One of the topics I’ve thought about writing about for a while is my mother’s career. Martha Goldman Sigall was her name, and she worked in the Hollywood animation business for 53 years as an inker and painter for nearly every studio except Disney.
She died in 2014 at the age of 97. My brother and I just threw a party for what would have been her 100th birthday for her friends and neighbors in Los Angeles.
When she was 86, Jerry Beck (author of several animation books) and I persuaded her to write a book about her cartoon stories. I had heard these stories all my life, and now others can read them in “Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales From the Golden Age of Animation,” published in 2005 by the University of Mississippi Press and available at amazon.com.
My mom’s family moved to Hollywood in 1926 when she was 9 years old. Fortuitously, her home was adjacent to Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes studio, which created such characters as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweety, Speedy Gonzales and Daffy Duck.
My mom knew the back story of these characters, as well as the antics of the people who created them. She said there was a hole in the backyard fence she crawled through to the studio and made friends with the Looney Tunes staff. When she graduated from Hollywood High in 1936, they put her to work for $12.75 a week.
Before television, cartoons were designed to run between movies in theaters. They were typically seven minutes long and might be made of 5,000 to 10,000 individually painted cells. They were for adults as much as children.
Here are a few of my favorite stories of hers.
HOW BUGS BUNNY GOT HIS NAME
In his first two appearances, Bugs Bunny was unnamed. He was created in 1939 by animator Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was “Bugs.” Charlie Thorson, a character designer, drew a model sheet of the rabbit to show the character from different angles. When Thorson finished his model sheet, he labeled it “Bugs’ Bunny.”
In 1940, Tex Avery suggested the rabbit be named “Jack E. Rabbit.” Several other names were bandied about but discarded. Then publicist Rose Horsely looked at the model sheet and exclaimed, “What about Bugs Bunny?”
Avery’s response was, “Nah, that’s a fuzzy-wuzzy name.” Everyone else just shrugged. Horsely said, “I’m going to ask the old man.”
She went into Schlesinger’s office and he immediately liked it. And that’s how Bugs Bunny was named.
Martha Sigall remembered that Bugs Hardaway based the rabbit on Daffy Duck. “I’m going to put a rabbit suit on that duck,” she remembered him saying one day.
Bugs Bunny went on to develop his own unique style as a cocky trickster with a Brooklyn accent.
Avery said that when he was a youngster in Texas, for some reason it was popular for kids to call each other “Doc.” “How ya doin’, Doc?” “What’s cooking, Doc?”
He had no idea that “What’s up, Doc?” would mean anything until he was in a movie theater when Bugs said it. The audience roared with laughter. It became the character’s signature line.
HOW TWEETY GOT HIS FEATHERS
In his very first cartoon in 1942, “The Tale of Two Kitties,” Tweety was a pink baby bird. His original name was Orson, and voiced by Mel Blanc he uttered the famous statement, “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”
A censorship office in Washington, D.C., said it was improper for children to watch a naked bird and wrote a letter to the studio insisting animators put feathers on him.
In his third cartoon, Tweety became a fully feathered, yellow, adult bird — and a hit.
Animator Bob Clampett created Tweety. Fellow animator Friz Freleng redesigned the character with an oversize head and feet and teamed him with a cat he created named Sylvester. What could be a better combination than a cat and a canary?
Their first picture together was “Tweety Pie,” and it won an Oscar in 1947.
Despite having long eyelashes and a high voice, the little bird with a big attitude is male.
Many cartoon characters have speech impediments. Sylvester has a lisp, and Tweety pronounces S’s as T’s. “Pussy cat” became “putty tat,” and “sweety pie” became “tweety pie.” That’s how he got his name.
WHY ROAD RUNNER SAYS ‘BEEP BEEP’
Road Runner was conceived by writer Mike Maltese while vacationing in Palm Desert, Calif., in 1949. He and his wife saw many birds running around the pool and learned they were roadrunners. Maltese thought it could be an interesting cartoon character and brought the idea to his director, Chuck Jones. The two developed the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote characters we know today.
Road Runner, you might have noticed, never hurt his nemesis. Wile E. (short for “Ethelbert”) Coyote is always injured by his own actions. At one point they considered calling him Don Coyote, as a riff on Don Quixote.
There wasn’t going to be any dialogue in the cartoons, but Maltese thought it might be good if the Road Runner, as he confronts and torments the coyote, said something. Actual roadrunners make a quiet cooing and clacking sound, so they needed something else.
At the end of a working day, background artist Paul Julian, carrying oversize and heavy wooden background boards, was rushing down the hall crowded with people on their way home. Instead of continuously saying, “Excuse me,” Maltese heard him say “Hmeep-hmeep, hmeep-hmeep.”
The studio writes it as “beep-beep,” but Julian said he pronounced it “hmeep-hmeep.”
Maltese and Jones decided it would be a great sound for the Road Runner. Julian’s voice was recorded, but he didn’t receive screen credit because he wasn’t a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Jones said the pairing was a parody of cat-and-mouse cartoons like “Tom & Jerry,” created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Tom and Jerry’s first cartoon was “Fast and Furry-ous,” released in 1949.
HOW MEL BLANC GOT INTO THE BUSINESS
“The Man of a Thousand Voices” had come to Los Angeles from Oregon. He dropped by Schlesinger’s periodically seeking an audition but was consistently turned away by Norman Spencer, who hired voice actors and other personnel.
One day in 1936, Blanc came by when Treg Brown happened to be filling in for Spencer, who was ill. Brown said they had a cartoon coming up called “Picador Porky” that involved bullfighting. Brown asked Blanc whether he could voice a drunken bull.
Blanc thought about it for a second and then did a great impression of an inebriated bovine, according to Martha Sigall. Brown dragged him into the writer’s room, where he repeated his impression. He was hired on the spot.
So it was a small twist of fate that opened the door for the greatest voice actor of all time. Blanc went on to voice Bugs Bunny, Daffy, Tweety, Porky, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew, Sylvester, Speedy Gonzales and many others.
Blanc attended several “cartoon group” dinners at my family home. I remember being disappointed when talking to him one on one. He did voices and impressions only when he had the whole room’s attention. Then he was amazing.
Blanc died in 1989. The inscription on his gravestone says, “That’s All Folks,” Porky Pig’s catchphrase.
HOW SPEEDY GONZALES GOT HIS NAME
In 1953 the assistant animators at Schlesinger’s were told they would have to do a minimum of 40 drawings a day. As a way of rebelling, they decided they would do no more than 40 a day.
One of the assistants, Frank Gonzales, went down to the story room at about 4 o’clock each day. Quitting time was 5:30. One afternoon he entered the story room, where Tedd Pierce III and others were trying to come up with ideas for characters. They asked him how he had finished his work early.
He answered, “I figured out a way to speed up my drawings.”
That gave Pierce the idea he was looking for. He shouted excitedly, “That’s it! Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in all Mexico.”
In his first appearance, Speedy was paired with Sylvester in 1953’s “Cat-tales for Two.”
Some said Speedy represented an offensive stereotype, and the Cartoon Network stopped airing cartoons featuring the character. But many Latinos said he was a beloved cultural icon and lobbied for his return, which happened in 2002.
My mother worked for Looney Tunes, MGM, Hanna-Barbera (“Flintstones,” “Jetsons,” “Tom & Jerry,” “Smurfs”) and several other studios from 1936 to 1989. In 2004 she won an Annie lifetime achievement award from ASIFA, the animation film society in Hollywood.
On her last visit to Hawaii, she told her stories on KSSK’s “Perry & Price” show.
Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.
