The several talents needed to produce an animated cartoon resemble a cast of characters from a Moliere play. The animators are, or course, the mountebanks. A director may be a Punchinello or a Bacchus. Other characters are the camera men, the artists who plan backgrounds and, of course, the musicians and those golden tonsilled folk who simulate the voices of rabbits, mice, witches, clowns and cartoon heroines. And, oh yes, the storymen.
I have always been fascinated by storymen. They are not normal people. They appear to be but that goes no further than their physical appearance. They are mild-tempered Dr. Jekylls until they begin working on a story. Then they become Mister Hydes, fanged monsters, destructive psychopaths. Like computerized sausage machines, they attack an idea, chew it up and finally regurgitate it in a strange but hopefully amusing form.
In the romantic 1930's and 40's, they devastated the verdant pasture lands of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Mother Goose and Hans Christian Anderson in their avaricious search for story plots they could turn into grist for the animation mills.
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