March, 2008

Industry legend Jack Zander died in December of 2007, at the age of 99. He created hundreds of commercials from the 1950's to the '80's. Animator Dean Yeagle recalls his days in at the
Zander Animation Parlour.

I first met Jack Zander in 1973, when I went to New York City from Philadelphia to look for work in animation.  I'd been in the Navy for the previous 4 years, and my wife Barbara and I had just become proud, but poor, parents of a daughter, Becky.  Jack offered me a job on the strength of my reel, which didn't have a lot on it - just some work I'd done in order to have a reel, basically.  I also had a character design portfolio. 

Jack gave me a job doing whatever was needed that I might be capable of, and he let me try my hand at a bit of everything.  Those of you in the animation industry will know how very rare this sort of arrangement is these days, and it was no more common then, especially at a major studio like Zander's Animation Parlour.  He gave me a chance to develop my skills at animation, layout, design, and eventually, direction.  And the chance to meet and work with some of the greats of classical animation, including Preston Blair,   Emery Hawkins, and of course, Jack himself.  It was an act of faith on his part, and it gave me my start, and my career.  Not everyone would have taken such a chance on an untried punk like me, fresh out of nowhere.

The first time I met Preston Blair, at the studio, he was looking at a pencil test for a Freakies cereal commercial he'd animated for Jack.  Jack introduced me and my head nearly exploded...one of my heroes, one of the greats! His book had been my starting point in learning the mechanics of animation. Since he worked at his home, we never specifically worked 'together', but I did some additional animation on one of his spots, and we may have split work on one or two others. 

The Freakies spots were a series.  Most of them were done on Color-aid paper with colored pencil rendering. I think the last one may have been traditional ink and paint, because they wouldn't pay for the extra work anymore. The cereal was so loaded with sugar that if it sat on the supermarket shelf for too long, the sugar would leach out and soak the bottom half of the box...yuuch!

Preston was a lovely guy - I visited his home in Westport, Connecticut, and bought an animation desk from him, which is the desk I work on to this day.  He took me into his garage to get the desk, and there were packages in butcher paper, floor to ceiling, all around the walls.  I asked what they were, and he said they were packs of cels and drawings from Fantasia (he did the hippos and gators in The Dance of the Hours, and some of Mickey in the Sorcerer's Apprentice), and from the classic MGM cartoon, Red Hot Ridung Hood!  My head exploded again. 

Emery Hawkins lived in Taos, New Mexico, so I didn't see him often, although I did visit him on a trip West.  I remember directing a spot that he animated, and at one point Ed Cerullo, one of the great assistants at Jack's, came to me with what appeared to me an odd bit of animation that Emery had done.  He thought the exposure sheet might have been written in error.  A group of dolphins, during a song for a Cracker Jacks commercial, leap out of the water, but when they got to the top of their arc, the sheet had the same drawings reverse so they went backward into the water again.  Looked a bit odd to me, too, but I said "Well, this is Emery Hawkins...let's see if he means it."  And we went to pencil test

that way.  Turned out to follow beautifully with the music, and looked strangely 'right' after all.  Emery was also famous for straying wildly from the model sheets, so the assistants had their work cut out for them - but his animation was worth the trouble.

While I was at the studio, between late '73 to early '81, I worked with animators Nancy Beiman and the late Bill Railey, Ed Cerullo, Mike Baez, Joe Gray, and Ellsworth Barthen (good friend of Rudy Vallee, and he did impressions of FDR on the Joe Franklin show); Al Martino, Ralph Ventura, Helen Komar (former Rockette), Irene and Janet Scagnelli...Mark Zander, Jack's son, was sales rep, later joined by his brother David.  Lots of other people came and went, either as freelancers or temporary employees, including Tom Sito, Eric Goldberg, and Maurice (now Pixote) Hunt. 

As for commercials that I worked on...hundreds, I guess.  I designed the original Cheerios Bee (well, the client WANTED him to look like an insect Elmer Fudd) and animated a few commercials for that; a lot of cereal commercials including Moonstones, Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs, and Crunchy Nuggets.   No, no one else has heard of them, either.  SOS Greasies, Herbal Essence Shampoo, a whole series for Dime Savings Bank (for which I designed the characters as well), a spot for dog biscuits (can't recall which ones) that allowed me to design and animate a dog version of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca; another long series of commercials for Hamm's Beer...many others.

Jack himself was wonderful to work for, and his company reel had some of the most impressive commercial work ever done.  He had also pioneered the use of well known cartoonists from The New Yorker and elsewhere to design spots, and his staff had to be able to draw in those styles.  As a result, I had a chance to do a great number of different styles, both as character designer and animator, and that sort of enforced versatility helped immensely when I went out on my own.

Jack and I kept in touch over the years. He was quite a character, his mustache and beard gave him an air of perpetual amusement; his wit was dry and deadpan.  He rode a motorcycle until well into his 90's...he told me every time he rode out to the Harley meet in South Dakota the grizzled old timers would curse to see him arrive:  "Damn, Jack's still alive!  I'm STILL not the oldest guy here!" 

I last talked to him just a few months before his death, and he was as sharp as ever at 99.   He told me that he'd recently awakened to find a half of a $50 bill on his bedside table...his dog had eaten the rest.  When he later walked the dog, he was able to retrieve the rest of the bill and piece enough of it back together for the bank to give him a new one. 

When anyone asks me what was the best piece of advice I'd ever had in animation, I always tell them about the advice Jack gave me early on. I was, as usual, sleepy after lunch, and I'd put my head down on my desk in my office to rest.  I heard him coming, so I quickly perked up and pretended to work.  He came in. We discussed the scene I was animating, and he turned to go.  Then, like Columbo, he turned back to me..."Oh, one more thing." he said,   "When you fall asleep at your desk, be sure not to lay your head on your animation disc.  You've got peg holes in your forehead."   Turned out he'd done the same thing, years before, at MGM.  A good lesson for all animators, and I'm happy to pass it on - a well-digested bit of currency.


Dean is a member of the Creative Talent Network. Are you connected?

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