Early years (1921–1933)
When producer Pat Sullivan came to Harry Warner to sign a contract with him on his and Otto Messmer's series Felix the Cat, he declined and instead told his soon-to-be former secretary Margaret J. Winkler that she should form her own company and take control of the distribution of the series. Winkler formed M.J. Winkler Productions and soon also took control of Max and Dave Fleischer's series Out of the Inkwell . By 1923 she and Sullivan were arguing, and that same year the Fleischer Brothers formed their own distribution company named Red Seal. Winkler saw an unreleased short called Alice's Wonderland , a cartoon produced and directed by Walt Disney, and became impressed with the short. The two agreed to make a series about the cartoon. In 1924, Charles Mintz married Winkler, and the latter's career began to decline. Mintz quickly assumed Winkler's role in the company, later rebranding it Winkler Pictures. In 1925 Winkler's renewal contract for the Felix shorts was written, yet Winkler declined to renew due to her dispute with Sullivan. The following year the Alice Comedies stopped being distributed by Winkler. After Mintz become involved with the progress it was clear that Disney was unhappy with the production costs on cartoons, and he asked Disney and Ub Iwerks to develop a new character. The result was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the first animated character for Universal Pictures. [4] In February 1928, when the character proved more successful than expected, Disney sought to meet with Mintz over the budget, wanting to spend more on the cartoons. Mintz refused, and hired away all of Walt Disney Studios's animators except Iwerks, Les Clark, and Johnny Cannon, who all refused to leave Disney. He moved the production of the Oswald cartoons to Winkler Pictures, along with Margaret Winkler's brother, George. After losing the Oswald contract to Walter Lantz, Mintz focused on the Krazy Kat series, which was the output of a Winkler-distributed property.
M.J. Winkler Productions became known as Winkler Pictures after Mintz took over in 1926 and partnered with Columbia Pictures for distribution in 1929. In 1931, when the studio moved from New York to California, it was renamed The Charles Mintz Studio. [5]
Becoming Screen Gems (1933–1946)
The Charles Mintz studio became known as Screen Gems in 1933. The name was originally used in 1933, when Columbia Pictures acquired a stake in Charles Mintz's animation studio. [6] The name was derived from an early Columbia Pictures slogan, "Gems of the Screen"; itself a takeoff on the song "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean". [7] In 1939, a short while before his death, after becoming indebted to Columbia, Mintz relinquished ownership of his studio and the Screen Gems name to Columbia to settle longstanding financial problems. [8]
Mintz was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Short Subject. His first nomination was in 1935 for Holiday Land , and he was nominated again in 1938 for The Little Match Girl .
For an entire decade, Charles Mintz produced Krazy Kat , Scrappy , and Color Rhapsody animated film shorts through Columbia Pictures. Mintz's production manager became the studio head but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. Columbia then decided to hire Frank Tashlin, then a writer for Walt Disney Productions, as lead producer. [9] There he would hire many displaced animators from the 1941 Disney animators' strike, as well as making the decision of firing the bulk of their initial staff (included Arthur Davis, Manny Gould, Lou Lilly, Ben Harrison and Winkler). Tashlin would also direct the 1941 short The Fox and the Grapes. Based on the Aesop's Fable of the same name, the short would inadvetably spawn Columbia's most successful characters with The Fox and the Crow , a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow.
Tashlin's stay at Screen Gems would be short-lived, as he would later leave the studio, following an argument with Columbia higher-ups. [10] When interviewed by Michael Barrier, Tashlin said that the management "can't stay happy long when things are going well, so we ended up in another fracas and I left." [9] He was replaced by Dave Fleischer, previously the co-founder and head director of Fleischer Studios. John Hubley described Fleischer as "one of the world's intellectual lightweights", as he had very little involvement in the making of cartoons. However he was also noted for his baffling editing practices. [11] Dave was later fired and succeeded by a revolving door of producers, including musician Paul Worth, Three Stooges producer Hugh McCollum and ex-Schlesinger assistants Ray Katz and Henry Binder. The studio would also create several more recurring characters around this time, including Tito and His Burrito, Flippity and Flop, Igor Puzzlewitz, Willoughby Wren, and an adaptation of Al Capp's comic series Li'l Abner , with varying levels of success.
The studios output following Tashlin's departure was, in retrospect, considered to be vastly inferior as many of the cartoons made during this period were described as being "misguided" or "imitation Warner Bros." Hubley also said to have disliked his work at the studio, and that Columbia "hated" the cartoons they were making. [11] Historians note that the decline in quality could have been caused by several key factors; Tashlin's departure from the studio, the inability to obtain confident animators, writers or directors and Columbia's mismanagement behind the scenes.
Other staff members during this period included people such as Bob Wickersham, Paul Sommer, Alec Geiss, Sid Marcus, Howard Swift and Alex Lovy. Bob Clampett was also brought in as a gag writer before setting up his own animation studio for Republic Pictures. [12] [13]
Screen Gems was, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Screen Gems shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after the second-longest holdouts (Famous Studios and Leon Schlesinger Productions). During that same year, Columbia decided to shut its doors for good, while releasing a back catalog up until 1949. [14] It later merged with the television version of Screen Gems (Previously Pioneer Telefilms).
In spite of the studio's internal affairs, Screen Gems' cartoons were still moderately successful, with it achieving additional Academy Awards nominations. However it never achieved a level of success comparable to Walt Disney Productions, Warner Bros. Cartoons, and the MGM Cartoon Studio. The studio's purpose was assumed by an outside producer, United Productions of America (UPA), whose cartoons, including Gerald McBoing-Boing and the Mr. Magoo series, were major critical and commercial successes. Following UPA, a deal with Hanna Barbera was made in 1957, which lasted until 1967.
In 1999, Columbia TriStar International Television produced Totally Tooned In - a syndicated TV package showcasing Columbia's classic cartoon library. With the aid of animation historian Jerry Beck, Columbia restored and remastered the majority of the color Screen Gems cartoons (as well as all the UPA cartoons) from their original 35mm elements. The show aired in several international markets before making its American television debut on Antenna TV on January 8, 2011. They would later be aired on Toon In With Me on the MeTV Network in November 2021. [15] Despite these restoration efforts, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has no current plans to release these shorts on DVD or Blu-ray.
