Paul Terry is an evanescent figure, not to say elusive, not to say non-existent. There is not much written about him, and even less in the form of those extensive interviews in which monsters such as Kimball or Hubley discuss their careers, peppering them with a thousand real or imagined details. Trying to gather material on the man is a task probably doomed to failure, beyond a couple of articles written in a dubious first person for mass-circulation magazines. The first mentions I read about a flesh-and-blood being named Paul Terry were not very promising either. In Donald Crofton’s “Before Mickey,” he appears a couple of times. First, he is told that the film used for one of his early cartoons was worth more before he left his mark on it, and then he is informed that his films are good enough to allow him to buy one of Bray’s animation patents—or else.
Thousands of books have been written about Walt Disney and his troupe, explaining even the slightest nuances of the Marceline Master’s eyebrow twitches. The different codes transmitted by the nervous drumming of his fingers have been deciphered by specialists in the Rosetta stone, while all ashtrays in Burbank were combed through exhaustively. Terry, on the other hand, is a blank page. His few photos show the kind of magnetism needed to star in “Death of a Salesman”. After seeing Disney strutting around in his luxurious office, it is inevitable to imagine how such an environment would look in Terry’s case: gray linoleum floor, a library limited to the phone book and no Rembrandt portrait of Mighty Mouse on the wall.
Of course, it’s Paul “Woolworth” Terry himself who is mainly responsible for this image of a hardware store clerk that accompanied him until the end of his days, or at least until the day he sold the studio, mumbling farewell to his staff as he fled on tiptoe. The general view makes him out to be a tough businessman, with not many dollars, fewer scruples, and the motto “quantity over quality” tattooed on the neck. And if, by some miracle, talented people came to work for him, the mistake was quickly corrected by the studio’s status quo.
Terry and Carlo Vinci (flipping at right)
In any case, the general consensus prevents Terry from being taken, even remotely, for anything resembling an “author” or someone with ideas of his own beyond churning out the stuff. And yet, a set of themes and motifs seem to recur in his work with such regularity that one would be tempted to call it “authorial.” Given the man status, it is easy to attribute this exclusively to his staff, people who generally received even less press coverage than Paul himself. The only problem is that themes are repeated over periods of time that transcend Terry’s association with these artists.
Therefore, my goal is to draw up a brief list of recurring motifs in the Terryan corpus™, rather than attempting to organize some guiding thesis that would structure it (a folly beyond my powers). I would be satisfied with just managing to record a sum of perplexities: those that made me take a special interest in the Terry of my childhood TV, which other celebrities, authors of more resounding fame, could never aspire to. The thing is, Terry was weird. It was impossible to fool a six-year-old audience on this point. One of us!
“Farmer Alfalfa’s Ape Girl”
In the beginning was the Lady. The Terry girls had a special status from the outset, when most of them were still drawn with a nail by Paul himself. Their initial prototype, a streamlined version of the Gibson girls, can be seen in the silent shorts of the Aesop’s Fables period.
The very first Terry Girl (1916).
To tell the truth, they don’t move much (too hard to handle), although these ladies hide an even greater flaw: they are 100% human. In any case, they testify to Terry’s undeniable interest in the female form. One of the few Terry’s animation drafts that have been preserved, Indian Pudding, a Terrytoon from 1930, shows that Terry managed to reserve the animation of the ladies for himself. But the girls of 1930 represent a fundamental advance over those of 1922: they are mice. Dancing mice.
Popcorn, 1931, animator’s breakdown by Devon Baxter. Note that again Paul Terry is in charge of the dancing mouse lady.
And here lies Terry’s fundamental contribution: his creatures could border on the grotesque, but they were primarily (that is, to the extent that the artist’s technical skills allowed) erotic entities; or they became so as they evolved in successive incarnations provided by artists of the caliber of Frank Moser, Bill Tytla, or Carlo Vinci—different fathers for the same spawn.
Terry’s Cinderella
Let’s compare them for a moment with other animated ladies. Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood prototype (brilliantly animated by Preston Blair) is a bombshell, but she is specifically designed to fulfill the role of a bombshell, a function made clear by her human physique thrown into a world of animals (wolves, preferably). Blair’s animation is erotic—rather burlesque—but not the character, who is actually a function or an excuse for a series of phallic gags (Avery’s women seem to be divided exclusively between bombshells and mothers-in-law, with the notable exception of some Country Gal). Betty Boop, to mention another human vamp, is also not erotic in herself but rather a caricature of eroticism. Her design has all the signs that designate the thing, but it never becomes the thing itself. Disney, for its part, would have to wait for Freddie Moore to introduce eroticism into its shop (and I’m not referring to the Moore Girls: anything Freddie drew was hot. If anyone could have combined pornography and abstract art, it was him).
But Disney would never go as far as Mr. Terry. For one thing, he would never end a Mickey short like this:
Obviously, it’s difficult to talk about Terry’s beauties without mentioning the artists who animated them, but therein lies my paradoxical argument: if more than one renowned animator, well versed in the history of the genre, confused Bill Tytla’s work with that of Carlo Vinci, it’s because there was a common force behind them. An eccentric mind, camouflaged under the harmless appearance of a Rotary Club member, able to get away with experiments that few would dare to attempt. How about a shot where the camera enters a character’s mouth and then exits through the other side? Something for Ralph Bakshi? Guess again. Submitted for your approval: “Tropical Fish”, 1933.
How about a half-naked woman who rules the jungle mercilessly, exposing her bare buttocks as a royal sign? (As a side line, this short include the exact opposite to the slow burn gag I wrote about some time ago: check out the ape smacking his wife at the beginning. No one can see that one coming!)
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How about a murderer who, confessing his crimes, first becomes the victim and then the judge who condemns him? A living flashback character, tortured by his memories? Peter Lorre, perhaps? Fritz Lang? Wrong. Dead wrong. “Bluebeard’s Brother”, 1932.
Bill Tytla animated this “flashback monster”, and in the close-up he introduced next, he did everything we will later associate with Jim Tyer… indeed, a strange brotherhood was brewing there. Some of the ideas that were discussed at home bore fruit elsewhere.
Think of Mike Maltese and his early days at Terrytoons, and it’s hard not to associate him with the profusion of Greek wolves or Italian bears… especially some bear family, who, a few years later, avoiding saying too much about their roots, would continue their career in the perfect hands (by then) of Chuck Jones.
Pearl White serials, melodrama, operetta… tons of operetta. Everything comes back again and again in the Terrytoons revolving door, as with those sax-ridden tracks composed by Phil Scheib, suitable for a psychotic nightmare. The continuous use of loops may be an economical measure, but it is also an introduction to trance and the repetitive rhythms of hip hop. And since we are delving into the background of today’s pop culture: Disney’s “Robin Hood” is often cited as the trigger for the furrie furry trend, but I have another idea. Nothing to be too proud of, of course, but it is worth noting. Terry’s girls are still going strong.
Terry’s Dancing Ladies.
But, of course, it’s difficult to define Terry’s girls. Tex’s girls boil down to a single repeated type. Terry, on the other hand, offers variety: there are tall ones and short ones, thin ones and fat ones. Especially fat ones. They are all enticing, in their own strange way. Their appeal lies in their diversity.
This is really a Van Beuren girl from a film by John Foster, who would later continue his career at Terrytoons
Terry’s Thin and Fat
There are also small ones. Very small, in fact. Especially if they are the object of desire of a large predator. A King Kong-like relationship, let’s say, of impossible consummation.
Terry’s Big and Small
This other Terryan device™ has a long history, and we can trace it back to an Aesop’s Fables from 1922 (“The Fable of the Cat and the Mice”). Over time, it will be refined until it becomes a crystal-clear dynamic that would make the Marquis de Sade blush. In general, the roles are divided between cats and mice (side note: the cat in “The Mad King” is animated with a degree of attention to what a real cat feels that sweeps offstage all the deer on Disney’s payroll). The pinnacle of this twisted logic is, in my opinion, the unsurpassable “Svengali’s Cat” (1946) and its surgical shot of the villain “operating” on his victim. In some poll of dubious legitimacy, “Vertigo” was voted the best film of all time. If that were true, guess which the best cartoon is.
But I was forgetting the dreams. No one seems to have taken the expression “girl of my dreams” more seriously than Terry. Dream is a second nationality for his creatures, and in it, a girl is always lurking, giving rise to pursuits like these:
Swimming in Dreamland.
Life is but a dream, they say. It can also be a nightmare, as we can see in A Midsummer Day Dream, an Aesop’s Fable starring Al Falfa and directed by Harry Bailey in 1929. Terry at its Daliest. But with girls, of course.
But we are barely scratching the surface, icing on the top of the iceberg. We still have many other recurring motifs from Terry’s oeuvre to explore, which can perhaps all be condensed into the figure of the most famous mouse who ever lived on the moon. I will devote my next entry to him – Tomorrow.
Lucas Nine is an Argentine artist: illustrator, graphic novel author, animator and director of animated films. His work has been awarded several times and published, exhibited and screened in Argentina, Brasil, Mexico, Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands and Japan. Check out his animation and artwork online: 
My single memory at this point of a Paul Terry shapely female in any of his cartoons, occurred in a heckle and Jekyll cartoon in which a goofy character given the name Horace was looking for his long, lost girlfriend, thanks to heckle and Jekyll. The final gag in that cartoon had a bevy of females running after horse claiming themselves to be the long lost girlfriend. I remember them being incredibly shapely, Also incredibly accurate for a cartoon! I know they were many others, and those will be revealed as the weeks go on. Wow! Bring back the TERRYTOONS, please!
You’re remembering “Blind Date” (1955), in which the millionaire Horace is offering a large sum of money to anyone who can reunite him with his childhood sweetheart “Dimples”, and Heckle dresses up Jeckle in drag in an attempt to collect the reward. The final scene, as you say, is hilarious, but I’m afraid the girls are much shapelier in your memory than in the actual cartoon. They’re all various kinds of animal, giraffes and hippos and whatnot, all wearing blond wigs.
I have been going through a lot of Terrytoons and this morning, after reading this article, saw 1950’s THE BEAUTY SHOP for the first time.
Bob
I’m always happy to read a positive reevaluation of Paul Terry and his studio. I underwent one myself several years ago after acquainting myself with his vast body of work during the first Covid lockdown, much of which I had never seen before. The Terrytoons evolved over the years, and they vary in quality, contradicting the widely-held notion that they’re all the same. Yet, just as you say, there are certain persistent elements that recur in cartoon after cartoon over the years, not least of which is sex appeal.
Terry’s oft-repeated dictum comparing Disney to Tiffany’s and himself to Woolworth’s is evidently something that he told to all new employees; even Terry’s nephew Alex Anderson recalled hearing it his first day on the job. Terry’s reputation as a cheapskate is fully justified, though his record of putting out a new cartoon every two weeks over a period of forty years, on time and under budget, stands as an achievement without parallel in animation history. He expected loyalty from his employees and very often got it, but he didn’t reward it; his handling of the 1947-48 strike, in which he alone came out on top at the expense of everybody else, is far from admirable. His reputation suffers further because many of the recorded reminiscences of him come from people who strongly disliked him. Gene Deitch, one of the last surviving figures from the studio, wrote about his impressions of Terry and producer Bill Weiss for Cartoon Research several years ago. His account is harsh; one might even call it scathing. A lot of people think that Chuck Jones was unkind in his assessment of Leon Schlesinger and Eddie Selzer, but Jones never compared them to gangsters and Nazis.
Terry personally approved every story before production began, and he often rejected the gags of other writers in favour of his own, regardless of whether those gags had been used before, which they usually had. Thus the studio’s entire output bore the stamp of Terry’s personal artistic vision, although he would never have called it that, much less referred to himself as something so pretentious as an “auteur.” But you make a very good case.
Your compilation videos could easily have been twice as long. There’s a wonderful scene in “Mighty Mouse and the Wolf” in which the zoot-suited wolf jitterbugs with Little Red Riding Hood as she desperately tries to escape from him. The animation of the dancing harem girl in “The Sultan’s Birthday” was later redrawn for “The Trojan Horse” and “Law and Order”, both times removing her veil, which vastly improves her appearance.
Another recurring element in the Terry corpus is the scantily clad jungle maiden cavorting gymnastically on top of a large beast: a dinosaur in “Farmer Al Falfa’s Ape Girl” (1932), a tiger in “Club Life in the Stone Age” (1940), and a panther in “Mighty Mouse and the Pirates” (1945). I’ve also seen the set-up in several Stone Age-themed cartoons from the silent era.
You might also have mentioned Fanny Zilch, star of a series of cartoon melodramas in the 1930s featuring the original villain Oil Can Harry. Granted, she doesn’t really belong in any of your compilation videos, as she’s neither too fat nor too thin, she isn’t disproportionately smaller than her male co-stars, and she dances very little. But oh, those legs….
Of course, this should only be the beginning of something much more extensive and systematic that I am not in a position to do (although I counted on the kind cooperation of the comments section regulars, where there will undoubtedly be people much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am: a lot of information may appear here, and in this sense, I imagine this section as a kind of addendum or even a correction—a gap filler—to the article.
Some of the points mentioned (Oil Can Harry and in particular Gene Deitch’s views) will be covered in tomorrow’s post. But many things will inevitably remain unmentioned. Anyway, the focus of the article is Terry’s “authorial variables,” which, at least as far as I could see, are only mentioned as the product of someone else or the repetition of what already existed in order to save a few bucks. But of course, I’m leaving out the “management side” of the story: his handling of the strike, the broken promise to share ownership of the studio with the “loyalists,” Moser’s questionable departure, etc. I think those points have been covered extensively elsewhere.
Over the years, my various girlfriends have all been very nice.
But none of ’em were Krakatoa Katy.
Great post, Lucas! Insightful and well-illustrated; looking forward to more. Yes, Terry – and his story – are quite enigmatic. I guess the most informative material is the work itself.
Which begs the question: where, oh where, are the HOME VIDEOS?
Who even owns Terrytoons at this point in time?
GDX – You need to read my post: Terrytoons: Why We Don’t See Them Anymore
Click here:
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/lets-talk-terrytoons-why-we-dont-see-them-anymore/
I’ve always thought that the reason why Terrytoons aren’t seen anymore is a very simple one— they’re lousy. The examples presented here certainly didn’t change my opinion; in fact, they’ve reinforced it!
For example, why is there so much dancing, especially in the early ones? Because it’s mostly cycle animation, another one of Mr. Cheapo Deluxe’s many ways of cranking out his bargain-basement product at bargain-basement prices.
The author, if he were writing about cars rather than cartoons, would probably try to find some way to make the Edsel and the Yugo look good! There is a certain skill involved, after all, in skillfully applying lipstick to a pig.
But I did like the Surrealistic Farmer Alfalfa cartoon, as it demonstrates that at least SOMEONE there had some imagination.
He was probably fired rather quickly by the boss, though— who might have feared that imagination could be contagious.
I think we can all agree that Terrytoons are an acquired taste. Most of us who enjoy them do so for various reasons: perhaps out of nostalgia; or to study the history of animation; or simply to appreciate some of the incredible artistic talents involved. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, everyone has a subjective point of view on art, movies – humor and cartoons. Some of us here see much merit in the Terry films – heck, even Walt Disney loved them in the 1920s. As someone who presents screenings of rare cartoons for many years, at venues all over the world… carefully curated… the Terrytoons, while no match for Disney, Avery, Warner Bros., get a surprisingly enthusiastic reaction from general audiences – and that may explain why the studio endured for over 40 years.
Applying lipstick on a pig? Forgive me, but that seems like an image directly taken out from a Terrytoon…
I must agree. Oink oink…!
Most people, upon seeing an article about something they find “lousy”, would say that’s not for me, and move on elsewhere.
You not only read an article about cartoons you find “lousy”, you respond to the article, then return again later in the day to make yet another response.
Your decision making can only be described as “lousy”.
(Clearly you have never had to make do with limited budgets on projects)
People like you may not like Terrytoons, but I’ve never minded them. Nothing too pretentious and they do the job well as entertainment generally.
Great article Lucas, really loved this. You bring up a good point that Paul Terry was the “girl” animator in many of the initial season of Terrytoon. In FRENCH FRIED, there is a Statue of Liberty is animated by him, with Alfalfa’s female co-star being animated by Frank Moser. You can see other Terry animated mouse girls in HAWAIIAN PINEAPPLE, POPCORN, BULLY BEEF, SPANISH ONIONS, among others
I also appreciated you noting Henry D. Bailey, a very underdiscussed animator from the Fables-VB stock. I always felt in the silents that his approach to the acting was more skilled then his co-workers and he could sell character action more. Since Terry enjoyed “Alfalfa swindles in the city with his dog saving him” beginning with SEES NEW YORK and ending with FRENCH FRIED, there are two within the silent Fables that use this plot, CITY SLICKERS being directed by Bailey (despite what the opening title may say) and you can see quite a bit of his acting skills in that one, especially when Alfalfa initially loses his bag and his dog gives it to him. We really believe that Alfalfa is grateful to have his faithful Pup with him
Harry Bailey was an excellent director who really deserves to be recognized for his work, as he had some very bold ideas for these cartoons that rivaled those of the Fleischer studios.
Towards the end of his career as a director, Bailey began producing a highly ambitious series based on Otto Soglow’s comics, Sentinel Louey, which is notable for being the first American cartoon to feature stylized landscapes and settings, a cross between Art Deco and Art Nouveau.
At the time, only cartoons produced in the Soviet Union could boast a stylized drawing style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsxV_QqRuDs
Unfortunately, the dismissal of Bailey by Van Beuren in 1933 led to the cancellation of the series, and The Little King, directed by George Stallings and also based on Soglow’s comics, is much more conventional and lacks the boldness and artistic ambition of the previous series.
Wonderful piece… though in all fairness, WRT the comment “Disney would never end a Mickey short like this…” multiple Mickey Mouse cartoons actually do end with Mickey and Minnie kissing deeply at the clinch (or Minnie raining lipstick-prints on Mickey, as in another of the Mighty Mouse shots).
Not exactly that kind of all-body kiss that seems to be fairly common in MM endings. Mickey’s kiss is pretty much the same as the one he would give to Pluto the Dog. But maybe I missed the hot endings!
Nothing a cartoon rodent does could ever be hot, but try MICKEY’S MECHANICAL MAN. (There are like half a dozen others.)
Good example! Yes, of course, the early Mickeys are a completely different matter. The first one, Plane Crazy, where Tricky Mickey forces Minnie to kiss him, is an even better example. But the character crystallized in a different way. In any case, our MM is still miles ahead of any Mickey for one simple reason: his girls are all different. In this sense, he’s closer to Hugh Heffner than Clark Kent… by the way, Heffner and his bunnies thing… too many Terrytoons?
The female dancers, while clearly not rotoscoped, do look as though some effort has been applied to choreography. Possibly just a particularly skilled animator or an extremely detailed story board, but can’t help suspecting a real dancer was involved at some point. Seems unlikely Terry would put out money for a professional and/or take reference footage. Maybe one or more of the following:
— Somebody had a supple friend willing to drop in and act things out.
— They had access to existing films, like obscure musicals and novelty shorts.
— Guys with really good memories went to the burlesque houses.
— It was simply a matter of more time and effort applied to the scenes the boss really liked.
I read somewhere that Carlo Vinci, who animated the most realistic ones, was a dance nut. He even met his wife on a dance hall…
Hi there, that was a very interesting read. I remember watching Mighty Mouse on tv like 5 years ago. Also I have a theory that the mighty mouse character is basically Mickey Mouse and Superman fused into one just because some unknown person i have heard thru the grapevine told it to me.
Maybe it was Al Falfa himself!
Thanks for the wonderful article, Lucas! The butt shot of the “Ape Girl” was animated by Frank Moser, who liked to draw girls and nude Cupids with three dimensional buttocks. He did the majority of that character’s scenes. The “primitive gal” was another Terry tangent in silents like BONEHEAD AGE, again mostly drawn by Moser, so I wonder if this type was his “baby”.
Thanks for the info!
You just don’t GET this kind of discussion on other blogs! 😀
A notable feature of Terry’s cartoons of the twenties and thirties was the role played by the Farmer Al Falfa: depending on the needs of the story, he was presented either as an anti-hero or as an antagonist (e.g. in “Venus and The Cat” (1921) and “The Enchanted Fiddle” (1922), to name but a few). I think this feature was completely unique in cartoons of this period, because although Felix the cat and Koko the clown could commit evil deeds, they were never presented as villains in their own cartoons. After Terry left Fables Studios in 1929, Van Beuren stopped presenting Al Falfa as an antagonist in the few cartoons he produced with the character in 1929-30. However, when Terry recovered the rights to his character in 1930, he would once again present him as an antagonist in some of his Terrytoons (in “A June Bride” (1935) and “The Talking Magpies” (1946), for example).
Another feature unique to Terry’s cartoons was undoubtedly mechanical horses, as they appear in many of Terry’s cartoons. Mechanical horses were a good source of gags for animators, and a good example of a cartoon making the most of gags around mechanical horses is “Phoney Express” from 1926. It was most probably to imitate Terry that Disney produced his own version of the mechanical horse in the cartoon Alice’s Brown Derby (1926), a remarkable film not in itself, but because the Fables studio team used it as inspiration for Flying Hoofs (1928), making it one of the few silent Disney films that can be said with certainty to have influenced another animation studio. Later, Terrytoons and Van Beuren each used mechanical horses separately in their cartoons, with Van Beuren gradually modifying the design of the horses to make them more bouncy and rubbery. This evolution reached its climax in the Horse Cops cartoon (1931), which features mechanical horses that seem to be made entirely of rubber, reinforced by the addition of a tail made of small bicycle tires of various sizes.
Terrytoons may not have much of a reputation, but they are still more interesting to watch than much of the made-for-TV cartoons that would come later. Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and Deputy Dawg were staples of afternoon TV when I was growing up. The older lesser-known theatricals seemed to get edged out once studios started selling new shows directly for syndication. Individually, many of the Terrytoons aren’t much, but as a whole, they’re a part of the history of animation, so it is a shame that they aren’t more easily accessible.
This article was a great read. Thank you. Loved this perceptive line : “… those extensive interviews in which monsters such as Kimball or Hubley discuss their careers, peppering them with a thousand real or imagined details.”
Yes, it has been confirmed that he indeed was a furry of the higher order.
Terry’s cartoons aren’t just simple, low-budget entertainment — they carry a strange, dreamlike, and provocative spirit, combining economy with real visual ambition.