Tex Avery | Legendary Animator & Cartoonist | Britannica (2024)

American director

Print

verifiedCite

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Select Citation Style

Feedback

Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

  • Tex Avery - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Also known as: Frederick Bean Avery

Written and fact-checked by

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Article History

Quick Facts

Byname of:
Frederick Bean Avery
Born:
February 26, 1908, Taylor, Texas, U.S.
Died:
August 26, 1980, Burbank, California (aged 72)
Also Known As:
Frederick Bean Avery
Notable Works:
“Red Hot Riding Hood”

See all related content

Tex Avery (born February 26, 1908, Taylor, Texas, U.S.—died August 26, 1980, Burbank, California) was an influential American director of animated cartoons, primarily for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Avery’s only formal art training consisted of a three-month course at the Art Institute of Chicago during the late 1920s. He began his animation career in 1929 for cartoon producer Walter Lantz at Universal Studios. For the next six years he worked for Lantz and freelanced his drawing and gag-writing services to other studios. In 1936 he was hired by Leon Schlesinger, the head of the Warner Bros. animation unit, who put Avery in charge of a team of animators that included such notable names in the field as Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Bob Cannon. As Warners did not have the resources to compete with Disney studios on a technical level, Avery endeavoured to make his cartoons the funniest and best-written in the business. He increased the pacing of the films and filled them with outrageous gags. He also redesigned Porky Pig—then the studio’s star character—and created Daffy Duck, whose personality of unmotivated insanity was unprecedented in cartoons. Most important, he gave a definitive personality to Bugs Bunny in his fifth film, A Wild Hare (1940), and was responsible for Bugs’s immortal catchphrase “What’s up, Doc?”

After a heated dispute with Schlesinger over the editing of the Bugs Bunny short Heckling Hare (1941), Avery left Warners and worked briefly for Paramount Pictures before being hired to head MGM’s animation unit in 1942. From 1942 to 1954 he created 67 cartoons for MGM, including several masterpieces of the genre such as Who Killed Who? (1943), Batty Baseball (1944), Screwball Squirrel (1944), and King-Size Canary (1947). A number of his films feature a curvaceous showgirl in revisionist fairy tales (Red Hot Riding Hood [1943], Little Rural Riding Hood [1949]), a paranoiac wolf (Dumb-Hounded [1943], Bad Luck Blackie [1949]), or the slow-talking dog Droopy (Northwest Hounded Police [1946], Droopy’s Good Deed [1951]), who served as foils for the director’s brilliant takeoffs on such themes as survival, control, fear, and the film medium itself.

Avery’s attitude toward animation was opposite that of Walt Disney, who favoured straightforward storytelling, classic draftsmanship, realistic narratives, and a live-action approach to the staging of action. By contrast, Avery celebrated the cartoon as a cartoon; his work never pretended to be anything but a drawing come to life. His films exhibited a love of exaggeration in his use of absurd gags presented at breakneck speed. An irreverence toward cinematic conventions pervades most of his animated films, as when characters comment on the action happening around them, sometimes by holding up a sign (“Silly, isn’t he?”) or by addressing the audience directly. Avery’s self-reflexive, modernist approach emphasized parody and satire, and his layered gags were held together on the screen by sheer manic energy. He brought brashness and an adult sensibility to animation that was aimed not at the family audience but toward amusing himself and his fellow animators and, by extension, all adults.

MGM eliminated Avery’s animation unit in 1954, and he spent most of the rest of his career directing television commercials. During the last two years of his life, he developed gags and characters for the Hanna-Barbera Studio. Avery is second only to Walt Disney in terms of his influence on American animation.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Tex Avery | Legendary Animator & Cartoonist | Britannica (2024)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Carlyn Walter

Last Updated:

Views: 5684

Rating: 5 / 5 (50 voted)

Reviews: 89% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Carlyn Walter

Birthday: 1996-01-03

Address: Suite 452 40815 Denyse Extensions, Sengermouth, OR 42374

Phone: +8501809515404

Job: Manufacturing Technician

Hobby: Table tennis, Archery, Vacation, Metal detecting, Yo-yoing, Crocheting, Creative writing

Introduction: My name is Carlyn Walter, I am a lively, glamorous, healthy, clean, powerful, calm, combative person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.