Pre-Hollywood Years
Frederick Bean Avery was born in the small city of Taylor, Texas, on February 26, 1908. After finishing high school, Avery headed north to Chicago, where he enrolled in a three-month course at the Art Institute of Chicago. The main purpose of this course was to create illustrations for newspapers. Avery quit after only finishing a month of the course.
In January of 1928, Avery made his way to Los Angeles but didn’t work in Hollywood immediately. Instead, he found work in a variety of jobs. This included painting cars and loading boxes at a warehouse.
Universal Cartoon Studios
After a few months of these menial jobs, Avery was hired as an animator for Winkler Studios. There he would work as an inker on the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts. In 1929, when Universal took over Oswald’s production, Avery moved to Universal Cartoon Studios, working directly with Walter Lantz.
The animators at Universal liked to play tricks on each other throughout the day. One such incident involving Avery was no laughing matter. An animator named Charles Hastings decided to shoot a wire paper clip out of a makeshift rubber band slingshot at the back of Avery’s head. When another animator yelled for Avery to look out he turned around and the small projectile pierced Avery’s left eye. He was permanently blinded in this eye.
Avery moved up the ranks at Universal and by 1930 was soon a full-fledged animator. He worked extensively on Oswald until 1935 and claimed to direct two of the shorts in that series. His transition from solely animating to directing came when he complained to animation director Bill Nolan that some of the best gags he animated were being left out of the shorts.
Avery had suggested to Nolan that he be given the job of creating storyboards for each short film, which Nolan agreed to. The two shorts that Avery did storyboards for – which made him the de facto director – were Towne Hall Follies (1935) and Elmer the Great Dane (1935).
In early 1935 the animator became unsatisfied with his pay at Universal Cartoon Studios. In protest, he began to turn in substandard work and was subsequently fired in April of that year. Two days later he married his girlfriend, who worked as a Universal Cartoon Studios inker.
Looney Tunes at The Termite Terrace
Returning to Los Angeles after a long honeymoon in Oregon, Avery was hired as a director by Leon Schlesinger, who produced cartoons for Warner Brothers. Avery was the third full-time director to be brought on board. This followed Jack King and Friz Freleng.
When Avery joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, there was no room to accommodate him or his staff at the animation building located on the Warner Brothers backlot on Sunset Boulevard. Instead, Avery and his team of animators (Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, and Sid Sutherland) were put up in a termite-infested five-room bungalow.
The animators had dubbed their new workspace “Termite Terrace.” Avery and his team were so influential that this space eventually would become the nickname for the entire animation division at Warner Brothers. Avery was assigned to the black and white Looney Tunes division instead of Merrie Melodies, which were in Technicolor. The first Looney Tunes cartoon that Avery’s quintet produced for Warner Brothers was Gold Diggers of ’49 (1935). This was the second cartoon to feature Porky Pig.
Porky and Daffy
Avery used Porky frequently and quickly redesigned his appearance to be more cartoony. As a result, this made Porky look less like a Walt Disney character. Ultimately, Porky Pig was the only character at Warner’s that Avery had a hand in either creating or redesigning. It would wind up becoming their most famous incarnation.
With the 1937 short Porky’s Duck Hunt, Avery introduced the manic waterfowl, Daffy Duck, which he co-created with Bob Clampett. This early version of the character was less anthropomorphic and more duck-like. He also behaved in a crazier manner than in later cartoons. The following year Avery would direct two more Daffy Duck cartoons: Daffy Duck and Egghead as well as Daffy Duck in Hollywood.
Another character Avery helped create in 1937 was “Egghead.” The character appeared in the short Egghead Rides Again as well as in Little Red Walking Hood (1937) and Daffy Duck and Egghead (1938). In 1940 the character would evolve into Elmer Fudd in the Chuck Jones-directed Elmer’s Candid Camera.
Bugs Bunny
In 1938, animators Ben “Bugs” Hardaway and Cal Dalton introduced a mischievous rabbit to the Looney Tunes cavalcade of cartoon characters. This unnamed rabbit appeared in Porky’s Hare Hunt. Two years later Avery supervised Bob Givens’ redesign of this character. He would now be known as Bugs Bunny.
This was an unofficial name he had earned in the Termite Terrace bullpen in 1939. Avery came up with the “What’s up, Doc?” catchphrase, which was a common expression used in Texas during Avery’s childhood. Bugs’ first official appearance was in the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare (1940), which Avery directed.
Avery went on to direct only three other Bugs Bunny cartoons. Tortoise Beats Hare, All This and Rabbit Stew, and The Heckling Hare were all released in 1941. During the production of The Heckling Hare, Avery quarreled with Leon Schlesinger over the ending of the short. This was subsequently reported on in The Hollywood Reporter on April 2, 1941. As a result of this feud, Avery was given a four-week unpaid suspension.
When Schlesinger passed on his new idea for shorts featuring live footage of animals with dubbed voices called Speaking of Animals, Avery left Warner Brothers behind and teamed up with producer Jerry Fairbanks to work on the series. The series would be distributed by Paramount.
MGM Years
After working on three shorts in the Speaking of Animals series, Avery signed a five-year contract with MGM to run his own animation unit. This was announced by The Hollywood Reporter on September 2, 1941. With larger budgets and free reign offered to Avery at MGM, his cartoons reached their zenith. Avery’s new boss, Fred Quimby, had a less frictional relationship with Avery than Schlesinger had. This was an added bonus.
Avery’s first cartoon for MGM was a “Three Little Pigs” tale with a Nazi twist called Blitz Wolf (1942). This was also the first animated short that Avery would direct to earn an Academy Award nomination. He ultimately lost to Walt Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face (1942) which also had a Nazi theme.
In 1943 Avery would create two of his most iconic characters: Droopy and the unnamed “sexy babe” dubbed affectionately by fans “Red.” Other characters he introduced during his time at MGM included Screwy Squirrel and the Of Mice and Men-inspired George and Junior. Avery made over 60 shorts for MGM over the next decade. On March 1, 1953, Avery was fired by the studio and his animation division was dissolved.
Return to Universal
Avery’s return to Universal Studio Cartoons, then known as the Walter Lantz Studio, was brief. In the two years he worked there (1954-1955) Avery only directed four cartoons: I’m Cold (1954), Crazy Mixed Up Pup (1955), The Legend of Rockaby Point (1955), and Sh-h-h-h-h-h (1955).
Two of these cartoons featured the penguin Chilly Willy (I’m Cold and The Legend of Rockaby Point). Avery had three more Chilly Willy cartoons in the pipeline before eventually quitting the studio over a financial dispute. These cartoons would wind up being completed by animator Alex Lovy.
Advertising Work and Final Years
For the remainder of Avery’s life, he predominately worked in advertising, specifically television commercials. Some of his most iconic work included creating the Frito-Lay mascot “The Frito Bandito” as well as ads for Raid insecticide. In addition to this, he also worked on ads for Kool-Aid. These ads featured some of the Warner Brothers characters he had helped to create in the 1930s and 1940s.
Avery’s final work was for Hanna-Barbera. There he had helped them come up with gags for their television cartoons. He also worked on creating a new Flintstones character named “Cave Mouse.” Avery suffered from depression during this period due to the suicide of his son and the dissolution of his marriage.
On August 26, 1980, Tex Avery died of lung cancer in Burbank, California. He was 72 years old.
