What is Arthur Davis?

For other people named Arthur Davis, see Arthur Davis (disambiguation).

Arthur "Art" Davis (June 14 1905 – May 9 2000) was an animator and a director for Warner Brothers' Termite Terrace cartoon studio. He got his start at a young age at the New York studio of Max Fleisher, and is reputed to have been the first in-betweener in the animation industry. Another of his distinctions was that he tapped out the famous "bouncing ball" of the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" cartoons of the 1920s. While one of the Fleischer brothers played the ukulele, Davis would keep time with a wooden stick with a white thumbtack on the end, which was photographed and incorporated into the films as the actual moving ball. Later he was an animator for the Charles Mintz studio. While there, he helped create and develop Toby the Pup and Scrappy with fellow animators Dick Huemer and Sid Marcus. Davis would eventually be promoted to director and remained at the studio even after it became Screen Gems in 1940.

In 1942, Davis left Screen Gems along with Frank Tashlin for Warner Bros. Davis worked as an animator for Tashlin's department until 1946 when it was assumed by Robert McKimson. Later that same year, he became a director himself, replacing Bob Clampett, who started his own studio.

Davis directed a number of hilarious Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, with a tone somewhere in-between those of Clampett and McKimson. He had a distinctive characteristic visual style, which can be seen as far back as Davis' Columbia shorts, in which the characters move from the foreground to the background, as well as from side to side, using all axes of the the animation field. Unfortunately, his department was shut-down only three years later in 1949 when Warners was having a budget problem. Davis then was taken into to Friz Freleng's unit until the studio closed.

Thirteen years later, Davis directed a cartoon for Warners again when Freleng was busy with other projects. This cartoon was "Quackodile Tears", which was also his last Warners short; he soon left to work at Walter Lantz as animator. He left Lantz in 1965 to work briefly for Hanna-Barbera Productions. He later moved over to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises to direct Pink Panther shorts and other cartoon series.