USPS Publication Number 16300
T h is C o m mu n i t y N ewsp a p er is a pu bl ica t ion of E sca m bia-S a n t a Rosa B a r Assoc ia t ion
Se r v i ng t he Fi r st Jud icial Ci rcu it
Section A, Page 1
Vol. 20, No. 6
Visit The Summation Weekly Online: www.summationweekly.com
February 12, 2020
1 Section, 8 Pages
THE TOONIST WHO SHAPED SATURDAY MORNING TV
By Josh McGovern
Humble beginnings and an ending just as sweet. Ron Campbell influenced a culture in the best way possible. For nearly 60 years, this cartoonist changed the way we spent Saturday mornings. Our eyes glued to the TV set, watching morning cartoons with a bowl of cereal in front of usScooby Doo, The Smurfs, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Rugrats. You know the names and you know the faces. Campbell created memories that stuck around from childhood to adulthood. He is an icon of animation, and we were fortunate to have the chance to interview him. Around the age of seven, a small thought gave Campbell a career path. That same small thought also changed a culture. Like most of us, Campbell’s experience with cartoons began at a young age. But whereas most of us first saw animated cartoons on our family’s TVs, Campbell first witnessed dancing animals and other drawn characters on the big screen. Growing up in Australia, Campbell went to movie theaters on the weekends. And always before a gritty Cassidy western or a movie with the singing cowboy himself, Gene Autrey, cartoons filled the screen for young kids in the audience. Campbell was captivated. “I remember my very first memory of these cartoons was that they were real. I didn’t understand where these animals lived,” Campbell said. “I’d been to the zoo and they weren’t there. And I’m telling my great grandmother about it and I remember her telling me, ‘Ronnie, they’re just drawings.’ Drawings?
And the idea came to me very early in life, ‘You mean I can do drawings that can come alive?’” Young Campbell kept this inspiration. In the Sidney Victorian Library, he stacked books to the ceiling in hopes he’d learn everything about animation. When the time came, he went to art school in Melbourne, Australia. Campbell knew he wanted to be an animator. After graduating from the Swinburne Art Insitute, he faced a brand new world. Television swept the nation. And where animation once had no market, it suddenly seemed possible to earn a living as a cartoonist. “I was able to sort of learn how to make cartoons through television commercials, and by doing you learn,” Campbell said. Campbell learned more than animation from his stint in television commercials. He learned how to storyboard and write scripts. He learned editing, photography, music and other crucial skills. Campbell became a jack of all trades and one of the few masters. This talent didn’t go unrecognized. King Features, the American media company, swooped in and took Campbell on board as a cartoonist. During this time Campbell worked on notable characters Popeye, Crazy Cat and Beetle Bailey. Timely and consistent, Campbell worked hard and found large success working for King Features. That’s when a call arrived one midnight from the New York TV and movie producer Al Brodax. Brodax had recently sold a show and wanted Campbell to direct the
episodes. “That’s great, Al. What’s the show?” Campbell said. “It’s the Beatles,” Brodax said. “And I thought for a minute,” Campbell told us in the interview. “‘Beatles? Al, insects make terrible characters for toon shows.’” The Beatles TV show lasted 39 episodes. When it was over, doors opened and Campbell flourished. With job offers piling up, Campbell uprooted from his home country and moved to the big lights of Hollywood. Cool McCool followed the Beatles TV show, and soon after arriving in the United States, Campbell took on an animation role on the popular show Big Blue Marble, which is one of his favorite and proudest works. Campbell continued his career working numerous roles in the trade. His credit listing stretches a mile to include every project he played a pivotal role in. Rugrats, the Yellow Submarine, which Campbell described the art style as “psychedelic art that the hippies adopted because it reminded them of their stupid LSD trips”, Scooby Doo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winnie the Pooh, Rocket Power, and he even worked on the last hand drawn animated cartoon Ed Edd and Eddie. “So, there I was at the very early days in the late 50’s doing black and
white cartoons for American TV on Popeye, and right at the very end, the very last scene, the very last show, the very last episode done by hand,” Campbell said. “When I look back on it now somehow, amazingly, I see that I was there at the beginning of Saturday morning television and there at the end of Saturday morning television.” Saturday morning television may have ended, but even in retirement, Campbell keeps the spirit alive. To this day, fans can see Campbell on his frequent tours nationwide. He brings his artwork to sell, most notably paintings of his own creations. Hand crafted cartoon characters for giddy adult fans reminded of simpler times and faces they used to love, each with a unique certificate of authenticity. Pensacola fans will have the opportunity to go to Campbell buy his work Feb. 25 and Feb. 26 at the Artel Gallery. “People become like a child. They remember the happy times as a child. And everybody has happy memories of Saturday morning cartoons. Even if your childhood was an absolute misery, you still have happy memories of that Saturday morning cartoon period.”
“When I look back on it now somehow, amazingly, I see that I was there at the beginning of Saturday morning television and there at the end of Saturday morning television.”
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