Customer Reviews

Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson

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This is not your typical university press book.
This is not your typical film or animation history book.
Tom Sito's DRAWING THE LINE is essential reading for historians of the 20th century, for labor historians, for filmmakers, for animators, and for anyone who wants to read an outstanding piece of writing.
It has a cast of thousands: Mafiosi, musicians, politicians, inventors, movie stars, producers, and animated cartoonists who were also labor activists.
If you are in the animation or film business, or a labor union, this book will raise your eyebrows more than once. If you are none of the above but want to learn about these things from the artist/worker's perspective, this book will educate you while entertaining you. (Remember when animated films did that?)
DRAWING THE LINE fills a huge gap in the history of the American labor movement. It is valuable history and it is also a lot of fun to read.

The really wonderful thing about this book isn't the incredible facts about events that led up to our current state of affairs in the post-production world of motion picture making, it isn't the inside view from the old-timers of animation -- Yes, those are all wonderful things to have within a book on the animation world, but it is the prose of Tom Sito that makes this book sing!

I'm so glad that he has written his first. It's such a great read, I couldn't put it down. My wife had to take it away from me or I would have stayed up all night reading and been zonked at work.

I can't wait for the next one.

Yes, this is a history of union activity within the American animation industry, but don't think for a moment that it is a dry, dusty treatise on labor practises. Tom Sito has written a lively, anecdotal, funny, hugely entertaining and magnificently informative history of the animated cartoon -- where it came from, who was responsible, and how far it has come. At a time when legendary figures like Walt Disney tend to be Rushmoreized, Sito presents them as real, living and breathing people -- enormously talented, even brilliant, and sometimes conflicted, yes; but real. In the process he tells the stories of these cartoon creators that are often as funny and endearing as the cartoons themselves. This is not simply the story of animation, however. It is also the larger story of Hollywood and how its traumatic, sometimes even violent unionization efforts reflected what was going on everywhere in America.

Sito has written an important story with panache, wit, and a unique insider's perspective, and has created a book that everyone interested in classic Hollywood and the Golden Age of animation must have.

As a Disney enthusiast, I have found one of the most delicate and hard-to-research periods in Disney history was the 1941 studio strike. Tom Sito fills this gap by providing a comprehensive narration. But more important to others, he provides a complete history of labor developments in the animation profession. I had no idea there had been so much turmoil! His account is very up-to-date, too, covering the most recent developments, like computer animation. This is a key reference tool for anyone seriously interested in the business of animation.

DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON provides the first comprehensive history of animators' unions in modern times, from silent cartoons through today's big movie hits. Any involved in cartooning will find the business and industry insights essential to a thorough knowledge of their career choice: history and cultural observations blend with a survey of the entertainment industry as a whole, making for many important insights on how the business evolved and how it affects today's working animators.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Tom Sito achieved something of a miracle-- he made a potentially boring "academic" subject fresh, entertaining, and a wonderful read. C'mon--let's face it-- unless you're in the animation industry, or you are the grandson of Sam Gompers, or like to hunt cement foundations for Jimmy Hoffa---- labor history? zzzzzz "WE had a strike in 1928"-- who cares? Go off and "sing solidarity forever", or something.
Ah, but Tom Sito's book is a fantastically interesting read for anyone--
full of anecdotal stories that are at once informative and entertaining. Where else can you read about the day Walt Disney almost got into a fistfight with actor John Garfield?
Sito is a storyteller, and much of the book is don't in a storytelling style-- for example, in speaking of animation mogul Dave Fleischer, Sito says "At the Fleisher studio, when Dave Fleisher put his red light on outside his office,it meant he did not want to be disturbed. That meant either he was working, or, more likely, he was having sex with his secretary or listening to the racetrack calls on his big radio."
There's a serious side as well. Sito details the terrible working conditions in the early days-- strict dress codes, cramped working conditions, low pay. Yet there's also balance in the book. Sito is not trying to tear down anyone's reputation. People like Walt Disney were human, nothing more, nothing less-- and they are also products of their time. Disney was sometimes generous and caring to employees, but he also was a perfectionist who demanded-- and usually got-- 1000 per cent from his workers. A driven individual, he was also a hard-headed businessman who feared unionism would disrupt profits. Sito's book makes it clear that Disney was not the affable Uncle Walt of legend, nor was he a cold-blooded studio tyrant. He was simply a gifted producer with human faults, just like the rest of us.
What makes the book so good? First, Sito is a writer with a passion for history, and as an animator he has an insider's feel for the subject. Sito himself has an impressive resume, including work on picures like Disney's Beauty and the Beast--he was heavily involved in the "Gaston tavern" sequence, for example.
Though union membership is in decline, in the 30s unions did make the workers' lives better. Sito certainly shows this as he details the struggles of the animation unions. The book is great on so many levels-- history, perod detail, entertaining stories. HIGHLY recommended.

Tom Sito is a excellent storyteller who weaves a tale of animation history using the unions as a guide. This book is accessible to those who don't know about the personalities in animation but is detailed enough to interest the animation history buff. Sito got a lot of his information straight from the animators who lived the history. The book includes some great photographs of animators at work. I highly recommend this book, but do be warned - You will want to go union after reading this.

I originally read about this book in a review from animation world network (www.awn.com) It is everything the review said. Great information about the start of the industry fighting for its rights. A great read if you are into animation history. All of the animation old masters are involved, and speaks of even though they were in competition, they all had the same goal.

Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Mr. Magoo, Fred Flintstone, the Pink Panther and Bart Simpson, are the biggest stars in the business. But they couldn't make the slightest move or even open their mouths, without the help of the animation worker. Meaning no disrespect, I say worker and not artist, because that's what Tom Sito's book "Drawing The Line" is all about. The eternal labor struggle of men and women in the animation industry and their right to be recognized and treated as artists. Of course Hollywood is not the kind of town where that is ever likely to happen any time soon. And for all those that scoff and think that anyone who gets paid to simply draw for a living, let alone getting to work in Hollywood at all should be forever grateful. Well -you're about to have your eyes opened as you turn the pages of this well written and lovingly researched history, that dares to speak the truth and document it in precise detail. Through first-hand accounts of the animators that struck the studios, were fired and blacklisted, Sito has chronicled their plight and shown the effect it has had on working conditions today.

As an animator himself and a former declared labor cynic. Sito learned from personal experience why their really was a need to be unionized. So much so that he later went on to become an active president of the screen cartoonists local in Hollywood. Yes, animation was and still is a labor intensive assembly-line that even in this digital computer age, still relies on the artistic and professional skill's of it's of workers. It's a "must read" not just for anyone with the least interest in animation, Hollywood or social and labor studies, but for anyone who's keen to know just how their favorite cartoon characters came into being in the first place. Believe me, you'll never see them as just simple drawings ever again!