What do you think?
Rate this book
Living Life inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation
Martha Sigall worked with all the classic cartoon characters-Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom & Jerry, Droopy Dawg, Beany & Cecil, Tweety, and Porky Pig-and the madcap artists who created them-Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, Friz Freleng, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Bill Melendez, and Ben (Bugs) Hardaway.
As a teenager Sigall became an apprentice painter working in the Golden Age of Hollywood at the Leon Schlesinger studio, making $12.75 per week coloring animation cels that would introduce Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to the world. She recounts her wild and wonderful experiences with the Warner Bros. cartoon crew, working and laughing all day with the animators, partying all night with the "Looney Tunes" gang on the bowling and baseball teams, and participating in weekend scavenger hunts. She was president of the in-house "Looney Tunes Club," co-wrote the company gossip column, and performed in the company's theatrical troupe.
After World War II, Martha joined MGM Animation ("Tom & Jerry," "Tex Avery") in Culver City as an assistant in the camera room and later freelanced her ink and paint services, creating art for many classic features, shorts, commercials, and TV series-including "Garfield," "Peanuts," and "The Pink Panther."
Written with warmth, humor, and a touch of nostalgia, this is a rarely told story of what it was like to be a part of a team of artists who were creating masterpieces of animation. Martha recalls her lifelong friendships with writer Michael Maltese, animators Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Herman Cohen, Paul Smith, Bob Matz, and many others. She writes of her experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, particularly during the war years when she was one of the first women camera operators in the industry.
Recipient of numerous awards for her artistry, Martha Sigall, Culver City, California, worked in animation production from 1936 to 1989.
As a teenager Sigall became an apprentice painter working in the Golden Age of Hollywood at the Leon Schlesinger studio, making $12.75 per week coloring animation cels that would introduce Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to the world. She recounts her wild and wonderful experiences with the Warner Bros. cartoon crew, working and laughing all day with the animators, partying all night with the "Looney Tunes" gang on the bowling and baseball teams, and participating in weekend scavenger hunts. She was president of the in-house "Looney Tunes Club," co-wrote the company gossip column, and performed in the company's theatrical troupe.
After World War II, Martha joined MGM Animation ("Tom & Jerry," "Tex Avery") in Culver City as an assistant in the camera room and later freelanced her ink and paint services, creating art for many classic features, shorts, commercials, and TV series-including "Garfield," "Peanuts," and "The Pink Panther."
Written with warmth, humor, and a touch of nostalgia, this is a rarely told story of what it was like to be a part of a team of artists who were creating masterpieces of animation. Martha recalls her lifelong friendships with writer Michael Maltese, animators Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Herman Cohen, Paul Smith, Bob Matz, and many others. She writes of her experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, particularly during the war years when she was one of the first women camera operators in the industry.
Recipient of numerous awards for her artistry, Martha Sigall, Culver City, California, worked in animation production from 1936 to 1989.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
245 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2005
1 person is currently reading
42 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 15, 2021
A fun, breezy, history of Sigall's experiences at several animation studios during the Golden Age of animation (and beyond - she retired in 1989!). It's packed with both hilarious anecdotes and delightful insights into the animation process from the perspective of the critical function of the ink-and-paint artists. I never knew, for instance, that Ub Iwerks (yes, co-creator and original animator of Mickey Mouse Ub Iwerks) also invented the cel Xerox machine used at Disney for films like 101 Dalmations...and as Sigall notes, impacted the role of inkers.
April 28, 2019
An excellent look at the history of American animation by a woman who enjoyed a 50 year career, starting out in the ink and paint department of Leon Schlesinger's studio, which produced Loony Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Anyone who grew up watching Warner Brothers' cartoons on Saturday mornings should enjoy this book. Martha Sigall worked for just about every American studio in her career. It was a book I couldn't put down.
March 1, 2022
3.5 ⭐️ An interesting read but would have loved to know more about the animation process at the time compared to now.
June 12, 2018
I didn't grow up watching "Romper Room" or "Captain Kangaroo" or Mr. Rogers. Instead, when I was a kid I watched a couple of guys named Harvey and Cannonball who had a local weekday morning show called "Hotel Balderdash" and showed Looney Toons cartoons. As well as I can recall, there wasn't much to it really: Harvey was tall and thin and Cannonball was short and round, there were some jokes and pranks, sometimes there was a creepy guy called Raymond (who was often the butt of the jokes), and they'd have a group of kids trying to win a bag of toys and candy by guessing a number, but mostly they showed a bunch of cartoons. It must have been pretty low-budget, but that's what I watched while eating breakfast and getting ready for school. (Yes, I can just hear some of my friends saying "oh, that explains a lot about him.")
I'm not sure how this book made it onto my to-be-read list, but it sat there for several years before I finally got around to reading it. Martha Sigall spent over 50 years working for different animation companies in Los Angeles and Hollywood, mostly as an "inker" or "painter." As she explains it, the producers and directors would come up with the storylines and gags for the cartoons and the animators would draw it out. Then the "in-betweeners" would draw all the in-between frames that gave motion to the cartoons. All these drawings had to be inked onto transparent sheets of celluloid ("cels"), and finally they were colored in by the painters. These cels would typically be layered up to four thick on top of a background with each layer having different parts of the scene - maybe even just the eyes of a character while the underlying parts didn't move. When each frame was assembled it would be photographed and all the pictures would be put together into the film. It's a little more complicated than that, but more than I ever would have guessed when I was seven or eight years old!
Mrs. Sigall tells of the people she was able to work with, some names you might recognize, although you'd more likely recognize their creations: Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Tom & Jerry, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, etc - basically all the cartoons except Disney. It's kind of interesting and has the feel of hearing your grandmother tell stories about her life, except this is someone else’s grandmother and you just happen to have fond memories of the cartoons. It's not the kind of book I'd recommend unless you have a specific interest in the history of animation and I ended up skimming over some parts. But still - kind of interesting.
And my cub scout troop was even on "Hotel Balderdash" one morning, and it's really weird to see yourself on television when you're a kid, but it makes you a minor elementary school celebrity for a day or two. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the kid who won the goodie bag was the den mother's son... but I was. I think I might even still carry the tiniest grudge.
I'm not sure how this book made it onto my to-be-read list, but it sat there for several years before I finally got around to reading it. Martha Sigall spent over 50 years working for different animation companies in Los Angeles and Hollywood, mostly as an "inker" or "painter." As she explains it, the producers and directors would come up with the storylines and gags for the cartoons and the animators would draw it out. Then the "in-betweeners" would draw all the in-between frames that gave motion to the cartoons. All these drawings had to be inked onto transparent sheets of celluloid ("cels"), and finally they were colored in by the painters. These cels would typically be layered up to four thick on top of a background with each layer having different parts of the scene - maybe even just the eyes of a character while the underlying parts didn't move. When each frame was assembled it would be photographed and all the pictures would be put together into the film. It's a little more complicated than that, but more than I ever would have guessed when I was seven or eight years old!
Mrs. Sigall tells of the people she was able to work with, some names you might recognize, although you'd more likely recognize their creations: Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Tom & Jerry, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, etc - basically all the cartoons except Disney. It's kind of interesting and has the feel of hearing your grandmother tell stories about her life, except this is someone else’s grandmother and you just happen to have fond memories of the cartoons. It's not the kind of book I'd recommend unless you have a specific interest in the history of animation and I ended up skimming over some parts. But still - kind of interesting.
And my cub scout troop was even on "Hotel Balderdash" one morning, and it's really weird to see yourself on television when you're a kid, but it makes you a minor elementary school celebrity for a day or two. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the kid who won the goodie bag was the den mother's son... but I was. I think I might even still carry the tiniest grudge.
November 28, 2012
A fun, breezy read, as former ink and paint girl Martha Sigall recalls a life in animation. Lots of quick bios of big names from classic Warner Brothers animation.
April 10, 2017
This book is a priceless one-of-a-kind insider's look at the golden age of Hollywood animation, told in a plainspoken voice whose anecdotes and details bring the animation process and its history to life.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews