David's Reviews > Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons

Last night (or, actually, early this morning), I finally finished “Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons” (1987 “Revised and Updated Edition”) by Leonard Maltin. Easily one of the best nonfiction books that I’ve read in a long time.

Now, I should qualify things a bit first. One, as I said above, this revised edition came out in 1987 (the first edition came out in 1980). So there is thirty-three years of animated cartoons not covered here (1987-2020). Also, some of the more “social” aspects of the history are addressed differently than Maltin probably would today. (I saw one GoodReads reviewer mark him down for mostly glossing over the troublesome racial stereotypes in several cartoons. Maltin does mention them at times but does not ever really focus on it.)

Also, to appreciate and enjoy this book as much as I did, one must already have at least a partial interest in the history of animated cartoons. If that is not a subject that one finds of interest, then he or she will probably be at the very least a bit overwhelmed (if not bored) by the level of historical detail presented here.

However, for “cartoon buffs” like me, this is *the* book on the subject. There are loads of books out there specifically on the history of the Walt Disney Studios and their cartoons, and books also on some of the other studios like Warner Brothers.

However, this book has chapters on *all* of the major and minor studios that produced theatrical cartoons (both shorts and feature films, although the focus is often on the theatrical shorts; animated features by the studios are covered as well but to varying levels of detail).

Chapters on...

Walt Disney/Disney Studios (over thirty pages),

Max Fleischer/Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, etc.; over forty pages),

Paul Terry and Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle; over thirty pages),

Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy; nearly thirty pages),

Ub Iwerks (when he was running his own studio after leaving Disney (for those who don’t know, Ub Iwerks was a major creative force/partner of Walt Disney in Disney’s early years and a co-creator of Mickey Mouse); ten pages),

the Van Beuren Studio (Felix the Cat, etc; ten pages),

Columbia/Charles Mintz and Screen Gems (Krazy Kat, The Fox and the Crow; twelve pages),

Warner Brother (or “Warner Bros.”; Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner and the Coyote, Tasmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, etc.; nearly sixty(!) pages (and I should mention that these pages, while loaded with black and white photographs and eight color photos pages, are two columns of text per page making it a very text heavy book; which is not a bad thing as it lets Maltin cover a lot of history and personal anecdotes in each chapter)),

MGM (Tom and Jerry, etc.; thirty pages),

Paramount/Famous Studios (Popeye, Casper, etc.; twelve pages),

UPA (“Gerald McBoing Boing”, Fox and the Crow, Mister Magoo, etc.; twenty pages),

and “The Rest of the Story” (works produced by other studios and independent animators from the 1960s onwards, the phasing out of animated theatrical cartoons at most of the studios in favor of animated feature films and animation made specifically for television, including the Pink Panther, “Yellow Submarine”, “Heavy Metal”, Saturday morning shows turned into animated features like Care Bears, He-Man and She-Ra (“Secret of the Sword”), and the films of Ralph Bakshi (“Lord of the Rings” and his more adult films) and Don Bluth (“An American Tale”); twelve pages).

And those are just the more well known characters I mentioned. Maltin follows the careers of seemingly all of the major animators, directors, writers, and (some of the) voice actors throughout their careers, way too many for me to list here.

At Warner Bros alone: Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and famous voice man Mel Blanc.

At Disney, Ub Iwerks, music man Carl Stalling, John Hubley, Jack Hannah, Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and John Lounsbery (many of whom would as a group become referred to as Disney’s “nine old men”, a group of veteran animators who worked with Disney from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” onwards).

And several key figures moved from one studio to the other, the aforementioned Ub Iwerks who went from Disney to running his own studio, some time at Warners, and then back to Disney again, and Shamus Culhane, who spent time at Bray, Disney, Fleischer, Lantz, Warners, and Paramount.

The last one hundred plus pages of this book are devoted to complete filmographies for each studio, a listing of Academy Award nominee and winner theatrical cartoons (these two being things one can easily find online these days at places like Wikipedia but which would have been an important resource back in the pre-internet days of 1980 and 1987), a glossary of animation terms, and a now out of date “Sources for Cartoons on Film and Video” (on 16 mm film and VHS).

I could go on and on about this one but I won’t. I would have thought that a book from 1987 would be long out of print but I just checked and it’s still available from Amazon. I checked this copy out from my public library but will most likely be obtaining a copy for myself at some point. (Unfortunately, it is not available on eBook.)

I give this one a rare (for me) five stars out of five on GoodReads.