Of Fords And Fritos: Animation's Forgotten Ad Studios

While people are surprised to learn of America's forgotten ad studios, they might be even more surprised to learn who worked for them! Michael Mallory explains.

By Michael Mallory | Sunday, October 1, 2000 at 12:00 am

In addition to the legendary veterans that passed through its halls, Cascade can boast of another legacy: in the 1970s it was the starting place for three young special effects animators named Ken Ralston, Denis Muren and Phil Tippett. "When I was at Cascade, Denis Muren had a script, and just looking at this script, it was the movie we always wanted to make, but no studio would make a movie like this because it was just too hard," Ralston recalled recently. "But it was made, and we got to work with the guy who made it." The script was a little thing called Star Wars, "the guy" was George Lucas, and Ralston, Muren and Tippett went on to become part of the key creative core of Industrial Light & Magic.

Until recently, animated spots have tended to be overlooked by those in the animation industry and cartoon fans alike. But commercials have long been a major part of the animation landscape, and even though such one-time powerhouses as Alexander Film Studios and Cascade Studios are gone, neither they nor the artists who worked for them deserve to be forgotten.

Michael Mallory has written over 100 articles about animation, past and present, for such publications as Comics Scene, Animation, In Toon, Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Millimeter. He is also the author of the book Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

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Comments

Interesting article. Although I was not involved in animation at Alexander Film, I was employed as a child actor there in the early sixtties. I appeared in approximately six national commercials produced at the studios including Chevrolet, Reynolds Aluminum Wrap, and Pacific Power. I remember the sound stages well, former aircraft hangers located of North Nevada avenue. Production was top notch and it was a great experience for me as a youngster. Alexander Film was quite a going concern in those days, however it wasn't long before the work dwindled. I did not know about their animation production and work on "timers" at drive in theaters.