“We’re a little bit sick of that ‘wherever she goes he goes, wherever he goes she goes’ bit,” declares Mr. Wagner.

“But what can we do about it? It’s true,” says Mrs. Wagner.

So they do nothing about it, which is as it should be since no pair in Hollywood are obviously as content in each other’s company.

Bob never proposed to Natalie formally.

“We were dining out, celebrating his return from Tokyo,” says Natalie. “I lifted my champagne glass and saw something glistening in the bottom. It was a ring and inside two words were engraved — ‘Marry Me.’ The rest is history.” After their marriage they began housekeeping in a boat. Before their marriage, Bob’s boat was named My Lady. They sold this and bought a larger craft, naming it My Other Lady, which they sold when they finally saw their “dream boat.” Before they could close the deal, however, their “dream ” became another’s — so they decided to buy a house.

Natalie is not sure that she likes living in a house for she feels more at home in a boat.

“When we want to get away for a weekend we just take our house with us,” she says. “ Before R. J. (she always refers to Bob as R. J.) and I were married, my knowledge of boats was confined to the Lurline over and back from Hawaii.”

She took to My Other Lady like a duck to water. “She was a good student,” says Bob with critical pride. “On our first trip out she didn’t make a mistake — until we docked, that is. Then she forgot to let go her hold on a rope and fell overboard. I saw it coming but was too frozen to do anything about it.”

Natalie even got a radio operator’s licence for the ship-to-shore telephone.

“When we would pull into the bay at Catalina I noticed all the other fellows on boats levelling their binoculars on us. That’s when I decided to put Natalie on the bow handling all the ropes. She is so tiny that it made quite a picture — and caused a mild sensation when the other boat-owners’ wives got together and protested. After watching Nat it seems the husbands demanded the same co-operation from them.”

Bob claims that Natalie’s tiny size — a slender 5 ft. 2 in. — is a distinct advantage to a boat-owner, especially when hard-to-get-at parts of the engine need repainting. This was her job on more than one occasion and once while thus engaged she attracted quite a gallery of onlookers all staring into the hold at her in disbelief.

She’s also a good cook at sea — but put her in a kitchen with all modern appliances and she burns herself.

Now they have their own house — a two-storey Colonial house in Beverly Hills, with a salt-water swimming pool — they are still managing to keep it as private as their private lives, only Natalie is willing to talk about it.

“The downstairs, with the exception of a den, is very formal,” she explains. “Marble floor is being installed in the entry hall and dining-room. The living-room has fitted carpet and is done in shades of ice blue with vivid accents. The den is wood panelled with leather furniture. This is our ‘entertainment centre’ with hi-fi, stereophonic sound, television, and a projection machine. There are three bedrooms, one an office, one a guest room, the third our room.”

When you saw them in All the Fine Young Cannibals, you saw something they vowed that they would never do — a film together.

The fact that they took their roles in it was because the film was different from others offered them — sticky comedies about young married couples and their domestic problems. These they turned down. However, they hope to make Seventh Heaven together, for they feel that its special qualities are in direct opposition to the wave of realism sweeping the world.

In addition to R. J. and Nat, the Wagner household includes two pets, both dogs. Chi Chi, Natalie’s, is a toy poodle, silver-grey in colour and small enough to fit into her handbag. Conroy, Bob’s, is a black Labrador retriever, a gift from Bing Crosby.

Natalie prefers to have her husband with her when she shops. When she can’t make up her mind between several choices, he says, “Take them all.” He prefers her in sports clothes.

Both love surprises and gifts prompted by nothing. Chi Chi was a “nothing” gift. So was Bob’s wrist watch engraved “I love you.” Bob has a passion for cars. The Wagners are now a two-Jaguar family — but they prefer to use one at a time — together.

The post Wagner and Wood appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Three years ago they branched out on their own under the banner of Hanna and Barbera Productions — they were formerly with M.-G.-M. for 20 years — located at the old Charlie Chaplin studio in Hollywood.

Oddly enough, neither William Hanna nor Joseph Barbera started his career in life as artist or cartoonist.

Hanna, born in Melrose, New Mexico, studied engineering and journalism at the University of California. His first job as a structural engineer was for the building of the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. After falling off a girder he decided to try his luck at another profession.

At a friend’s suggestion he went to art school where he studied for several months before getting his first “art” job with the Harman-Ising cartoon firm. His duties were “to clean cartoon frames, sweep up the place, run errands and inspire bosses with story ideas.”

Joseph Barbera, born in New York City, went to work as an accountant for the New York’s Trust Company. He was a dreamer and a doodler, a habit which was to launch him in a new career. After many tries of submitting cartoons to magazines he managed to sell one to Collier’s. Soon he became a regular contributor to such leading magazines as The New Yorker and Punch as well as Collier’s.

In 1937, Bill Hanna was hired by M.-G.-M. studios as a director and story man and Joe Barbera became an animator and writer at the same studio.

As their first assignment the two men were told to create a fresh, new cartoon series for motion pictures. The result: Tom and Jerry.

William Hanna, a modest and unassuming gentleman, told me: “My partner and I got along together so well all these years that by now we seem to be like identical twins, knowing each other’s thoughts and blending our ideas together.”

“Are Tom and Jerry modelled on any particular cat and mouse?” I asked.

“On the M.-G.-M. backlot there was a whole colony of cats to keep down the population of rats. Although the studio supplied them with food, water and even milk, those cats were vicious and like wild animals. From them we got the idea of adding Butch, the alley cat. Butch’s counterpart was on the backlot, and this also is true of Tom.

“Jerry, the mouse, was a little creature that turned up at our office from nowhere — I guess he was after scraps. We encouraged him to have the run of the office by putting titbits of cheese and other tasty morsels for him to nibble. We used to watch him for weeks in all his movements and antics.

“When kittens were born to the alley cats the girls in the inking department mothered them and made pets of them. Here we added models for the behaviour of Tom and Jerry.

“The bulldog idea was actually created from a little pup we called Tike. In our department we had an animator, the father of a small boy, who continually bragged about his son’s smartness. Day in and day out we had to listen to this devoted father and son relationship. My partner and I thought it a good idea to use the same formula with dogs and so Spike came into being.”

During the 20 years’ tenure at M.-G.-M. the team turned out 125 adventures of the mischievous rodent and bungling feline, which won seven Academy Awards for the studio. It was expensive to produce these cartoons which cost about £13,000 [£275,000 in 2018’s money] for a seven-minute run.

In 1957, with the motion picture business at an all-time low, M.-G.-M. decided to discontinue cartoon production for motion pictures and Hanna and Barbera were given release from their contracts.

This proved to be the biggest break of their lives. Together they had perfected several techniques and ideas for producing cartoons for television which they submitted to various advertising agencies and film production companies.

Everywhere they went they were met with the same answer: “It can’t be done. Good animation is too expensive; limited animation is too shoddy.”

On 7th July 1957 the two men formed the Hanna and Barbera Productions and Screen Gems took over as distributors. Their first production was Ruff ‘n’ Reddy, a story about a frisky cat and a dimwitted dog, and went on an American network in 1957, followed by Huckleberry Hound, the saga of a canine Don Quixote, which is one of their most popular cartoons.

It is estimated that it takes over 90 separate drawings to create a laugh movement or a total of 10,000 individual drawing frames to make up a half-hour cartoon enjoyment.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera say: “We think the popularity of our cartoons lies in providing psychological release for all human beings of all ages. No one gets hurt despite clobbering and binding situations.

“We have tried to give the audience characters which they can identify with themselves—then follow up with wild antics impossible to duplicate in real life.

“The adults have taken to the satire while the children watch the programmes for the face value action packed story.”

William Hanna is married and resides in North Hollywood with his wife and their two children, Bonnie, 18, and David, 21.

Joseph Barbera and his wife live in West Los Angeles. They have three children, Lynn, 21, Jayne, 18, and Neal, 15.

The post Hanna-Barbera appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post James Darren appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

From a spacious office set in a fascinating warren of technical studios and workshops overlooking Soho Square, works a man who can proudly claim to be head of “the busiest cartoon film unit in Europe.” His name? John Halas, of Halas and Batchelor, the partnership that virtually put the British cartoon film industry on the map.

The way in which this unusually successful team came into being is quite a story which began when tall, charming John Halas came to England in 1936.

Born in Budapest he grew up with a passionate love of the theatre but when he left school his parents apprenticed him to a carpenter. That job lasted a matter of weeks before he turned it in and obtained another with a cartoon film company — sweeping floors and cleaning paint pots. From that time on John Halas relinquished any other ambition he may have had and became dedicated to making cartoons. He worked his way up to a better position (at one time he was assistant to George Pal, who later found fame in Hollywood) before taking a job in Paris. This fell through, however, and it wasn’t long before he was back in Budapest where he formed his own company. A couple of years later the invitation to form a cartoon film unit in England arrived and John Halas was on his way here.

An advertisement for an assistant brought him an attractive blonde by the name of Joy Batchelor and after launching the Halas and Batchelor company four years later they were married.

A husband and wife team unique in the world of film making, the production that brought them real fame was the full-length controversial cartoon of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This success was by no means an overnight one for together they had already produced more than 100 cartoon and puppet films before winning this enviable and much sought after assignment.

Today the company is busier than ever, dividing its time equally between cinema and television, and under the guidance of Halas and Batchelor their large creative staff is always perfecting techniques of film-making and developing new and unusual characters.

Their most recent films and character creations include features like: The Cultured Ape (this won a first prize at the Venice Film Festival), The Insolent Matador, The Widow and the Pig, The Lion Tamer and I Wanna Mink, and their latest character due to be seen in cinemas and on television this autumn is a cut-out paper dog called Snap, the basic idea for which came from a Danish artist now working with the company in London.

Halas himself prefers to produce for the medium of the cinema—he says it offers him more scope and presumably, for an artist, it is always more exciting to work in colour.

Halas and Batchelor are also unique in another way, for their films have done more to make the cartoon “adult” than anything else produced. A form of screen entertainment which was at one time almost completely limited to children’s films or as fill-ins to the main cinema feature, the cartoon, thanks to this still young company, now occupies an important and very successful place in both cinema and television.

As John Halas himself says: “The past few years have shown us that there is a very real demand for screen entertainment of significance— and we intend to play our part filling it.”

We wish him every success.

The post Halas and Batchelor appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Jean Simmons appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Haya Harareet appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Gustavo Rojo appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Jeff Hunter appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Gina Lollobrigida appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post John Saxon appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Gia Scala appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post June Thorburn appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post George Hamilton appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Marlon Brando appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Frankie Vaughan appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Mitzi Gaynor appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Frank Sinatra appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Mylène Demongeot appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Fabian appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Norman Wisdom appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Elizabeth Taylor appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Pat Boone appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Edd Byrnes appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Patricia Bredlin appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Doris Day appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Dirk Bogarde appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Perry Como appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Diane McBain appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Pier Angeli appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Debbie Reynolds appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Rod Steiger appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Dean Martin appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Russ Conway appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Danny Kaye appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Sal Mineo appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Charlie Drake appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Susan Kohner appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Cary Grant appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Sylvia Syms appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Carol Lynley appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Tommy Sands appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Bill Travers appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Tommy Steele appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Barry Coe appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Tony Curtis appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Anthony Perkins appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Troy Donahue appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Anthony Newley appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Yvonne Monlaur appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

The post Anne Aubrey appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.