Get Martha Sigall started telling stories from her long career in animation and you’ll spend hours laughing at the antics of the animators from the “golden years” of animation. Getting her to talk is no problem; just say something like “did you work with so and so,” and she’ll be off and running with stories of that person, the studios she knew him or her from and all the others that were around them at that time. And those stories are exactly what you’ll find in this book.

Don’t expect this book to be an exposé Martha has never had a bad thing to say about anyone. This book was written by a woman who loved the work she did, and felt privileged to be working in the animation industry. She genuinely liked the people she worked with and was honored to be accepted into the “boys club” that early animation developed. She states in the book, “What I have written is my own recollection of what happened on a day-to-day basis… “ and she tells stories that she feels shouldn’t be forgotten of the zany people who make up the animation business. She knew personally most of the extraordinarily talented men and women who comprised the small group of people who created the commercial arm of one of the most original and expressive of all the art forms.

This is a book that is really fun to read if you are in the animation biz, or if you just love this whacky community.

First, a word about Martha. This small effervescent woman is one of the nicest people I know. She and her husband Sol met at a Passover dinner during WWII and have one of the most happily enduring relationships ever. They both have more energy than a cheerleading team. Both are docents at the Warner Bros. Museum, which is on the main lot, and either one can tell you tales of Warner Bros. because Sol has heard so many over the years from Martha. Martha is in demand for speaking engagements and loves to talk to classes and animation groups.

The Beginning
Half biography and half history, Living Between the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation is arranged more or less chronologically. Martha starts with her Le Conte Junior High School days when her family moved into a house directly behind the Pacific Title and Art Studio, where Leon Schlesinger was producing Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes for Warner Bros. (People tend to run those two together, but actually they were separate production units). There she ran errands and learned to paint cels, and got in trouble for doing it.

She later went to work for Schlesinger and her original employee card is reproduced in the book, with the date 7/13/36. She was paid the grand salary of $12.75 per week. She worked more or less continuously until 1989 when she finally retired, after 52 years in the animation business. In 2004 she was presented with the June Foray Award from ASIFA Hollywood at that year’s Annie Awards. When Warner Bros. produced a DVD set of 56 classic cartoons, Martha was asked to contribute to the commentaries to be included.

Most of Martha’s career was in ink & paint, although she also was a cameraman during the war, and has a thorough understanding of nearly every job in the industry. No one has ever done a history of the ink & paint side of animation before that I know of, and here Martha lays out the details of how inking and painting are done and the circumstances that the I & P people had to put up with in the early days.

She describes accurately the equipment, conditions and attitudes that the I & P people (mostly women) worked in. From the consistency of the paint to the origin of ebony scrapers (read the book and find out what they are), and compensation (it has nothing to do with money), she talks about her experiences in the studios. After three months she was making $14 an week, so she must have been good! Studios weren’t air conditioned then and many days they painted in 100º temperatures. Safe working conditions were non-existent. Martha didn’t care, she was having fun.

The Story of Ink & Paint
Many of the shorts she worked on are lovingly described in detail, along with the problems peculiar to inking and painting those shorts. She tells of some of the people that no one has bothered to talk about before, because I & P was and still is at the bottom of the totem pole. Sadly, this is an instance where the entire job category has been outsourced, and not recently either! The end of ink and paint in this country began with Hanna-Barbera sending some of those functions to Asia in the 1960s. Small independent studios were able to stay in business, though, and Martha was able to find freelance work enough to get in her union hours. She worked at Celine Miles Ink and Paint, C & D Studios, and with Auril Thompson. She knew Raynelle Day, Mary Lane, Betty Bronson and many other women from the early days of animation.

Martha was very active in “The Union,” and her book tells stories of how the strikes affected her and her friends. Art Goble talked her into coming to her first union meeting. Martha tells of how everyone was locked out of the Schlesinger studio on the eve of their calling a strike. Schlesinger had made all the animators take a cut in pay, and predictably they joined the union people in their threat to walk out. Wages were very low for everyone, but particularly for the ink-and-paint workers, and, in 1941, this was still the depression — a very scary time to strike.