My Life in 'Toons: From Flatbush to Bedrock in Under a Century - Hardcover

Barbera, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1570360421 ISBN 13: 9781570360428

Publisher: Turner Pub, 1994

Synopsis

The author recounts his life and career, explains what inspired him to draw animated cartoons, and describes his long partnership with Bill Hanna

About this title

Reviews

Dubbed by 60 Minutes "the sultan of Saturday morning," Barbera, along with his partner Bill Hanna, pioneered the concept of television animation, delighting generations of kids with such shows as The Jetsons , Scooby Doo , The Smurfs and The Flintstones . In their heyday, the Hanna-Barbera team was responsible for up to 70% of the cartoon programming on American airwaves, and their vast corpus continues to be widely circulated in syndication today. Here Barbera, writing with Axelrod ( The War Between the Spies ), provides a chatty and lucidly detailed inside look at the 'toon biz, chronicling his rise through the ranks from inker to studio head and recounting the history of his legendary partnership with Hanna, which began at MGM in 1940 with the creation of the immensely popular "Tom and Jerry" movie shorts and lasted for more than 50 years. Particularly interesting are Barbera's accounts of the various technical innovations and marketing strategies that were necessary to launch cartoons on the small screen. The Flintstones , for example, almost died before the show was born for want of corporate sponsorship. Clearly a shrewd and hard-working businessman as well as a talented artist, Barbera emerges here as a quintessential American success story, a Brooklyn boy whose persistent faith in his creative vision led him to the top ranks of the entertainment industry. His memoirs are almost as much fun as his 'toons. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Barbera's animated characters--Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, and the Jetsons--may have kept American kids entertained for the past 30 years, but don't expect a side- splitting memoir here. Rather than laughter, his autobiography inspires bored yawns and knowing nods; it's jammed with dull details and horror stories that confirm Hollywood's dog-eat-dog reputation. Barbera begins his story with the 1960 Flintstones odyssey: Holed up in a New York hotel for eight weeks, he peddled the denizens of Bedrock to ad agencies and TV networks with no luck until his very last prospect (ABC) bought the show, which went on to be wildly successful. Barbera wasn't an unknown doodler when he went door-to-door with the Flintstones in 1960--he and Bill Hanna had won seven Academy Awards and created a major Hollywood studio--but in the media business, he tells us, each venture is a fresh battle. Of more interest than Barbera's depiction of his Lower East Side childhood, struggling apprenticeship, and California lifestyle (earthquakes, brush fires, pool parties) is his view of Hollywood creativity and deal making. He reveals that many of his best inventions were improvised; Fred Flintstone's famous ``Yabba-Dabba-Do,'' for instance, was a last-minute suggestion by the voice actor. ``My whole life...has been determined by perfectly casual, almost thoughtless decisions and actions,'' writes Barbera. Unfortunately, ``casual'' and ``thoughtless'' are adjectives that can also be applied to this book's structure. Random recollections and asides disrupt the narrative, which seems to name every animator and ad man the author met during a 50-year career. MGM producers always picked up the Oscars won by Hanna-Barbera cartoons. If Barbera had been able to step up to the podium, maybe his memoir would read less like a long acceptance speech. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Had Barbera and partner William Hanna stopped after their first success in animation-the creation of Tom and Jerry-their place in movie history would still be secure. After all, that warring cat and mouse team won seven OscarsR-more, Barbera is proud to claim, than his more esteemed colleagues at Disney or Warner Brothers earned for any of their individual creations. But Barbera really hit the jackpot with television, beginning in 1960 when he got the green light for a prime-time show called The Flintstones. (It's no coincidence that this book and the live-action film based on the series are enjoying simultaneous release.) Hanna-Barbera went on to become the General Motors of animation, churning out dozens of shows of varying quality. Barbera is an unassuming man, and this memoir is like most of his creations: amusing but hardly memorable. For popular collections.
Thomas Wiener, formerly with "American Film"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Creator, with partner Bill Hanna, of dozens of cultural icons beloved by Boomers (e.g., the Flintstones, Yogi Bear) and Generation X-ers (Scooby Doo), animator Barbera looks back at his 60-year career. He and Hanna hit with MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons in the 1940s and 1950s, but it was MGM's 1957 decision to shut down its animation studio that propelled them to a new medium and their greatest success. Although they didn't, as Barbera claims, invent cartoons for TV or the bare-bones "limited animation" technique--those were the distinctions of Jay Ward's 1949 Crusader Rabbit series--they developed dozens of hit series. Barbera offers entertaining anecdotes about the animation pioneers he worked with, but shows little inclination to discuss the artistic impetus behind his own work. Such indifference may be understandable: his TV success was due to cost-cutting animation techniques and to pitching solely to kids (as opposed to the adults at which the classic theatrical cartoons were aimed). There's no denying, however, the ongoing appeal of Hanna and Barbera's characters, so his book--self-serving and clich{‚}e-ridden as it is--will still find an eager audience. Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: Turner Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1570360421
• ISBN 13: 9781570360428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250