essay were presented at the Marshall Plan Symposium, Berlin Film Festival, February 2005. Daniel J. Leab is Professor of History at Seton Hall University, and Editor of American Communist History. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including I was a Communist for the FBI: the unhappy life and times of Matt Cvetic (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). Notes Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999), for very good reasons had a remarkable impact after its publication in the UK and the USA. It is a splendid overview of a complex subject. Unfortunately for all its many virtues, the book's treatment of the filming of Orwell's is not up to the high standards of the rest of the text. Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: the state, propaganda, and consensus (London, 2001), with regard to the filming of Orwell's book avoids some of the pitfalls of Stonor Saunder's study, and is much more than just a rehash of previous scholarship, but he too also gets a number of key facts wrong. Both books are splendid introduction to their subjects, but on the details dealing with the filming of Orwell's book, there are, alas, some miscues. A history of cartoon film making, WPN & Advertiser's Review, 9 June 1961, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection, Animation Research Centre, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, England (hereafter referred to as Halas & Batchelor Archive). I used the Halas & Batchelor materials in 2000 when they were housed at the Southampton Institute, Southampton, England. I am deeply indebted to James Walker who then was at Southampton and since has moved to the Animation Research Center for assistance in using these materials. Interview with Vivien Halas, London, 21 October 2000. Picture Show and Film Pictorial, 2 February 1952, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. A history of cartoon film making, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Elizabeth Coxhead, A woman in London: she brought Animal Farm to life, Liverpool Daily Post, 20 January 1955, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; interview with Vivien Halas, London, 21 October 2000. John Grant, Masters of Animation (London, 2001), p. 102; Barbara Brandenburger, Artist whose drawings come to life, The Times (London), 5 January 1967, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive, Halas and Batchelor as a team, by Joy Batchelor, notes requested by Glen Ireton for an article, no date, Insert A, p. 1, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Grant, p. 102; Personality of the month: John Halas, Films and Filming (March 1957), p. 3; Artist whose drawings come to life, The Times (London), 5 January 1967, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Gwen tells the human story behind ‘Animal …’: The Watford girl who won fame: as the British Disney, West Herts Post, 20 January 1955, clipping, Halas and Batchelor Archive; John Halas, Application for prolongation of my stay in the United Kingdom, 22 December 1938, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Halas and Batchelor as a team … , p. 1, Halas & Batchelor Archive. An animated life story, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 22 January 1955, p. 1, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Elaine Burrows, Live action: a brief history of British animation, in Charles Barr (ed.) All Our Yesterdays: 90 years of British cinema (London, 1986), p. 277. Sir Fife Clark, The Central Office of Information (London, 1970), p. 28; James Chapman, The British at War: cinema, state, and propaganda, 1939–1945 (London, 1998), p. 13; Roger Manvell, Art & Animation: the story of Halas and Batchelor Animation Studio, 1940–1980, no place of publication: no publisher given, 1980, (distributed in the USA by Hastings House, New York City), pp. 5–6. Excerpts from Dustbin Parade as well as other early Halas and Batchelor films can be found in ‘Down on Animal Farm’, a 1995 ‘Special’ of the BBC's ‘Stay Tooned’ series which is part of Polygram's 1999 video release of Animal Farm (#05830330). Derek G. Morgan, Films little but important, Everybody's Weekly, 30 April 1949, pp. 10, 11, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Manvell, Art & Animation, p. 5; Clive Coultess, Images for Battle: British film in the Second World War, 1939–1945 (Newark, DE, Toronto: Associated Universities Press, 1989), p. 147; Halas and Batchelor as a team … , p. 2. At one point they restructured their operations and were able to buy out the assets of their original company for only £5000 (Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Limited, Minutes of a Meeting Held … 16th April 1947, p. 2), Halas & Batchelor Archive; Manvell, Art & Animation, p. 5; Brochure of the Educational Film Centre (which distributed Halas and Batchelor films), October 1989 (in author's possession); Peter Foldes, who had left Hungary was encouraged by Halas, but left film-making for painting until the mid-1960s when he gained ‘an international reputation as one of the first artists to make figurative computer-drawn animation’ (Tate Britain, A Century of Artists’ Film in Britain, 3 November 2003–25 January 2004, www.tate.org.uk/britain/artistsfilm/programme3). Attlee quoted in Clark, p. 38. From White Paper to colour cartoon, COI Review, c, 1948, p. 28, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Documentary Films, Documentary Film News, February 1948, p. 18; Morgan, ‘Films little but important’ p. 11. Kenneth O. Morgan, The People's Peace: British History, 1945–1989 (Oxford, 1990), p. 73; Out of small beginnings, Supplement to the Kinematograph Weekly, 18 May 1961, p. 4. Manvell, Art & Animation, p. 6; John Halas and Roger Manvell, The Technique of Film Animation (New York, 1959), p. 133; New Documentary Films, Documentary Film News, 12 November 1948, p. 118. Agreement between the Government of the United States and the Government of Italy Providing for Economic Cooperation … , in Raymond Durmatt and Robert K. Turner (eds) Documents of Foreign Policy, Vol. 10 (Princeton, NJ, 1950), p. 235 (this agreement typifies those the USA concluded with Marshall Plan recipients—with the aid went propaganda); Chloe Metz, The changing face of Europe: the Marshall Plan seen through film, The Columbia Historical Review, , c, 1998, p. 1; Bernadette Whelan, Marshall Plan publicity and propaganda in Italy and Ireland, 1947–1951, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 23 (October 2003), p. 312; David Ellwood, E. R. P. Propaganda in Italy … , in E. K. Kippendorf (ed.) The Role of the United States in the Reconstruction of Italy and West Germany, 1943–1949 … (Berlin, 1981), p. 274. Also please see Ellwood, ‘You too can be like us’: selling the Marshall Plan, History Today, 48 (October 1998), pp. 33–39. Jim Lindner to Daniel J. Leab, e-mail 2 August 2000; John Halas, Not for fun, Films and Filming, November 1956, 8; Albert Hemsing, The Marshall Plan's European Film Unit, 1948–1953: a memoir and filmography. Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 14(3) (1994), pp. 293; The Shoemaker and the Hatter, Marshall Plan Filmography, www.marshallfilms.org/filminfo.asp?id=SH-1 . Marshall Plan Filmography, Preface, p. 2, www.marshallfilms.org/mpfdetail.asp. L. Leslie Withers, Films, Sunday Mercury, 1 January 1955, untitled story in the Liverpool Daily Post, 22 January 1955, Evelyn Ball, husband and wife team challenge Disney, Evening Star, 17 December 1954, clippings, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Farmyard satire will be Britain's first feature cartoon, Kentish Mercury, 14 December 1951; untitled story, Ipswich Evening Star, 18 December 1951; They’re making Britain's first full-length cartoon, Hampshire and Highgate Express, 4 January 1952, clippings, Halas & Barchelor Archive. Batchelor and Vivien Halas quoted in Karl Cohen, Orwell and the CIA, The Guardian, 11 March 2003, found on the History Network http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?ed=0206 (this is an edited version of the article which originally appeared in Animation World). Personal knowledge (I met Wolff at an academic conference at the University of Vermont in 1976—it turned out that our mothers came from towns about 30 miles apart in what at the time of their birth was East Prussia; we remained friends until his death in 1988); Lothar Wolff—Produzent, Regisseur, Cutter, in Hans-Michael Bock (ed.), Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film (Hamburg, 1984–), Lg. 13 (1989), pp. D1–D5. Fielding, p. 111; interview with F. Bordon Mace, Washington, CT, 7 August 2001; Arthur Tourtellot quoted in Fielding, p. 112; interview with Vivien Halas, London, 21 October 2000. Rear Admiral Ellis Reed Hall, US Coast Guard, in Report on Lothar Wolff, File #124-2994, 28 June 1949, p. 38041 (hereafter referred to as FBI—Wolff). Report on Lothar Wolff, ibid. Drew Pearson quoted in Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: the Man and the Secrets (New York, 1991), p. 450; David Thomson, All the conspirators, in Ann Lloyd (eds) The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema (London, 1981), p. 1601. … Agreement … Between RD-DR Corporation … and … Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Limited, 14 December 1951, p. 1, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Ibid., pp. 5–6, Clause 7 Ibid., pp. 9–10, Clause 16; interview with F. Bordon Mace, Washington, CT, 7 August 2001. Roger Manvell, The Animated Film, n.p.: The Sylvan Press, 1954, p. i; John Halas, Masters of Animation (Topsfield, MA, 1987), p. 34. Halas, Masters of Animation, p. 31; Halas and Manvell, p. 258. John Halas, Joy Batchelor, Animal Farm, in Anne Lloyd (ed.) The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema (London, 1980), p. 832; Walter Hayes, It's British—and no pig in a poke, The Daily Sketch, 26 January 1953, p. 13, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Anthony Kinsey, Animated Film Making (London, 1990), p. 42. Morgan, Films little but important, p. 19; Roger Manvell, The Living Screen: background to film & television (London, 1961), p. 64; Charles Rosner, Halas & Batchelor, Graphis, #53, 1954, 195, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Manvell, The Animated Film, p. 11; Robert Musel, Algernon to be wickedest screen villain, Los Angeles Daily News, 14 October 1952, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Manvell, The Living Screen, p. 64; Hayes, Its British … , clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Manvell, The Animated Film, p. 11; They helped to create ‘Pig Brother’ in a three story house, Cheltenham Chronicle, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Halas and Batchelor as a Team … , Insert H to p. 3. Grant, p. 68; Harold Whitaker and John Halas, Timing for Animation (Oxford, 1999; [originally published in 1981]); Mace to Leab, 14 April 2003. Halas, Master of Animation, p. 83; Whittaker and Halas, p. 14; Ralph Stephenson, Animation in the Cinema (London, 1957), p. 15. Storyboard, Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York, 1979), p. 1100; David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York, 2002), p. 402; Halas and Batchelor in Lloyd, p. 832. Halas and Batchelor as a team … , p. 3. Ibid.; Orwell in the cinema, Manchester Guardian, 13 December 1954, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Halas and Batchelor as a team … , p. 3; Tension Plan quoted in Orwell in the cinema. Stephenson, Animation, p. 40. Ian Grant, Pushing for pixels, Computer Images International (February 1989), p. 16; Award for ‘Dilemma’ in Moscow, Press Release, Halas & Batchelor Animation Ltd., Halas & Barchelor Archive; Halas quoted in From Bauhaus to film cartoon, The Times (London), 30 January 1962, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Ball, Husband and wife team challenge Disney. Geoff Alexander, Philip Stapp http://www.cine16.com/stapp.htm; Stapp died on 2 October 2003, Obituaries, The Stonington Intelligencier http://www. stoningtonct.com/obits.html; Vivien Halas quoted in Cohen, Orwell and the CIA. Analysis of direct costs incurred on ‘Animal Farm’ to 15 June 1951, Box 86, de Rochemont; Animal Farm, Polygram Video, 1999; Halas to Wolff, 12 February 1952, Box 210A, Louis de Rochemont Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY (hereafter referred to as de Rochemont). Manvell, The Living Screen, p. 49; Obituaries, The Stonington Intelligencier. Agreement … between RD-DR … Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films Ltd., clause 8; No, he's not one of the Goons, undated clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Summary of cash transactions, September 1952, Box 195, de Rochemont. Whitaker is an interviewee in The Making of Animal Farm, Animal Farm, Polygram Video; Sweatbox Notes, 23 June 1953; 10 June 1953, Halas & Batchelor Archive. John Reed to M. Western, 13 March 1953, Reed to Stroud Unit, 22 May 1952, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Gerald Kaufman, Orwell Plus Disney, Tribune, 21 January 1955, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Interview with Bordon Mace, Washington, CT, 7 August 2001; Manvell, Art & Animation, p. 5; de Rochemont to Joy Batchelor, 20 June 1953, Halas & Batchelor Archive. From White Paper to colour cartoon, COI Review, p. 29; Halas and Manvell, p. 258; Bordon Mace to Leo Jaffe, Columbia Pictures Corporation, 6 February 1953, Box 43, de Rochemont. de Rochemont to Abe Schneider, Columbia Pictures Corporation, 13 August 1951, Box 43, de Rochemont; typical of the newspaper stories written from the press releases is one in the Yorkshire Evening News, 15 December 1951, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Stephen Watts, Metamorphosis of a menagerie, 2 November 1952, in The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film (New York, 1984); Variety, 6 February 1971, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Memo relative to production costs of Animal Farm, 27 July 1953, Box 43, de Rochemont. Interviews with Vivien Halas, London, 21 October 2000, and Bordon Mace, Washington, CT, 7 April 2001; Halas to Mace, 5 April 1954, Martin J. Maloney, Treasurer, RD-DR Corporation to Accounting Dept., 4 February 1957, both Box 104, de Rochemont. Tatler, 15 January 1952, untitled clipping, Halas & Batchelor Archive. Ball, Husband and wife team challenge … , Halas to Wolff, 3 March 1953, de Rochemont. A. H. Weiler, The screen: New York and Hollywood, 2 November 1952, The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film; Rochemont Chiefs Here, Daily Film Renter, 19 March 1952, C. H. B. Williamson talks about British films, Today's Cinema, 24 March 1952, clippings, Halas & Batchelor Archive; Halas to Wolff, 27 February 1952, Box 210A, de Rochemont. Vivien Halas quoted in Cohen; Mace to Leab, 19 August 2001, p. 5.