Tex Avery: The Mgm Years, 1942-1955

I love this book. Some really nice prints of the artwork and model sheets, a must have for Tex Avery fans. Great to own if you can find it. Rare these days!

TA fans must be a patient bunch because we are still waiting for DVDs of his brilliant cartoons. Warner's 2007 two-disc set with twenty-four cartoons (though six were directed by Michael Lah) is as far as we've got and this set didn't include too many classics. How annoying that it's easier to read about his genius instead of watching it.Joe Adamson's 1975 book was a start, full of history and interesting anecdotes (but annoyingly without an index) but it looked so appalling with its scrappy reproduction of stills, model sheets and the few photos of the Avery crew. The appearance in 1996 of Canemaker's coffee-table book changed it all. At last a fabulous looking book choc-full of all the visual material that let down the Adamson's title.The book is a revised edition of a 1993 French one and I found it interesting that Warner Home video have released several Avery DVDs in France including, in 2003, a five-disc set lasting almost eight hours. I believe it includes most of the MGM cartoons featured in this book.I've looked through these pages several times over the years and it still delivers a punch. Page after page of beautifully reproduced cells, model sheets (maybe a little too small) original animation roughs, several background layouts including two fold-outs of these that measure just over three feet wide. The pages are divided into each year's output between 1942 and 1955 and each gets an overview of the titles followed by the captioned visual material. The back pages have an Avery filmography, perhaps a bit more detailed than the one in Adamson's book but he was writing about Avery's entire career.A gorgeous looking book on Tex Avery is better than nothing but it's the cartoons that count. Someone in Hollywoodland needs to get their act together to satisfy the obvious demand for DVD releases. This book sits very nicely beside another remarkable cartoon book: `The Hanna-Barbera treasury' (ISBN 9781933784281) and though visually the complete opposite of the cool, precise look of Canemaker's it nevertheless is brimming over with design exuberance, graphics, color and amazingly a whole load of pull-out booklets, cells and other printed goodies stuffed in envelopes and all revealing the work of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. They surely must have been strongly influenced by TA.