Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, director, and voice actor.
54 Facts About Tex Avery
2.
Tex Avery was known for directing and producing animated cartoons during the golden age of American animation.
3.
Tex Avery gained influence for his technical innovation, directorial style and brand of humor.
4.
Tex Avery's cartoons focused on sight gags, surrealist humor, rapid pacing, racial stereotypes, and violent humor, with wacky characters who broke the fourth wall.
5.
Tex Avery's father was born in Alabama and his mother was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi.
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Tex Avery spent the following months working in menial jobs.
7.
Tex Avery began his animation career when hired by the Winkler studio.
8.
Tex Avery was an inker, inking cels for animated short films in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series; the character had been created by Walt Disney.
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Tex Avery then moved to a new studio, Universal Cartoon Studios.
10.
Tex Avery was again employed as an inker, but moved rapidly up the studio's hierarchy.
11.
Tex Avery continued working at the Walter Lantz Studio into the early 1930s.
12.
Tex Avery worked on most of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons from 1931 to 1935.
13.
Tex Avery is shown as "animator" on the original title card credits on the Oswald cartoons.
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Tex Avery later claimed to have directed two cartoons during this time.
15.
Tex Avery heard one of his colleagues telling him to look out.
16.
Tex Avery would describe in which direction Oswald was running and for how many feet.
17.
Tex Avery started handing out work to other animators working under Nolan.
18.
Tex Avery wanted still greater control over the creative process and served as a de facto director for a couple of films.
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Tex Avery was submitting sight gags for use in the short films.
20.
Tex Avery wanted to somehow get all his gags in the finished film.
21.
An older Tex Avery recalled that both films "were terrible", though they got accepted for release.
22.
Tex Avery was reportedly displeased with his salary and had started giving up on his work.
23.
Tex Avery reportedly managed to convince producer Leon Schlesinger that he was an experienced director, a false claim.
24.
Tex Avery was granted exclusive use of four animators: Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Sid Sutherland, and Virgil Ross.
25.
The Tex Avery unit was assigned to work primarily on the black-and-white Looney Tunes instead of the Technicolor Merrie Melodies, but was allowed to make color Merrie Melodies beginning with Page Miss Glory from 1936.
26.
Tex Avery stopped using Beans following Gold Diggers of '49, but continued using Porky as a star character.
27.
Tex Avery was like a porcine version of Roscoe Arbuckle.
28.
Barrier notes that the new design by Tex Avery departed from the "Disneyish" realism in the previous drawing style.
29.
When some of the artists humorously criticized the wild action in his animated shorts, Tex Avery would take time to explain his rationale.
30.
Tex Avery crafted gags for the shorts, and sometimes provided voices for them and held such control over the timing of the shorts that he would add or cut frames out of the final negative if he felt a gag's timing was not quite right.
31.
Tex Avery had directed the short Porky's Duck Hunt featuring Porky Pig, which introduced Daffy Duck.
32.
Originally, Avery wanted Bugs Bunny to be called Jack E Rabbit because he hunted for jack rabbits when he was a kid.
33.
Tex Avery ended up directing only four Bugs Bunny cartoons: A Wild Hare, Tortoise Beats Hare, The Heckling Hare, and All This and Rabbit Stew,.
34.
When Tex Avery left the Schlesinger studio in mid-1941, he went straight to Paramount to work on the first three shorts in the series before joining Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
35.
On September 2,1941, the Reporter announced that Tex Avery had signed a five-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he was to form his own animation unit and direct shorts in Technicolor.
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Tex Avery's cartoons became known for their sheer lunacy, breakneck pace, and a penchant for playing with the medium of animation and film in general that few other directors dared to approach.
37.
Tex Avery began his stint at MGM working with lush colors and realistic backgrounds, but he slowly abandoned this style for a more frenetic, less realistic approach.
38.
Tex Avery introduced a slow-talking wolf character, who was the prototype for MGM associates Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound character, right down to the voice by Daws Butler.
39.
Tex Avery returned to MGM in October 1951 and began working again.
40.
On March 1,1953, Tex Avery's unit was given the axe and he was fired from MGM.
41.
Tex Avery left three new Chilly Willy storyboards which were later made into cartoons by Alex Lovy.
42.
Tex Avery produced ads for Kool-Aid fruit drinks starring the Looney Tunes characters he had once helped create during his Termite Terrace days.
43.
Tex Avery then went back to Cascade, and closed the cartoon department in 1978.
44.
Tex Avery had a offer from Friz Freleng, to write for DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, but wasn't interested.
45.
Disney's "cute and cuddly" creatures, under Tex Avery's guidance, were transformed into unflappable wits like Bugs Bunny, endearing buffoons like Porky Pig, or dazzling crazies like Daffy Duck.
46.
Tex Avery endeared himself to intellectuals by constantly breaking through the artifice of the cartoon, having characters leap out of the end credits, loudly object to the plot of the cartoon they were starring in, or speak directly to the audience.
47.
Tex Avery had developed a distinct, signature style at Warner Bros.
48.
Tex Avery occasionally filled in for Bill Thompson as Droopy.
49.
Two days after being fired from Universal in Spring 1935, Tex Avery married his girlfriend, Patricia.
50.
Tex Avery was employed at Universal Studios as an inker.
51.
On Tuesday, August 26,1980, Tex Avery died of lung cancer at St Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California at the age of 72.
52.
Avery's work has been featured on shows such as The Tex Avery Show and Cartoon Alley.
53.
Volume 3 was released on October 5,2021, with an additional 20 uncut restored cartoons with the Tex Avery directed Merrie Melodies short, The Crackpot Quail, as a bonus feature restored with its original 1941 soundtrack.
54.
Many of Tex Avery's cartoons have been released on home video over the years:.