3 Chasing Their Cartoon Dreams
O
pening in late August of that year, MGM’s new cartoon studio was initially headquartered in a house near the studio grounds.
It was located at first in a modest building at Overland and Montana Avenues on MGM’s Lot 2 next to its motion picture studio on its Culver City lot. Put in charge of this promising new group was a nattily dressed, benevolent and refined 51-year-old business man, Fred Quimby, who had worked in the film business since 1913, first with Pathé, a leading film equipment and production company in the early 20th century. After a three-year stint with Fox Studios, in 1926, he joined MGM to become head of sales and distribution for its short-feature department. In 1937, after many years of distinguished service, the studio promoted him to short films department chief, giving him special supervision over cartoons. In establishing MGM’s new Cartoon Department, the Minneapolis, Minnesota native raided top talent from every major American animation studio, including Harman-Ising, Columbia Pictures, TerryToons, Warner Bros., and Leon Schlesinger Productions. Among the contingent of animators and story men recruited from New York to join the studio, Joe was put to work as an animator and story man. Little did he realize that one day before his arrival, another talented animator would
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