While MGM was adapting just fine to the changing animation landscape thanks to the efforts of Hanna-Barbera, the other animation studios were still trying to regain their footing with the advent of television - some more so than others.
Famous Studios was one of the more stable ones - despite no longer having the Superman license (which wouldn't have done them much good at that point anyway, as superheroes were in a bit of a popularity slump during the 1950s) they were coasting by just fine on their other major comic adaptations (
Popeye and
Little Lulu) and their Noveltoons series (which covered one-shot cartoons and minor recurring shorts, with the potential to be promoted to starring segments if popular enough - among those that got promoted was another adaptation of a licensed property, that being the
Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy line of dolls and children's books). They'd also built up a small roster of original stars; those being
Casper the Friendly Ghost (exactly as his name implies - a ghost who seeks the friendship of others in spite of their fear of the supernatural),
Little Audrey (initially conceived as a "backup" to the Little Lulu shorts in the event that they lost the latter's license like they did with Superman - once it turned out that they weren't at risk of that, Audrey's segments were retooled in order to distinguish them from Lulu's),
Baby Huey (an unusually large duckling with the strength to match his size) and
Herman & Katnip (a blatant attempt by Famous to copy the success of Tom and Jerry with their own brand of cat-and-mouse shorts - these are primarily distinct in that Herman the mouse is noticeably more violent in his retaliations against Katnip the cat), as well as a revival of Fleischer Studios'
Betty Boop series of cartoons (which were initially discontinued due to being unable to sufficiently adapt to the Hays Code without losing their core appeal - but now that the animators at Warner Bros. and MGM had pushed the limits of what animated shorts could get away with under the Hays Code's nose, Famous decided that the time was right to bring Betty back into the spotlight, a decision that would pay off rather nicely). They've also been keeping up with their animated film output, with a feature film based on their most popular animated short series (
Popeye the Sailor Man, 1951) and a circus/carnival-themed package film (
The Big Fun Carnival, 1957).
Walter Lantz Studios is doing alright as well (aside from a temporary shutdown in 1949), with Woody Woodpecker continuing to persist despite not being
quite the screwball he once was back in the early 1940s. The studio greatly benefitted from the arrival of Tex Avery in 1953, particularly his innovations to the
Chilly Willy series of cartoons (these generally revolved around the titular penguin's efforts to stay warm, usually resulting in him facing opposition from Smedley the dog). Avery would also be the one to direct the studio's next animated feature -
The Mouse That Roared (which premiered in 1958), an adaptation of Leonard Wibberley's 1955 novel of the same name about a small monarchy declaring war on the United States in order to intentionally lose (and subsequently benefit from American reimbursement), only to inadvertently get their hands on an experimental doomsday device known as the Q-Bomb. They also benefitted from Lantz's decision to bring his studio's cartoons to television via
The Woody Woodpecker Show, which premiered on ABC (acronym for American Broadcasting Company) in 1957, helping to bring much-needed financial revenue to the studio.
UPA, as previously mentioned, has fully merged with Screen Gems as Columbia's primary animation studio. They've produced two animated films in the 1950s:
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T in 1953 (a collaborative effort with Dr. Seuss, about a boy trapped in a bizarre dream world where his piano teacher is a mad dictator - notably, the real world segments are live-action while the dream world segments are animated, with quite a few moments where both mediums blend into each other) and
1001 Arabian Nights in 1959 (a comedic retelling of Aladdin guest starring Mr. Magoo as Aladdin's uncle "Abdul Azziz Magoo"). An animated adaptation of Burton Lane and E. Y. Harburg's musical
Finian's Rainbow was also planned during this decade but ran into complications due to both Harburg and the film's planned director John Hubley being among those blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for suspicion of promoting Communist values in their works (and for refusing to rat out other suspected Communists they've associated with) - the film itself wouldn't be completed and released until the 1960s, after the Red Scare had died down and the "Hollywood blacklist" had been officially discarded.
There's also the relatively more obscure Terrytoons studio (named after its founder Paul Terry), which had been chugging along since 1929 in spite of their lower quality of shorts in comparison to the other animation studios, with their most notable characters being
Heckle and Jeckle (a pair of trickster magpies) and
Mighty Mouse (a superhero mouse). In 1955, Paul Terry retired and sold the studio to CBS (acronym for Columbia Broadcasting System), who appointed former UPA animator Gene Deitch as the new creative supervisor for the studio. The studio would take its own first steps into televised animation as a result, with both re-packaged classic shorts (aired on the show
Mighty Mouse Playhouse) and original animated content (Gene Deitch's
Tom Terrific series of shorts, which aired as part of the children's television show
Captain Kangaroo).
Disney's position is... complicated, to say the least. On the positive side, both Cinderella and Peter Pan proved to be major hits both critically and financially, which was a major boon for the studio following the tumultuous 1940s period. On the other hand, the studio had dropped their distribution deal with RKO in 1954 as a result of conflicts between Walt and RKO's owner Howard Hughes, with Walt establishing his own in-house production company for Disney's films in the process (RKO would try to jump on the animated feature bandwagon by themselves that same year by obtaining the rights to the independently produced stop-motion film
Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy, but it was crushed by Return to Oz at the box office, and RKO wouldn't get the chance to try again before going bankrupt in 1959). At first, this didn't seem like
too bad of a decision - Disney's next animated feature in 1955,
Lady and the Tramp, would prove to be a modest box-office success in spite of mixed reviews (the novelty of being the first ever animated movie to be made in CinemaScope format certainly helped). But in 1959, Disney would end up flying too close to the sun - their animated feature that year,
Sleeping Beauty, would rival Snow White and Fantasia (as well as the Alice shorts) as one of Disney's most ambitious yet (as one of the main criticisms of Lady and the Tramp was that it felt like a regression back to Disney's older style in comparison to the two films that preceded it, Walt must have taken that as a personal challenge), and also one of its most expensive. Unfortunately, it did
not pay off financially, with critics and audiences being split over the movie's unexpectedly dark tone (particularly the scenes involving the villain Maleficent). The film
would be regarded years later as one of Disney's greatest cinematic achievements, but for the time being the film put the company at risk of financial collapse - and unlike with Disney's ambitious flops of the early 1940s (Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi), there would be no closed overseas box offices to use as an excuse. As a result, several of Disney's animation staff were laid off... leaving them ripe to be hired away by MGM for additional work at Hanna-Barbera.
Fortunately for Disney, Walt had the foresight to diversify the company's business ventures beyond just animation, or even filmmaking in general (the Disney studio had begun producing live-action films this decade, starting with
The Story of Robin Hood in 1952). You see, back in the late 1940s, Walt got interested in the idea of building his own theme park, and in 1954 decided that the studio was in a financially secure position to start making that idea a reality. In order to drum up interest and additional funds, Walt hosted a television broadcast on ABC detailing his plans for the park and showcasing footage from Disney's filmography in order to help visualize said plans (this would help the show transition into an anthology series after its initial purpose was fulfilled). The park, titled Disneyland, would officially be completed and open for business on July 17, 1955 (though Walt would end up throwing a second opening ceremony the following day after the initial one turned disastrous), and would prove to be the massive success that Walt hoped it would be... which was fortunate for the Disney company and brand as a whole, as the fallout from Sleeping Beauty's failure compounded by other issues in the 60s would end up putting the animation studio in dire straits that they would take quite a few years to fully recover from.
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So yeah, here's where the other animation studios are at ITTL during the 1950s. Credit to
@TheFaultsofAlts for coming up with the idea for Tex Avery doing an animated adaptation of The Mouse That Roared (and yes, this does replace the 1959 live-action version produced by Columbia that OTL had).
By the way, the stuff about UPA's animated adaptation of Finian's Rainbow getting canned as a result of the Hollywood blacklist actually did happen IOTL. Same with the initial opening ceremony for Disneyland taking a disastrous turn for the worse (the event ended up going down in infamy as "Black Sunday"), forcing Disney to have to throw a second one.
Speaking of Disney, I was honestly going back and forth on whether or not I'd let them keep Disneyland ITTL, but I ultimately figured that, given what's to come for this company later on, they could certainly use this extra business venture in order to help them stay afloat.
Next time, we take a peek at an artistic medium that has a close association with animation - comics!
