Customer Reviews

Tex Avery: The Mgm Years, 1942-1955

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For us long-time fans of legendary cartoon director Tex Avery, we enjoyed the earlier Joe Adamson tribute, but were disappointed at the poor quality black and white photos included in it. Now at last the famous Avery shorts get the treatment they deserve, in this full-color, oversized coffee table edition straight from their proprietor Turner/MGM. Loads of famous scenes, model sheets and background designs are reproduced here, capturing the vivid color and style that we remember these cartoons for. Canemaker covers his subject mostly from a historical perspective, so you won't find any of the amusing anecdotal references here as in the Adamson book. Nonetheless, Canemaker covers Avery's cartoons with appropriate insight and reverence. If you haven't yet discovered the inimitatable style and hilarity of Tex Avery cartoons, you simply don't know what you're missing. And if you already know and appreciate the genius of Avery, your home shouldn't be without this book. It's a treasure.

To view individual cels from a Tex Avery cartoon is like a brief stop into an insane asylum. Fortunately, this book is chock full of film stills from vintage MGM cartoons such as Screwy Squirrel, Red Hot Riding Hood and lesser known but just as noteworthy cartoon shorts from the Golden Age of American Animation. The text by John Canemaker is just as light as it needs to be with some helpful intros. Avery changed how directors think about pacing, sight gags, and characterization while knocking off layers of the sugar-sweet Disney-stigma and this book does a fitting job paying tribute to that.

Tex Avery was and probably will be the king of the most wackiest animation the world has ever seen. Being the inspiration for future generations of cartoonists, Avery brought us such funny characters as Droopy, Spike the bulldog, Screwy Squirrel, and several Looney Tunes characters.

This book, originally published by the now defunct publishing branch of Turner Enterprises (now part of AOL-Time Warner) is an excellent tribute to the man who gave the cartoon world new ways to express comedy and feelings. From exploding cigars to eyeballs that pop out of their sockets, Avery gave many comedians and animators inspiration (the film "The Mask," with Jim Carrey and his facial expressions are a great example of this).

Most of the cartoons in this book are now owned by Ted Turner (president and CEO of Turner Enterprises, and now one of the executives at AOL-Time Warner) and Turner's preservation of Avery's works will give future generations access to some of the most wackiest cartoons ever made. Overall, an excellent book with beautiful animation cels and a wonderful history of Avery's life and contributions.

Tex Avery is one of the most important figures in the History of Animation, and John Canemaker does him justice with this excellent "Art of" Book! The book provides dozens of crisp, clean images of screenshots, model sheets, pencil skecthes and cels from the original cartoons, with just enough text to provide context to the images, with excellent if brief histories of each of Avery's 65 MGM shorts.

A worthy purchase, and it makes a great companion to Joe Adamson's book "Tex Avery: King of Cartoons".

TA fans must be a patient bunch because we are still waiting for DVDs of his brilliant cartoons. Warner's 2007 two-disc set with twenty-four cartoons (though six were directed by Michael Lah) is as far as we've got and this set didn't include too many classics. How annoying that it's easier to read about his genius instead of watching it.

Joe Adamson's 1975 book was a start, full of history and interesting anecdotes (but annoyingly without an index) but it looked so appalling with its scrappy reproduction of stills, model sheets and the few photos of the Avery crew. The appearance in 1996 of Canemaker's coffee-table book changed it all. At last a fabulous looking book choc-full of all the visual material that let down the Adamson's title.

The book is a revised edition of a 1993 French one and I found it interesting that Warner Home video have released several Avery DVDs over there including, in 2003, a five-disc set lasting almost eight hours. I believe it includes most of the MGM cartoons featured in this book.

*See my COMMENT about this box set.

I've looked through these pages several times over the years and it still delivers a punch. Page after page of beautifully reproduced cells, model sheets (maybe a little too small) original animation roughs, several background layouts including two fold-outs of these that measure just over three feet wide. The pages are divided into each year's output between 1942 and 1955 and each gets an overview of the titles followed by the captioned visual material. The back pages have an Avery filmography, perhaps a bit more detailed than the one in Adamson's book but he was writing about Avery's entire career.

A gorgeous looking book on Tex Avery is better than nothing but it's the cartoons that count. Someone in Hollywoodland needs to get their act together to satisfy the obvious demand for DVD releases. This book sits very nicely beside another remarkable cartoon book: The Hanna-Barbera Treasury: Rare Art and Mementos from your Favorite Cartoon Classics and though visually the complete opposite of the cool, precise look of Canemaker's it nevertheless is brimming over with design exuberance, graphics, color and amazingly a whole load of pull-out booklets, cells and other printed goodies stuffed in envelopes and all revealing the work of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. They surely must have been strongly influenced by TA.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

The material included is very good and a very descriptive selection
Of course I'm a very enthusiastic of animation and Avery in my opinion, change the animation films in a way that gave all it capacities for comedy expresion.
It is not posible to get the same action expresion with real characters.
So this is the tool to get a new resource for animated characters, attitudes, postures.
Just we must consider that ingenuous erlier animated films.
And the new very important ingredient, the Avery's timing.


Eduardo Agrela

Tex Avery was and probably will be the king of the most wackiest animation the world has ever seen. Being the inspiration for future generations of cartoonists, Avery brought us such funny characters as Droopy, Spike the bulldog, Screwy Squirrel, and several Looney Tunes characters.

This book, originally published by the now defunct publishing branch of Turner Enterprises (now part of AOL-Time Warner) is an excellent tribute to the man who gave the cartoon world new ways to express comedy and feelings. From exploding cigars to eyeballs that pop out of their sockets, Avery gave many comedians and animators inspiration (the film "The Mask," with Jim Carrey and his facial expressions are a great example of this).

Most of the cartoons in this book are now owned by Ted Turner (president and CEO of Turner Enterprises, and now one of the executives at AOL-Time Warner) and Turner's preservation of Avery's works will give future generations access to some of the most wackiest cartoons ever made. Overall, an excellent book with beautiful animation cels and a wonderful history of Avery's life and contributions.