93 Facts About John Hubley

John Kirkham Hubley was an American animated film director, art director, producer, and writer known for his work with the United Productions of America and his own independent studio, Storyboard, Inc.

John Hubley was born in Marinette, Wisconsin, in 1914 and developed an interest in art from a young age, as both his mother and maternal grandfather were professional painters.

John Hubley left Disney in 1941 during the Disney animator's strike and joined the First Motion Pictures Unit, later following many of his fellow unit artists to the newly-formed Industrial Poster Service.

John Hubley served many roles at UPA and directed several Academy Award-nominated animated shorts.

In 1952, John Hubley was forced to leave UPA after refusing to denounce communism, leading to his eventual investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

John Hubley is often considered the most important figure in American independent animation and one of the most important figures in the history of animation.

John Hubley collaborated with jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, and Quincy Jones and often used unscripted, improvised dialogue in his films, creating an entirely new way of expressing emotion and feeling through the medium of animation.

John Hubley's films are considered important in the evolution of post-war modernism in film.

John Hubley was born on May 21,1914, at 1212 11th Street in Marinette, Wisconsin.

John Hubley was encouraged at a young age to become an artist by his mother and maternal grandfather.

John Hubley attended Iron Mountain High School from 1929 to 1932.

John Hubley wrote for the school's newspaper, The Mountaineer, and from 1930 to 1932 provided the illustrations for the school's yearbook, The Argonaut.

Unable to support himself, John Hubley lived with his aunt, Kathleen Kirkham Woodruff, who had moved to Los Angeles for her film career.

John Hubley's painting talents caught the studio's eye, and he was hired as a background and layout artist.

John Hubley began work at the Walt Disney Animation Studio on January 1,1936.

John Hubley started as an apprentice on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs making background tracings and painting backgrounds and layouts for animators, but was quickly promoted to an art director for Pinocchio.

Wright showed the film to Disney's staff, including John Hubley, who was greatly inspired by the film's stylized visuals and animation.

John Hubley was chosen as one of three directors to handle the "Rite of Spring" passage of Fantasia.

Specifically, John Hubley directed the section covering the molten stage of Earth's creation to the cooling off into greenery.

Hubley and his wife Claudia both participated in the 1941 Disney strike, with John taking dozens of photographs to document the event.

John Hubley was one of the better-paid employees of the studio, making $67.50 a week, but decided to strike in support of unionization.

John Hubley called Flesicher one of "one of the world's intellectual lightweights".

John Hubley disliked his work at Screen Gems, but Flesicher's detachment from the employees allowed John Hubley a creative freedom he had not found at the Disney Studio.

On November 23,1942, John Hubley enlisted in the United States Armed Forces to work in the First Motion Picture Unit, an independent film production unit in the Air Force.

John Hubley, who had grown increasingly more interested in the works of modern artists like Paul Klee, pushed his films to have flat, abstract visuals.

Since the films were often uncredited, it is unknown how many films John Hubley directed for the First Motion Picture Unit, but Flight Safety: Landing Accidents was likely his last.

In 1943, Hubley was contacted by the United Automobile Workers, who were looking to hire Hubley to produce a short film endorsing Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1944 Presidential Election.

John Hubley took the project to the newly-formed Industrial Film and Poster Service, which was renamed to United Productions of America.

The film, Hell-Bent for Election, was storyboarded by John Hubley and directed by Chuck Jones.

At UPA, John Hubley found the creative freedom he had yearned for his entire career.

John Hubley was tasked with directing the first "trial" films, Robin Hoodlum and The Magic Fluke.

John Hubley, inspired by his uncle Harry Woodruff, pitched an idea for a short-tempered, aggressive old curmudgeon.

John Hubley served as the supervising director of Gerald McBoing-Boing, written by Theodor Geisel and directed by Robert Cannon.

The film won UPA their first Academy Award for Best Short Subject Cartoon, which "stung" and "really shocked" John Hubley, claimed layout artist Bill Hurtz.

John Hubley, now determined to win his own Academy Award for the studio, directed Rooty Toot Toot, UPA's most expensive and ambitious film at the time.

John Hubley wrote the film alongside Bill Scott and hired Phil Moore to compose the score.

At the recommendation of Art Babbitt, John Hubley hired dancer Olga Lunick to choreograph the film's dance elements, and much of the film's animation was done by Betty Boop creator Grim Natwick.

In September 1951, UPA layout artist Bernyce Fleury testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that several UPA artists, including John Hubley, were promoting communism through their films.

John Hubley refused to denounce communism and was fired from UPA on May 31,1952.

John Hubley found work illustrating album covers for Westminster and Clef Records for artists such as Al Hibbler, Aaron Copland, Slim Gaillard, and Chico O'Farrill.

Still "undercover" in Hollywood, John Hubley founded Storyboard, Inc in 1953.

Since television work was both uncredited and in high demand, John Hubley quickly found work directing animated commercials for companies such as Heinz, Bank of America, and E-Z Pop.

In 1955, after the collapse of Finian's Rainbow, John Hubley moved Storyboard, Inc with him to New York City, where he soon married his second wife, Faith John Hubley.

The resulting film, The Adventures of * was the first short film John Hubley directed after leaving UPA, as well as the first animated film ever commissioned by an art museum.

The film contained many of the advertisements John Hubley had already made at Storyboard, Inc.

John Hubley experimented with multiple exposure effects on the film to give it a distinct look and dimensionality.

John Hubley was inspired by his earlier work on the Mr Magoo films with Jim Bauckus to experiment with films centered around improvised dialogue, as he often encouraged Baukus to riff in the studio.

In 1958, John Hubley recorded his sons Mark and Ray his sons playing a game where they search for a "Moonbird", referring to a pet bird the family had lost recently by leaving a window open.

Faith edited the conversations together into a narrative, and John Hubley enlisted Ed Smith and former UPA director Robert Cannon for animation.

John Hubley wanted to make a film about Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and was inspired after reading Harlow Shapley's Of Stars and Men in 1959.

John Hubley began teaching filmmaking at Harvard in 1962, becoming the first teacher of animation at Harvard's Visual Arts Center.

John Hubley wrote an adaptation of Edwin Abbot's 1884 novella Flatland, and collaborated with his students as well as Dudley Moore and several members of Beyond the Fringe.

John Hubley was chosen to direct the film for the NFB, which eventually became The Cruise.

The film was designed to be an educational tool for school use, though John Hubley had very little involvement with creating the curriculum surrounding the film.

The film addressed themes of fertility and death and continues John Hubley's run of collaborating with musicians as voice actors, as singers Anita Ellis and Grady Tate lent their voices for the film, as did actor David Burns.

Notably, John Hubley directed the "Letter E" segment for the show's first episode on November 10,1969.

John Hubley directed over thirty animated segments for the show between 1969 and 1977.

John Hubley enlisted the help of geoscientist Bruce Heezen to research the film.

Much in the same way The Hole and The Hat were companion pieces, John Hubley's next film, Cockaboody was a companion piece to Windy Day.

John Hubley again recorded a conversation between his daughters Georgia and Emily and brought it to life through animation.

John Hubley, now being commissioned by the same government that had practically forced him out of UPA in 1952, was finally free from the effects of the blacklist.

Now one of the most respected artists in an industry that had blacklisted him only two decades prior, John Hubley began his most ambitious project to date.

John Hubley picked many unknown actors with few or no prior credits for the film, including Lawrence Pressman, his then-girlfriend Lanna Saunders, and Yale student Meryl Streep in her first acting role.

The John Hubley children appear in the film for different stages of life.

Around the time John Hubley began production on Everybody Rides the Carousel, producer Martin Rosen hired John Hubley to direct an animated adaptation of Richard Adams' Watership Down.

John Hubley flew to London to meet Rosen at the new studio Rosen opened for the film and the two took trips to the English countryside for inspiration, but John Hubley's interest in the project quickly faded.

Rosen and John Hubley frequently disagreed on the film's narrative, with Rosen pushing for grittiness and John Hubley pushing for a lighter tone and more abstract visual style.

John Hubley had signed an exclusivity contract to work on the film, but Rosen soon found out he was secretly developing a new film, leading to Rosen firing John Hubley from the film and becoming the director himself.

John Hubley is often credited as the co-director of the film, but his name does not appear in the credits.

Toward the middle of production in February 1977 John Hubley died, leaving Faith and Trudeau to finish the film themselves.

On May 30,1941, John Hubley married Claudia Sewell, one of Disney's "ink a paint girls", in Reno, Nevada.

Sometime in the 1940s, John Hubley met Faith Elliott, a stage manager from New York City who had come to Los Angeles to become a script clerk at Columbia.

When John Hubley was fired from UPA and began work on Finian's Rainbow, Yip Harburg assigned Elliott to be John Hubley's assistant.

Nonetheless, as Elliott and John Hubley grew closer, John Hubley's own marriage crumbled.

John and Claudia divorced in 1954, with his children staying in Los Angeles while Hubley left to focus on Storyboard, Inc in New York City.

John Hubley actively fought against this, highlighting Faith's contributions and their collaboration whenever possible.

John Hubley remained close with a number of UPA and Disney animators, many of whom he worked with on Storyboard, Inc films.

In 1951, the House Un-American Activities Committee heard the testimony of UPA layout artist Bernyce Fleury, who claimed John Hubley's films promoted communism and John Hubley held communist sympathies.

Boyle found that John Hubley had moved in the year prior before receiving the subpoena, hence his lack of response.

John Hubley responded, and was set to appear before the HUAC on June 20,1956.

John Hubley invoked the Fifth Amendment for the remainder of the hearing.

John Hubley was never formally indicted by the HUAC, but the investigation did effectively blacklist him from Hollywood afterwards.

John Hubley named his new studio Storyboard, Inc out of fear of using his own name.

John Hubley was greatly influenced by Ivan Ivanov-Vano's The Tale of Czar Durandai, which used limited animation and flat compositions to create an incredibly stylized world.

John Hubley used both cels and the Xerox method depending on the film.

John Hubley sometimes opted to use underlighting - wherein the drawing or cel is lit from below rather than above - to make the films more distinct, and often used multiple exposure for more complex elements, like the river in Tender Game or the abstract color section in Everybody Rides the Carousel.

John Hubley took the idea a step further by recording his children playing together, interpreting their conversations through animation after Faith had edited them together into a story.

John Hubley was fascinated with the way children discussed life and their own experiences, which can be seen in Moonbird, Windy Day, and Cockaboody.

John Hubley died during the surgery on February 21,1977, at the age of 62.

John Hubley was cremated, his ashes spread over the Atlantic Ocean.

John Hubley is often cited as one of the most influential figures in the history of animation, influencing artists such as Michael Sporn, Gene Deitch, and his own daughter, Emily John Hubley.

Eight of John Hubley's films are preserved in the Academy Film Archive.

In 2021, a crowdfunded campaign headed by the Animation Education Association to have a Wisconsin State Historical Marker for John Hubley placed in Marinette, Wisconsin, reached its goal.