Arthur Davis

Arthur Davis was born on June 14, 1905, was an American animator and director of the Warner Brothers animation studio, Termite Terrace. Davis was born in Yonkers, New York Click to look into! >> Read More... to Hungarian parents. He is the younger brother of entertainer Mannie Davis. Davis started at Out Of The Inkwell Films in New York when he was a teenager and worked as an assistant when Dick Huemer suggested him as an assistant in 1922. He is considered the first middle man in the animation industry. Another of his accolades was playing the famous "bouncing ball" from the 1920s cartoon "Follow the Bouncing Ball".

While one of the Fleischer brothers played the ukulele, Davis kept up the rhythm with a wooden stick with a white thumbtack at the end, which was photographed and worked on in movies as a moving ball. He helped develop Toby the Pup and Scrappy with fellow animators Dick Huemer and Sid Marcus. Davis was eventually promoted to director and remained in the studio even when Mintz died in 1939.

In 1941, Davis of Screen Gems was fired from Frank Tashlin   Frank Tashlin (Francis Fredrick von Taschlein) >> Read More... and transferred to Warner Bros. Cartoons, which were renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons when Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. Davis worked as an animator for the Tashlin division until late 1944 when it was acquired by Robert McKimson Robert McKimson was an American animator and illus >> Read More... . Later, in May 1945, when Bob Clampett Robert Emerson Clampett Sr. was not only an Americ >> Read More... left, Davis took over Clampett's unit to start her studio. Davis completed some of Clampett's planned cartoons, including "The Goofy Gophers" and "Bacall to Arms."

Davis directed several Looney Tunes During the golden age of American animation, one o >> Read More... and Merrie Melodies Merrie Melodies is also known as the Looney Tunes >> Read More... shorts, with a tone somewhere between Clampett and McKimson. He had an unmistakable visual style that can already be seen in Davis' Columbia shorts, in which the characters move along all axes of the animation field from foreground to background and side to side. His department was closed just two years later, in 1947, when Warner had a budget problem. Davis was later inducted into Friz Freleng's unit and served as one of Freleng's main animators for many years.

In 1962, fifteen years after his unit closed, Davis made another cartoon for Warner with the Freleng unit. (Several short films were released at the time, not only by Freleng's unit but also by Chuck Jones   Chuck Jones (September 21, 1912, Spokane, Washi >> Read More... , who were credited with directing various subordinates.) This cartoon, "Quackodile Tears" was also that of the last Warner Brothers short film. After leaving the studio in 1962, Davis joined Walter Lantz Productions as an animator. He left Lantz in 1965, then worked for Hanna-Barbera Productions and later moved to DePatieFreleng Enterprises to direct Pink Panther shorts and other animated series. Davis outlived most of his companions and died on May 9, 2000, at the age of 94 in Sunnyvale, California. He was cremated and his ashes scattered across the sea.