Word: cartoon
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Last week the industry's biggest buyer of gag cartoons sat in his gag-littered office at Collier's and shuffled through the week's receipts: more than 2,000 roughs. (Out of 15,000 mailed in each year by unknown hopefuls who just know they can draw, Collier's finds only three good enough to buy.) Said mustached, soft-spoken Gurney Williams, 42: "The other day I found myself staring at the millionth cartoon submitted to me since I became humor editor here. I wish it could have been fresh and original. Instead, it showed...
Traffic Jam. Last week they had plenty of both to talk about. The major cartoon-buying magazines (Satevepost, Collier's, True, This Week, etc.) were using twice as many gag panels as in 1941, and paying more for them. (Prices were up, too, in the New Yorker's exclusive stable.) But competition was getting tougher, even for the 50 artists who make 70% of the sales to the majors...
Editors like Gurney Williams consider Gardner Rea, veteran of 37 years in the business, and Virgil Partch, a comparative newcomer, two of the top artists in the country. (But Peter Arno gets top pay. When he bothers to turn out a cartoon the price is reputed to be $1,000.) Partch, no Wednesday go-to-market man, lives in North Hollywood, Calif., has never been east of New Mexico, tells editors he can make his characters just as gruesome in the West as he could in New York...
From the swank Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif, came a new wave of raucous sound effects. It was no sign of new life in Walt's celebrated cartoon creatures. It sounded more like Donald Duck in a tizzy of indecision...
Actually the situation had been boiling up for years. Since 1940, cartoon costs have jumped 165% (due almost wholly to increased labor costs) while revenues have increased only 12%. Distributors have cold-shouldered efforts to increase rentals, which are still at the 1940 rate. Full-length cartoons, for all the fanfare about them, have only dug the hole deeper. As a result, most cartoonmakers (e.g., Lantz, Pal, Quimby, Selzer) are wondering how long they...