Art Davis

Art Davis (June 14, 1905 - May 9, 2000) was an animator and a director for Warner Brothers' Termite Terrace cartoon studio. Davis got his start at a young age at the New York studio of Max Fleischer, and is reputed to have been the first in-betweener in the animation industry. Another of his distinctions was that he tapped out the famous "bouncing ball" of the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" cartoons of the 1920s. While one of the Fleischer brothers played the ukulele, Davis would keep time with a wooden stick with a white thumbtack on the end, which was photographed and incorporated into the films as the actual moving ball. Later he was an animator for the Charles Mintz studio. While there, he helped create and develop Toby the Pup and Scrappy with fellow animators Dick Huemer and Sid Marcus. Davis would eventually be promoted to director and remained at the studio even after it became Screen Gems in 1940. In 1942, Davis left Screen Gems along with Frank Tashlin for Warner Bros. Davis worked as an animator for Tashlin's department until 1946 when it was assumed by Robert McKimson (though he did work on one McKimson cartoon). Later that same year, when Bob Clampett left to start his own studio, McKimson was given Clampett's unit. McKimson's old unit was given to Davis who was working in that unit. Davis directed a number of hilarious Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, with a tone somewhere between those of Clampett and McKimson. He had a distinctive characteristic visual style, which can be seen as far back as Davis' Columbia shorts, in which the characters move from the foreground to the background, as well as from side to side, using all axes of the animation field. His department was shut down only three years later in 1949 when Warners was having a budget problem. Davis then was taken into Friz Freleng's unit, and served as one of Freleng's key animators for many years, until the studio closed.