One of Julian’s incredible backgrounds from UPA’s “Tell-Tale Heart” (1953)
Background painters do not attract as much attention in the classic cartoon era as some of their counterparts, such as animators, directors, or voice artists. A handful, such as Maurice Noble, Eyvind Earle, and Tyrus Wong, have attained fame, but one of the most unsung and influential background artists in history was Paul Julian.
From “Hell-Bent For Election”
Julian joined the Schelinger studio in 1939. He spent two years as Chuck Jones’ background painter before joining United Productions of America in 1941, where he remained until 1945 (Julian would spend much of his career switching between the two studios).
During WWII, Julian served in the First Motion Picture Unit, where he worked on several Private SNAFU movies and other war-related projects. Here he met several founders of a fledgling enterprise, Industrial Films (later United Films), including Steve Bosustow. Julian served on a crew under Chuck Jones for the political film Hell-Bent for Election (1944) in support of Franklin Roosevelt. United morphed into United Productions of America, but Julian returned to Warner Bros. in 1945.
Paul Julian reached a peak with Warner from 1945 to 1951. Assigned to Friz Freleng’s production unit, he produced colorful, emphatic background art for many of the Looney Tunes’ outstanding shorts. Some of his notable work includes Back Alley Oproar (1948), Bad Ol’ Putty Tat (1949), and Buccaneer Bunny (1948). In Bad Ol’Putty Tat, an examination of Julian’s work reveals striking use of perspective and canted angles. When the cartoon switches to Granny’s apartment, Julian brings vibrant color to his simplified backgrounds. These talents would serve him well in the next phase of his career. But before departing again for UPA in 1951, Julian would add another hallowed contribution to Looney Tunes history.
“Back Alley Oproar”
Julian recorded the sound. Speeded up, it became the Road Runner’s voice for the initial cartoon Fast and Furry-ous, and remained that voice for decades, long after Julian departed Warner.
Back at UPA, Julian became a favorite of Producer/Director John Hubley and teamed with him for several well-regarded cartoon shorts. Perhaps the most famous was Hubley’s 1951 masterpiece, Rooty Toot Toot. Not only did Julian tie color to mood, but he also created some of the background work with a craggy, pitted gelatin roller to produce strong backgrounds mirroring the sordid action on the screen.
The next Hubley-Julian collaboration was The Four Poster (1952), a four-segment film detailing the course of a marriage. This film founded an entire artistic movement in Yugoslavia, the Zagreb School of animation, under the early direction of Dusan Vukotic.
Working with Director Ted Parmalee, Julian produced the visual design and color styling for The Tell-Tale Heart in 1953. This unique short, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, featured elements Julian was already proficient in. His eye-catching, angular, tilted designs, creative use of perspective, and stark lines created a horror classic (Julian’s daughter related that her father always had a dark, creepy side. Nowhere is this seen more emphatically than in this film).
When UPA came under suspicion for Communist activity during the infamous Red Scare, Julian was among the accused but cleared after an investigation. In 1964, after working on Mr. Magoo cartoons, Julian left UPA. Julian also worked with non-UPA producer Les Goldman to design The Hangman (1964), winner of 15 international film festival awards.
Julian made his way to Hanna-Barbera, where he worked on design for many Saturday Morning shows, including The Herculoids (1966) and two of their feature films. In 1980, Julian was awarded the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award. After a brief stint with Ruby-Spears, He returned to Hanna-Barbera and remained with them until 1991.
Paul Julian never actually retired. He produced art until he died in 1995 from pneumonia following a heart attack. Today, background art is designed and colored by computers; Paul Julian was a unique artist who did his most outstanding work by hand and deserves appreciation as perhaps the most prestigious background artist of his time.
Julian returned to Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” for Hanna Barbera Records. Click to read Greg Ehrbar’s post on this record.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
At least two of Paul Julian’s WPA murals in Southern California still survive: one in a post office in Fullerton, another at a school in Upland.
If Julian is less widely celebrated than some of his peers, then his own sheer versatility might be party accountable for that. Many cartoon fans can recognise Maurice Noble’s work, or Eyvind Earle’s, on sight; their styles are distinctive and individual. But when you look at the background paintings in “Baseball Bugs”, “Rooty Toot Toot”, “The Herculoids”, and “Raingully: The Last Rainforest”, it’s hard to believe that they were all created by the same person. Clearly Julian was able to adapt to any director’s style and create the ideal backgrounds for any situation.
I’m curious as to why Julian moved between studios periodically during his career. If his own daughter acknowledged that he had a “dark, creepy side,” then he might, for all his talent, not have been an easy person to get along with.
Paul Julian’s animation work definitely deserves a closer examination; the handful of images provided for this article provide ample evidence of his talent. I strongly urge everyone to check out “Hangman”, linked to in antepenultimate paragraph; while the animation is minimal, Julian’s artwork is more than sufficient to carry the film along to its stark conclusion.
Nice tribute to a great and under appreciated artist. Hopefully someone will be able to track down those murals in CA.
I never knew there was a Winsor McCay award. Neat
Fantastic artist. Would love to see more of his personal art, but we have plenty of his wonderful “commercial” art to enjoy. I’ve seen originals of his backgrounds for 60s and 70s Hanna Barbera TV shows and even those are brilliant.
Contrary to what this article states, I believe Julian was employed full time as Friz Freleng’s background painter after leaving Chuck Jones’ unit, his work for UPA being a side hustle (as it was for Jones when he directed Hell Bent For Election). Happy to be corrected, but the backgrounds on all of Freleng’s 1942-45 releases are all unmistakably his work. There was a brief period later in the 1940s where Terry Lind or Phil DeGuard painted backgrounds for Freleng and this is when Julian was first regularly employed by UPA.
Brilliant article on a brilliant artist. He deserves a proper retrospective or at least a quality coffee table book but I don’t see that happening. This is a perfect example of why I check in here every day.
You don’t see all that many “Silent Cal” Coolidge visual gags anymore. There are two in the “Four Poster” UPA animated segments. And Julian’s backgrounds in “The Hangman” really carry the narrative, which packs plenty of parallels with where we are today.
“The Tell Tale Heart” was produced, but not released, in 3-D.
Julian found employment during the 50s and 60s doing imaginative animated titles for Roger Corman.
His backgrounds for “The Terror” are strongly reminiscent of “the Hangman”.
The Tell-Tale Heart is more like a series of paintings instead of an animated film. Still, I can take it for what is and it’s easily one of the better UPA shorts.
“The Hangman” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJhSHa3PV7U
What a virtuoso artist! He was like a musician who can play practically any instrument, and play it well. The late, great jazz innovator Rahsaan Roland Kirk was like that— simply astonishing, and a level of talent like that seems practically superhuman. He could play three reed horns at once with accurate pitch, becoming a one-man brass section (Rahsaan was blind, too)! I’m not kidding, I saw him do this.
I can’t help but wonder what Paul Julian might have done if he hadn’t gone into the animation industry. On the other coast, the modern art world was really cooking! The 40’s and 50’s were the heyday of Abstract Expressionism (for example, the works of Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, and Mark Tobey, just three of many genius-level painters who traveled this unexplored path).
So the question arises: if you’ve got talent to burn, then what do you DO with it? Maybe the answer depends largely on finding out where there’s any path at all— which certainly applies to the “Mouse Factories.” Only UPA thought of itself as producing some sort of fine art, so that was a place where Mr. Julian could thrive.
The one drawback is that you’ll never see any of his work hanging on the wall of an art museum. But we still remember him, so— does that really matter?
Back to the 40s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, the cartoons always tended to have some gags about the crew in the backgrounds, but it seemed to be more frequent in those cartoons with backgrounds painted by Julian. I wonder if the writers responsible for the gags here or was Julian came up with these gags himself.
Also, one interesting to mention was that before “The Hangman”, Paul Julian also directed one UPA cartoon, Baby Boogie, released in 1955.
I’d never heard of “The Hangman” before (thanks!), and I just watched it— it’s available on YouTube. Perhaps it’s lapsed into the public domain? I don’t know, but it’s certainly NOT a cartoon for the weekend kiddie matinees of its era! 100% nightmare fuel…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkbpwbpZcsU
It involves very little traditional animation, but mainly Mr. Julian’s striking paintings instead, and a lot of camera panning in all directions. Side-to-side, up, down— not unlike the Ken Burns historical documentaries that came along much, much later. Could this little film have been an influence there? Not very likely, but I wouldn’t rule it out. In any case, providing “movement” to still pictures this way is a really effective technique, no matter who might have thought of it first.
Although he didn’t do the backgrounds for that cartoon, Julian‘s work on the Tell-Tale Heart was actually shouted out in a Mr. Magoo cartoon, When Magoo Flew. Magoo passes a movie theater that advertises the actress Theodora Parmalee in The Tattle-tale Heart. Bob McIntosh painted the backgrounds over Sterling Sturtevant’s designs.
The fact that Paul Julian was still able to produce such quality art even late into his life shows how much he put his A-Game into his work. I would’ve never guessed his cover art for the radio broadcast take of The Tell-Tale Heart was something made years after the 1953 cartoon if it wasn’t for the Hanna-Barbera name popping up. Also, the visual appearance of the narrator, who doesn’t show up in the cartoon, is so unnerving, I love it.