Tex Avery biography

Synopsis

Cartoonist, artist. Born February 26, 1908, in Taylor, Texas, to parents George and Mary Augusta "Jessie" Bean Avery. Avery (first known as Fred; "Tex" came later) took up drawing as a student at North Dallas High School, where he published a few rudimentary cartoons for the school yearbook and newspaper. After graduating in 1926, he took the train north for a summer to the Art Institute of Chicago. The school wasn't to his liking, so Avery soon returned home to work odd jobs in Dallas. In 1928, he and some friends traveled to southern California, and Avery immediately knew he'd found the place he wanted to be. His friends went back to Dallas without him, while a 20-year-old Avery stayed behind, scraping together a living unloading produce trucks by day and sleeping on the beach at night.

Avery tried selling his cartoon strip to local newspapers, but he experienced little success. Instead, he landed a job as an assistant animator at the Walter Lantz Studio, which produced the "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoons, among others. There Avery had a disheartening epiphany: he was not actually a very good artist. "Most of those fellows at Lantz's could draw rings around me," Avery later recalled. To make up for his lack of artistic talent, Avery became determined to master every stage of cartoon production. By the end of his five years at Lantz's, he had convinced his bosses to let him oversee two full animated feature films—a huge responsibility. He had also gained the nickname "Tex," in honor of his home state, and lost the use of his left eye in a freak office accident involving an ill-fated game of catch and a paper clip.

Classic Cartoons

In 1935, Avery sought a move to the Warner Brothers animation studio. As a trial project, he produced a feature film—Gold Diggers of '49—that knocked the socks off producer Leon Schlesinger, who hired the 27-year-old as animation director. From a small building on the studio lot nicknamed the "Termite Terrace," Avery oversaw every aspect of his cartoons, from story and music to animation. From Termite Terrace, Avery created some of the most memorable characters in cartoon history, many of which were voiced by the legendary Mel Blanc (though Avery also provided snatches of dialogue and his deep belly laugh when necessary). His characters included Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as well as Bugs Bunny, whose trademark greeting of "What's up, Doc?" had been popular slang at North Dallas High in Avery's student days.

Avery and his co-workers largely abandoned the children's market, which was already dominated by Disney. They focused instead on making cartoons that could also appeal to adults, transforming the whole idea of what a cartoon would be. Avery was the first director to work from the premise that his characters could do anything since they were, in fact, cartoons. They could get squished by an anvil, pushed off a cliff, or chopped into pieces