Biography: Dick Brown Retrospective

The more I learn about the history of animation, the more surprises I uncover... The other day, Margaret Kerry Willcox brought in some old 3/4 inch videotapes to be digitized. One of the tapes had a demo reel on it that blew my mind and changed the way I thought about one of the early TV cartoon pioneers, Dick Brown.



I knew that Margaret had been married to Brown, and that she had provided the voice (and live action lips!) of Spinner in the classic TV cartoon series Clutch Cargo. I knew that Brown also produced a couple of other series using the "Syncrovox" system of combining live action mouths with cartoon heads... Captain Fathom and Space Angel. I knew that both Alex Toth and Doug Wildey worked on Space Angel, and they would go on to create Jonny Quest. But one of Margaret's dusty old 3/4 inch tapes showed me that I didn't know the half of it.



Did you know that Dick Brown made a functional horizontal multiplane out of sliding glass doors? Did you know that he produced the first half time special for the Super Bowl? Did you know that he pioneered computer graphics and flying logos on the General Electric Genegraphics system as early as 1971? Well I didn't until I saw this demo reel. It includes clips from his animated feature, Button Willow; an episode of the half time special cartoon, Freddie the Football; and never before seen pilot cartoons for the unmade series, Golden Eagle and Dinosaur Island.



Just as a sample, here is a Quicktime movie of the unsold pilot for Golden Eagle. It includes several beautiful multiplane shots using Brown's horizontal multiplane stand...

Golden Eagle Pilot
(Quicktime 7 / 5 megs)

Many thanks to Margaret for sharing this amazing treasure with the Archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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