paul houlton terry (february 19, 1887 – october 25, 1971) was an american cartoonist, animator, director and producer who made more than 1,300 cartoons between 1915 and 1955. he drew newspaper cartoons in san francisco for the chronicle, the call and the examiner, and later for the new york press. after seeing winsor mccay's gertie the dinosaur he made his first film, little herman (1915), distributed by the thanhouser company of new rochelle, new york. down on the phoney farm, released the same year, introduced farmer al falfa. terry directed eleven farmer al falfa films at bray productions in 1916 and left with the rights to the character.
he formed paul terry productions in 1917, then served in the army in the first world war. in 1920 he partnered with amedee j. van beuren to found fables pictures, contracted to pathé from june 1921, which released a new aesop's film fables cartoon every week for eight years. dinner time (1928) used a sound process two months before disney's steamboat willie. the partnership ended in 1929 over the switch to sound, and terry started the terrytoons studio in new york, moving it to new rochelle in 1932.
terrytoons characters included farmer al falfa, gandy goose, dinky duck, mighty mouse — first seen in 1942 as super mouse and renamed in 1944 — and the magpies heckle and jeckle, who debuted in the talking magpies in january 1946. theatrical distribution began with educational pictures and then passed to 20th century fox in the late 1930s. terry kept budgets low and was among the slowest to adopt sound and color; his directors were connie rasinski, eddie donnelly and mannie davis. under terry the studio took three academy award nominations for animated short film, for all out for v (1942), my boy johnny (1944) and mighty mouse in gypsy life (1945).
in 1955 he sold the studio and its film library to cbs for $5 million and retired. cbs continued to produce new cartoons, with gene deitch as creative supervisor from 1956 until 1959 and then bill weiss, who put mighty mouse and heckle and jeckle back into production. ralph bakshi began at the studio in the 1950s as an opaquer and left in 1967 as a director, and early staff had included the animator art babbitt.
related profiles; Alex Anderson, Max Fleischer, Ralph Bakshi
sources; wikipedia: paul terry (cartoonist), wikipedia: terrytoons, wikipedia: mighty mouse, wikipedia: heckle and jeckle, wikipedia: farmer al falfa, wikipedia: aesop's fables
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