Model Sheet by Jules Feiffer (click to enlarge)
One of the most intriguing “could’ve-been” projects in animation history is Easy Winners. Gene Deitch protégée Jules Feiffer came up with a kids show that was clearly ahead of its time.
Here’s what Gene Deitch recalls about the pilot:
“The 24-year-old Jules Feiffer showed up at our UPA-New York studio in about 1953. His stuff was already great. He claimed to be influenced by UPA and William Steig, same as I. He wanted a job with us. I wished I could hire him, but like so many great creators who knocked on our door, he had the impression that our New York UPA branch was there to create original projects, when in fact Steve Bosustow had planted us in New York with the express purpose of making money for the Burbank parent studio by doing TV commercials and custom productions. Such projects were controlled by our clients.
“Jules was predominantly a writer and a cartoonist with a highly personal style. He wasn’t a “studio man,” as we all were, willing to adapt to various styles of commercial production. I tried him out as a potential assistant on my then budding comic strip, “TERR’BLE THOMPSON!,” but even there, he bent it into his own style, which I (perhaps foolishly), rejected. So nothing worked for him at UPA/NY.
“However, just two years later, when I’d become the fever-pitch creative director of CBS-Terrytoons, and had an entirely different mandate: to lead an animation revolution, among my first acts was to hire Jules Feiffer! He was just the man to help me instill new life in that moribund studio. I put him in our story department, along with my other new recruits, Al Kouzel and Eli Bauer, and where the atmosphere was charged with great external creators such as R.O. Blechman, and Ernie Pintoff. Jules’ first work for me was on my story team for “Tom Terrific!” He made great contributions to the stories and dialog of that series, and I set him off to create an entirely personal project.
“He came up with a great idea involving a group of feisty kids, with writing sharp enough to outdo the just emerging Peanuts gang. I suggested ragtime piano music for the series, naming it, “Easy Winners,” after one of my favorite Scott Joplin piano rags. That tune would be the title melody. Jules developed the stories, design, and dialog for this projected series. I found a wonderful woman actor (Norma McMillian) to record the voices, and we got as far as a pencil reel of animation for the first pilot episode. It was great pure early Feiffer; his first personal animation project!
“But it was late in my Terrytoons days. I was bounced out of there before I could get Easy Winners into production. Equally dismayed, Jules also left Terrytoons, and the potentially great Easy Winners became Hard-Losers.”
The good news is that animator Tony Eastman – son of cartoon writer and children’s book legend P.D. Eastman – was able to rescue a piece of this long lost pilot from the trash at Terrytoons, back in the 1950s when he was a kid.
Tony recalls, “I was at Kim Deitch’s house in Tarrytown when Gene Deitch brought home (from Terrytoons), a new pilot… Easy Winners, which, as I recall being told at the time, was to be on Captain Kangaroo – I’m thinking that it was meant to replace Tom Terrific when it had run it’s course. That day I saw the complete pilot, which was about 8 minutes long. I recall Gene wanting our opinion of it.
“Other than the opening and closing bumpers, the animation was more limited than Tom Terrific – I mean really more limited! Unlike “T.T.” with it’s bold brush ink line, Easy Winners utilized painted cels. Budget considerations might have dictated the very limited animation. The characters were designed by Jules Feiffer, who was on staff at T.Toons in that era. Gene took Kim and me to Terrytoons on some Saturdays. During one of those visits, I managed to pull a portion of that pilot out of the trash.”
Tony sent it to me and I’m proud to be able to post this excerpt (about a minute) of film below – to date it is all that remains of this lost TV pilot.
After seeing this bit of footage 56 years later, Gene Deitch wrote me saying:
“Even though I directed this, 60 years erased my memory that Easy Winners ever got this far! What I remember is a pencil reel of an actual story, about the kids playing a ball game. I remember Raymond as an outfielder, pleading, “Roll this way, ball! Roll this way!” As you can sense, this “could have been a contender!” It’s just one of the things squelched by that that terrified, self-serving throwback, Bill Weiss. This piece of animation does look great, but it just seems to be either the proposed show opener or maybe a promo.”
Regardless, this project adds to the legacy of Deitch era at Terrytoons – a period that equalled or perhaps exceeded the animation revolution that UPA promised. The mind reels at the possibilities of what Deitch and Feiffer could have brought to the world of children’s TV animation. For now we have this fragment to speculate on what might have been.
(Thanks to Gene Deitch, Tony Eastman, Mike Kazaleh, Charles Brubaker and Bill Lorenzo for their contributions in making this post possible)
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
This is marvelous! I wanted to see what was made of this pilot, and the little that we got made me satisfied!
I wish they did more with this.
Jerry:
It’s an intriguing bit of animation.Too bad it never went beyond that!
“Budget considerations might have dictated the very limited animation.”
But how much more fluid and expressive is limited animation by animators trained in full animation, compared to that created by a later generation who knew nothing else!
It’s part of the long tradition of kids comics, from Reg’lar Fellers through Peanuts. Looks like it had a lot of potential.
Very nice. Kinda reminds me of “Peanuts” minus one beagle.
I of course had a dog or other pet beast in mind as the stories developed..
This is fantastic! Thank you for this post. So interesting to read about this time in my father’s life and to see what he was working on.
One day when discussing Terrytoons Ralph Bakshi recalled this project with the words: “Easy Winners. Best thing they ever did!”
At least he saw potential.
This looks like it would have been a great show. Too ahead of its time, I guess.
One thing I noticed was the use of painted cels, when what I’ve read about the project is that it was planned to be shot in pencil test form.
It’s all a full flood of water under an old bridge. Sure, to paraphrase Marlon Brando, “it coulda been a contender!” But dead-hand Bill Weiss slammed the door on my plans for Terrytoons, and this and other potentially great projects never saw the light of a TV screen.
I’m more of the belief that some tightfisted exec at CBS took one look at this and said, “Didn’t that Gerald McBoing Boing crap look exactly like this just lose over a million dollars?”
LOL! It wouldn’t surprise me if that was actually said.
But had that tightfisted exec known his animation history, he would know “that McBoing Boing crap” won an Oscar, put UPA on the map, and that the character was the second most successful “franchise” that UPA created (after Magoo). He also might recall that CBS hired Deitch to seriously compete with UPA and – for those brief few years in the mid-to-late 50s – his Terrytoons studio did that quite nicely!
I love these discoveries. As the art director on the UPA documentary The Boing Heard Round The World, I often stumble across stories like this that are just amazing. I had the opportunity to design an animated character of Gene Dietch for our film and was thrilled to learn that he liked it. I see Gene has posted here, Hi Gene!
Anyone interested in our film can visit http://www.upapix.com
I just finished binge watching Ralph Bakshi’s “Mighty Mouse The NEW Adventures”. I’m 100% convinced that Terrytoons are still marketable and could make a huge comeback if packaged properly. I have thought about this for years and would love a chance to help make this happen. Terrytoons contain some of the most lovable and nostalgic characters ever created. It’s a shame to not introduce them to new generations.