Making Tiny Classics for Public TV

On Tissa David and the Hubleys.

Faith and John Hubley with Tissa David (right) during the early ‘70s, courtesy of In Quest of Cockaboody

Welcome! The Animation Obsessive newsletter returns with a new issue — and this one is all about animator Tissa David, the Hubleys and public TV.

Last month, Max canceled Sesame Street, leaving it in search of a new partner. Call it a sign of the times. When the series premiered in 1969, its big idea was to give free education to kids. It was a public service of a kind rarely seen now.

Mid-century TV didn’t offer young children much nourishment. But they loved it — especially the ads. Sesame Street put the advertiser’s toolkit in the hands of educators. It used the format and style of TV commercials for good. Early on, a member of the team said, “We’re trying to sell the alphabet to preschool children.”

Children’s Television Workshop had a hit with Sesame Street. Soon, it did The Electric Company (1971–1977) to reach older kids with the same methods. That second series was billed as an attempt to fight “the growing problem of reading failure among the nation’s school children through the teaching of basic reading skills on television.”¹

Behind these two shows was an army of artists. CTW commissioned indie animators and small studios to make its cartoon “spots,” the entertaining mini-films that taught numbers, rhythm, phonics and the rest. The ‘60s and ‘70s were tough years for American animation, but CTW’s projects were a creative lifeline.

As animator Austin Kimmell wrote yesterday:

If you want an easy way to educate yourself on the history of indie animation, watch old Sesame Street — my introductions to Sally Cruikshank or the NFB came from CTW platforming unique voices found on the fringes of the medium.

John and Faith Hubley were in that group, too. Their studio was one of the first on Sesame Street, and it contributed heavily to The Electric Company. They were Oscar-winning artists’ artists, but CTW brought their work to millions of kids.

For the Hubleys, Tissa David animated some of the finest CTW spots. It happened before her top billing on Raggedy Ann & Andy (1977), before she was known as an all-timer. David was simply a working animator in New York, trying to get by. Still, despite the low budgets and short deadlines of CTW projects, their potential was real. David used it. As she said:

Those [were] always very limited animations. Now, limited animation doesn’t mean it has to be bad animation. On the contrary, it’s just a different style of animation. When you learn how to animate limited, in a limited way … then you can make very good animation.²

A snippet of animation from Cool Pool Fool, watchable on YouTube

A couple of John Hubley’s layouts for Cool Pool Fool, courtesy of Michael Sporn’s blog