The Drawings Of Norman Mclaren
Chapter 5. 133 Collaborations
Sometimes I get the impression from articles people write about me that I make my films almost single-handed. Now, this is a quite erroneous impression. Usually it's with one or two people. We form a small team. Most often it's been with Evelyn Lambart, but almost as frequently with Grant Munro. On the music side it's with Maurice Blackburn. So there's usually three people in the team.[1]
Frequently referred to as a 'pioneer' or genius in developing new animation styles and techniques, McLaren's work has received international attention. Despite the fact that the majority of his film title cards bear his name alone, McLaren was an enthusiastic collaborator in most of his work. He was modest about his own successes but keen to reinforce the part that other people played in his success.
From the early film-making efforts at the Kinecraft Society and then the more substantive work with Helen Biggar, discussed earlier, McLaren found kindred creative spirits at various points in his career. His work with Mary Ellen Bute, not strictly considered collaborative as such, also previously discussed, gave him the opportunity to develop his techniques and earn some money at the same time. It gave him a chance to work with someone who took a different approach to the job of selling the work. In Guy Glover, also his romantic partner, he had a creative companion who supported his work in terms of helping with the practice but also in the extraneous work of producing, securing music and generally overseeing much of the work at the FB of Canada in later years.
This chapter moves into a different phase of McLaren's life, covering more of his time at the film board. This has been discussed extensively by both McWilliams and Dobson through the lens of McLaren's creative output during his forty-year career there, and as such will not be too concerned here with the work itself, but instead examine these later, and arguably more important, collaborations and relationships McLaren had at the board.
The chapter discusses Evelyn Lambart and Grant Munro in the main as two people McLaren became closest to, apart from Glover. It also looks at some 134 of the other key influences in his work at this time, from composer Maurice Blackburn, protégé Claude Jutra, to friend and animator Alexandre Alexieff. The FB was well known for fostering new talent, particularly in those days, as exemplified by people such as James Beveridge and George Dunning who went on to other places. Though there were a great number of people from the board, particularly in later years, who worked with McLaren, including René Jodoin and Tom Daly, this chapter (like the rest of the book) is concerned with these main relationships through McLaren's correspondence; there is far less in the way of substantive discussion of others. That is not to say that there is no material available which discusses these other people, just that they were not available to me at the time of writing and as such are considered outside the scope of this book.
Evelyn Lambart (1914–1999)
Figure 5.1. Norman McLaren with Evelyn Lambart, date unknown. GAA/31/PP/19/024.
Of all of McLaren's collaborators over the years, the closest in terms of both working practice and creative drive and friendship was probably Evelyn Lambart (another key female in his life). She was known fondly as Eve in letters home from an early stage of their relationship; she was someone with whom 135 McLaren spent a great amount of time both inside and outside of the working environment. This section considers Lambart's own work both before and after her collaborations with McLaren and examines their relationship through his letters.
Lambart is fairly well known in her own right as a Canadian animator who was encouraged in art by her father, who was a photographer, and her mother, a botanist. Lambart studied commercial art at the Ontario College of Art. She spent a year and a half after graduation working on Canada's Book of Remembrance doing illuminations. This was delicate work which showed her skill with fine work and colour. She then went to work at the National Film Board of Canada in Ottawa in 1942, a year after McLaren joined the board. She first began to work with McLaren as an assistant but very quickly began working with him, animating and often co-directing.
Not all of her time was spent working with McLaren; she took a break in the post-war years to create maps and diagrams for the World in Action series and in 1947 began her first solo work, The Impossible Map (1947). She resumed her partnership with McLaren in 1949 with Begone Dull Care (1949), which is often considered to be the partnership's best film.
Begone Dull Care (1949)
Co-directed by McLaren and Lambart, Begone Dull Care, released in 1949, is an interpretation of jazz music by the Oscar Peterson Trio, with a running time of 7 minutes 40 seconds. The images were painted directly onto film (using a variety of materials including fabric and dust), and the film is generally held up in animation history as one of the best examples of cameraless animation. The film demonstrates the kinetic qualities of the soundtrack and studies the nature of movement. The film was made by recording the soundtrack and then cutting lengths of film to match the music. The images were created with a variety of methods including scratching and painting directly onto film (and accidentally melting it with a serendipitous effect). In 1950 Norman McLaren won a Special Award at the Canadian Film Awards, and in 1951 both animators won the Silver Plaque at the Berlin Film Festival for Best Documentary/Cultural Film.
While Begone Dull Care is the film most commonly associated as collaboration between the two, there were several more over the years, including Rythmetic (1956), A Chairy Tale (1957), Le Merle (1958), Lines Vertical (1960), Lines Horizontal (1962) and Mosaic (1965). Lambart once talked about her experiences at the board and working with McLaren in a newspaper interview.
'I'm working with Norman all the time on something or other ... I've been doing all kinds of animation. I like three-dimensional things and I like color. Almost any artist does.' She frequently produces the material with which Mr McLaren works. The birds for 'Le Merle' were hers and so were the numbers for 'Rythmetic'. 'I moved the chair in Chairy Tale ... I moved the chair with 136 black nylon fishing line. The greatest trick was when the chair jumped, turned a somersault and landed on its feet again. That took two of us.' ...Evelyn did the 'lines' for two more recent McLaren productions – 'Lines Vertical' and 'Lines Horizontal' ... She admits that she and Mr McLaren sometimes disagree but says: 'He is a person of enourmous talent, I respect his opinions very much but I think its my business to use my own brains.'[2]
The article went on to describe her then-current film, designing DNA molecules, which at the time had a working title of Microcosm, produced by Colin Low at the board. It also talked about her personal life, which in the context of McLaren's letters was interesting.
Evelyn is the Board's only female animator although there are several apprentices. After 19 years she says happily: 'It suits me beautifully. I am an extremely lucky and privileged person to work here. There are many talented people who don't have this opportunity.' Does she care about the world outside? 'I read the papers. I hate them but I read them. I do some gardening and weaving. I have a summer cottage and keep a couple of cats. Oh and I have a house in the suburbs. I'm only mildly social. But I don't like people around all the time. I like privacy. My life here is such a rich and satisfying thing.'[3]
It is clear from this quote that she and McLaren shared a similar personality type in describing themselves as private and non-social, though from the letters we see that they, along with Guy (and later Grant Munro), would spend much of their time together.
In the letters home McLaren frequently sent Evelyn's love home to his parents, suggesting that they may have met at some point, or perhaps he spoke of them all to each other so often he felt that they knew each other. One of the most frequent mentions of Evelyn in the letters was in social gatherings – generally at Eve's house where she cooked elaborate meals for them all. In late 1947 he wrote home to describe a dinner at Eve's followed by a film screening on her new projector which was better than his.[4] In his next letter he sent his own news combined with Evelyn's.
'On Wednesday evening Evelyn came for dinner, and then went to a concert for which she had seats ... she is very busy now, making a film on the history of Canada, which looks as if it is going to be very good.' 'Im not so busy at the moment, but my mind has been taken up with trying to decide what to do about an offer to go to Hollywood for a short job.'[5] ' I am getting a copy of that list of my films for you Mum: I don't think I took it away by mistake, but anyway, I'll send you another. I have been seeing about getting more copies of my films for England so it is quite possible you may get another chance to see "Poulette Grise" again Mum.'[6] (12 January 1948)
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In many letters over the next few years he described even more meals cooked by Evelyn either for large groups from the board or for smaller gatherings – she was always interested in trying new recipes and, from McLaren's accounts, was a very good cook. Her creative skills in the kitchen extended into other areas of craft as well. He would usually use the post-Xmas letter to describe the gifts he and Guy had received and in 1951 told his parents about Eve's new craft output, 'Evelyn gave me a most beautiful waistcoat, which she had knitted herself.' 'I returned to work on the Tuesday, and Eve and I did a lot of shooting on the film for the Festival of Britain' (7 January 1951, underline in the original).[7] The time taken to create a personal gift demonstrated the closeness of their relationship and most Xmas meals were spent together.
Over the next year (1951), they worked together on McLaren's stereoscopic film experiments (though these are rarely mentioned in connection with Lambart's work ). One example from Wednesday, July 1951, talks about McLaren and Eve finishing a film (a revision of Around Is Around) and sending it to London to be color printed for the Canadian National Exhibition. 'An invitation just arrived today from the American Society of Motion Picture Engineers asking me to go out to Hollywood in October to attend their annual conference and give a talk on stereoscopic techniques in animated films.'[8]
This invitation would have boosted McLaren's confidence in developing what he thought was very new technology. In fact he was developing something which had been thought of before. In an article written in 2014, Alison Loader outlined the early stages of his stereoscopic drawings, that the technology was Victorian and that he had, 'unwittingly recreated the 1838 apparatus and technique of Sir Charles Wheatstone – a fact pointed out to McLaren by fellow NFB filmmaker Raymond Spottiswoode on a visit to the animator's Ottawa home.'[9] Loader's assertion is reinforced in McLaren's letters home, including one from 1944 when he outlined his new invention.
I have been very busy doing a new type of drawing and painting. It is absolutely new and revolutionary, and all my own invention. I have been inventing it this summer, about June, and have been working and perfecting it, in my spare time ever since. You will probably hear quite a lot about it in the future, but not immediately, as I have still got a lot of progress to make in it. It is called 'Stereoscopic' drawing and painting. For every scene or picture, I have to draw actually two drawings – one for each eye. The drawings are of the same scene, but seen from a slightly different point of view. When you look at the two drawings together, the eye fuses the two images into one scene, which has an amazing sense of reality about it. You may remember, away back in your young days looking at Stereoscopic photos of scenery thru a little gadget for viewing them. well this is the same thing, only they are drawings and paintings, instead of photos. No one has ever thought of doing drawings for a stereoscope before, or, if they have, have been able to do them. 138 However, I have invented a marvellous method for doing them with ease. (27 November 1944)[10]
Despite the fact that it was not new as such, it did not diminish McLaren's enthusiasm for the process and he continued developing what would be some of the earliest 3D animation.
Most of my spare time has been taken up with writing a thesis on doing stereoscopic painting and drawing that I have been doing from time to time, during the last two years. I am thinking of submitting it to the Carnegie foundation, in the hope of getting money to carry on my experiments in a bigger way ... I enjoyed doing it. (9 June 1946)[11]
Over the next few weeks McLaren continued with the documentation of his techniques, 'This past week I have been busy writing a report on the methods I used to make the two films you so [saw]. Now it is finished, and this coming week I shall be going out to shoot more on a film I'm making on "Good Neighbourliness"' (Sunday, 9 September 1951).[12] In the letter he asked his mother if she enjoyed the film (Around Is Around) and that he thought it was more restful than the previous years film (the very active Begone Dull Care). He also wondered about the effects of the stereoscopy, 'I wonder if you were able to get the stereopscopic effect of depth very much? Some people do so more than others. It is rather ironic that I myself don't very much, nor does Eve who worked so much on the film too.'
It is interesting that during such a creative period, Eve's name is so absent from much of the history of these films. That said, the films were only recently nominated for restoration by the National Film Board to be shown during the centenary celebrations and very little had been written about them before. That Eve is missed from much of the discussion also speaks to the relative celebrity of the name McLaren and though collaboration is often mentioned, it is for the better-known films, with the most visible collaboration being Begone Dull Care (and as we will see with Grant Munro, Neighbours).
Though he moved on to work on Neighbours over the next year, he continued with some work in the stereoscopic films, having completed both Around Is Around and Now Is the Time in 1951. He supervised Evelyn's O Canada and Gretta Ekman's Twirligig in 1952, both of which used the stereo techiniques.
Around is Around presents the graceful arabesques of an oscilloscopic line, while Now is the Time features a whimsical figure dancing amidst layers of smiling suns and cartoon clouds, animated by drawing directly onto film. O Canada travels cross-country in a sequence of zooms through pastel-painted Canadian landmarks, and the abstract Twirligig transforms in stream of consciousness shapeshifting. Each film spotlights movement in depth, and significantly accomplished without a stereoscopic camera rig.[13]
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All four of these films were shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. The films were also developed for the Festival of Britain the same year, and in another letter he spoke to his parents of different issues of collaboration, once more revealing his political feelings.
In my regular work, when I have been getting time for it I have been working on the stereoscopic film for the opening of the new stereo cinema in London on the 23rd of May, in the pleasure gardens at Battersea Park. It was a big rush, and meant working evenings and weekends, for the finished negatives had to be airmailed to England by the 7th of May, where they will be made into colour prints. The name of the film is TWIRLIGIG; however I have withdrawn my name from the film, as has also the composer of the music, in protest against what we both consider unwarranted political discrimination against the artist who did the animated drawing for the film. Yesterday I cabled London to cut out our credit titles from the film, and avoid all reference to the artists who made the film in publicity to the public or to the press. (1April 1952)[14]
In 1954, the extent of the closeness of McLaren's friendship with Eve was demonstrated in a letter home to Stirling, this time from Eve on McLaren's behalf, telling them of his safe departure to South America for more film festival duties.
Norman asked me to send you this magazine, or correctly I offered and he said fine. We got him off to Brazil yesterday in something of a hurry to say the least. I had been working with him for the previous week to help him finish his current film 'Night Encounter'. It is being printed in color in New York and from there he goes on to São Paulo where there is a great festival of new films being held. He is there in an official capacity, and will have to make some speeches. I hope he meets some interesting people otherwise he will find it a great strain and a great bore. He may go over to the Argentine afterwards where there is another festival of a different sort, he is going to take about a months holidays while there too. The Canadian Ambassador has asked him to stay over in Rio after the Brazilian festival is over and make some speeches. People on this side just love a Scottish accent. If he would just roll his Rs a little he could be a hit on that alone ... he has worked awfully hard the last few months and I hope he has a good holiday, the last few days he did not even stop to eat his lunch. He ate while working. He does not seem too tired, I have seen him look a lot worse. He and Guy and I had a few days at Blue Sea last summer were you really get away from people and relax and I think they both enjoyed it. Norman painted all the time that we were not swimming, and I got Guy carving a fork and spoon out of drift wood. Ps I hope you have not heard all this before. With much love to you both from Evelyn Lambart. (5 February 1954)[15]
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The personal references to how tired, or otherwise McLaren was and the details of their trip to her holiday home showed how much she cared for him as well as how far their friendship extended beyond work.
The next major project the pair worked on together, started in 1954, was Rythmetic and as seen in the earlier interview, Evelyn was heavily involved in the animation of the film, creating the moving parts.
It must be more than five weeks now that Eve and I have been shooting our new film 'RYTHMETIC'. It is slow steady and fairly exacting work, and if you were to drop I and see us doing it from time to time, it would almost certainly seem to you that we were always doing the same thing ... It would seem very monotonous work to a bystander, but to us it is engrossing, because by our thousands of little moves we are making the arithmetic numbers come to life, and they will seem to move and behave like little creatures in the final film ... When the film is finished I hope it will make you laugh. No word about my TV program in the UK, so far. BLINKITY BLANK is being shown at the Cannes Film Festival this spring. (Mid-March 1955)[16]
Over the next few years they worked on different projects but still spent their Xmas breaks together. By 1959 they had started working along with composer Maurice Blackburn on their Lines films.[17]
Lines and Rythmetic
Over the years of their collaboration, McLaren and Evelyn continued to experiment with movement, form, rhythm and music. In 1956 they made Rythmetic, which used cut-out animation, music and movement to explain mathematics to children. This technique was useful in producing pure movement and in the early 1960s they simplified the form of movement again in the form of single lines which would move, meet and multiply. Over the next few years they used this technique to produce what is known as the Lines trilogy – Lines Vertical (1960), Lines Horizontal (1962) and Mosaic (1965). The films have different moods and evoke emotional response to the combination of music and movement. The use of music in these films is discussed eloquently by Aimee Mollaghan,[18] who argues that their work is situated within a period of minimalism in art. McLaren often considered himself to be at the zeitgeist of many areas though he didn't always look for them or indeed engage with them deliberately.
As with many of McLaren's films though, they were never entirely finished and in 1960 they worked on a television credit sequence in New York which was based on the style of animation used in Rythmetic. The job was successful and resulted in three well-paid job offers but he was not interested, 'as it would be really wasting my abilities on cheap commercial trash' (6 February 1960).[19]
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Their projects diverged again and in 1962 (as discussed earlier) Evelyn began working on 'a film to do with the "microcosm", showing atoms and molecules" (Monday, 7 May 1962). In the same year though they came together again to make Mosaic which was based on the Lines films. Mosaic was not finished though, until 1965.
In 1963, another letter to McLaren's mother demonstrated how much Evelyn cared about and admired him, but also reassured his mother how well he was doing and how well he was regarded at the board.
He has been very well this Christmas, much better than usual at this season. He has kept going, and done everything, while pretending to do nothing ... I think Norman has been saying some flattering things to you about me and I think you should know the truth. The talent I have is very limited, and in my fingers (this is not a rare sort of talent as everyone knows). He is the one with the real inspiration. A talent which is very rare and I am very happy that he so often finds a use for what I can do. Besides this he is such a gentle person, and so sympathetic and understanding of other people, that it is a joy to be associated with him. It is just wonderful to work with a person whose taste and opinions are so excellent and so sure and who so completely commands your respect, that you can put the best you have into the job with confidence and pleasure. I do not think he realizes how great his influence is both in the animation dep. and in the board in general not only for the magnificently high standard which his work always has: but also for the thoughtfulness and generosity which is in all his human relationships. When I go about our mutual business around the board, and I ask for something for N, there is not a person who does not eagerly rise with a smile to the job, in the pleasure of doing it for Norman. No matter how much trouble it may involve. I am sometimes guilty of hinting that a thing may be for N when really it is for me and I always get it faster and better. We do share everything eventually.
I do not know how you have produced this paragon. But you have done it and I would like to say thank you and congratulate you for all of us. With many Best Wishes for the New Year and love to all of you, from Eve. (13 January 1963, underline in original)[20]
The language in the letter, similar to the last example, reinforces how similar they were in both their own modesty, but also caring for others. After the Lines films were completed, McLaren received a letter from the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo extolling the virtues of the films and offering congratulations on their success. He added a note by hand to make sure that Evelyn's name was included.
Figure 5.2. Letter from Canadian Embassy, Tokyo, to Norman McLaren with additional handwritten note including Evelyn Lambart, 9th February 1961.
During the year 1961, as discussed in the previous chapter on McLaren's health, he had several hospital stays, and each time Eve visited almost daily, along with Grant Munro (particularly with Guy away in India). In March 1965, Evelyn was invited to the Annecy festival as part of the jury and at the same festival, a retrospective celebrating 25 years of McLaren's work was to be shown. 142 McLaren and Evelyn would travel together for the festival (joined by Grant Munro and Maurice Blackburn).
As the work and related 'celebrity' led to more official duties for McLaren , they took great comfort at Eve's summerhouse on Blue Lake with rejuvenating trips getting them away from the busy pace of the board. 'I am begin bombarded by visitors & press critics, etc & I will have to get a secretary of my own at the NFB to cope with it – else I'll never be able to get on with making films.'[21] McLaren had this 'special person' by the letter of 5 September, 'This 143 new arrangement has been in effect only two days, but already it has made a big difference.' Evelyn's lake house would also accommodate visiting guests such as their friends the Alexieffs during one summer visit from France.
Shortly before his mother died, McLaren sent a letter to tell her what he had been up to. He told her of a trip to Eve's for the day when they went on to visit Eve's sister. This was interesting to McLaren as Eve had not spoken well of her but he thought she was 'a perfectly charming person'.[22] They went on to make maple toffee, which involved pouring hot maple syrup into the snow and eating it cooled, like ice-cream. He had previously sent a detailed drawing of the process of tapping the trees for Maple syrup when he first saw it in his early years in Canada.
McLaren and Lambart continued to work well together but in the 1960s his interest in dance films grew and she began making her own films, though she did help complete Ballet Adagio when McLaren was ill. She began to use a technique of paper cut-outs transferred onto litho plates and then painted and animated. This was used to make seven award-winning films including Fine Feathers (1968) The Hoarder (1969), Paradise Lost (1970), The Story of Christmas (1973) and Mr. Frog Went A-Courting (1974).
Lambart retired from the film board in 1975 and moved to the country where she made her last film, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse/Le Rat de maison et le Rat des champs (1980).
Their relationship was born out of work and grew into close and trusted collaboration and friendship. It is interesting to see how they reflected each other later in their lives. In an interview in September 1987, eight months after McLaren's death, Evelyn described her own filmmaking career and her work with McLaren.
Norman was a moving spirit in the invention of animation techniques. There was always something new brewing in his mind ... Sometimes I think I'm really a piece of Norman. You can't work that closely with a person for so long and not feel that. We co-ordinated so well together ... We were compatible. Our feeling for time and colour was the same. It all became integrated because every tiny detail was discussed back and forth until we came to an agreement on what was acceptable ... Norman had great prestige. I feel that all my life Norman's mantle has fallen a bit on me and I think people respect me mainly because I was working with him. Norman was a big figure ... I often felt very insignificant beside him, but he respected me very much.
She talked about McLaren's move to his ballet films in the 1960s and how their collaborations essentially ended, and how difficult this was for her, 'Until then, the relationship had been so comfortable and so successful that there'd never been any reason to think otherwise. I felt very lost at that time; I had always worked with Norman and I found it difficult to have to make my own decisions. I had to force myself.'[23]
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Asked about Evelyn's role as collaborator in an interview which eventually became part of the Creative Process documentary, McLaren said,
She played an immense role in almost all my films, except for the last ten years, when she started making her own films. We got together in the forties. I remember working out tests with her for Poulette Grise before I arrived at the final decision. She started kind of as an assistant, but more and more we fitted in and in some films she was really co-directing them. One thing was that she was very methodical. Terribly systematic, had lots of things on hand – protractors and compasses and many other instruments. So we thought and felt the same way about it – the use of colour. She came into the designing the use of colour in Mosaic, where there's little flickers ... when the dots crowd together, you get a little clump of flickers. So we shared ideas and opinions. And ... and ... she was a – I felt the value of a second person provided that other person – felt the same way about art and colour and about movie movement. And there she was.[24]
Both of these lengthy quotes of reflection of a long friendship demonstrate their closeness and trust the pair had in each other. It is interesting that McLaren felt so at ease with Evelyn despite once writing to Biddy Russell that he felt uncomfortable in the presence of women, though this was in a letter, which was essentially coming out, and what seems to be the rejection of Biddy's advances. His romantic interests may have never been inclined towards women, but his work and friendship never precluded them. This could be seen in his work with Helen Biggar, arguably with Mary Ellen Bute, but reinforced with Evelyn. He clearly saw her as a creative kindred spirit and as such their work and friendship flourished.
Grant Munro (1923–)
Though Evelyn was a creative constant at the National Film Board, Grant Munro, who came and went over several years, became well known for working with McLaren on some of his most famous films, namely Neighbours (1952), Two Bagatelles (1953), Canon (1964), and the instructive series Animated Motion.[25]
Winnipeg native Munro had many talents as a director, actor, cinematographer and documentarian,[26] but in this context is discussed as another key collaborator during McLaren's years at the board.
Munro joined the board in 1944 but left in 1947 to work with another company. He returned in 1951, in time to perform the physically demanding role of one of the neighbours in Neighbours as well as continuing the experiments in the pixelation technique also seen in Two Bagatelles. He left the board again in 1957 to work with fellow former board staffer George Dunning, who had set up a studio in London, England. He came back to the board once more in 1961 and 145 remained there until 1970. After this period he began making documentaries, including the Animated Motion series with McLaren.
The sporadic tenure at the board is reflected in the letters which go from constant references to Munro to next to nothing and back again (as with Evelyn and Guy, Grant would always say 'hello'). It is unclear if they kept in touch during Munro's periods away from the board, however during certain periods, like Evelyn, he was a constant presence, particularly during McLaren's periods of ill health in the 1960s.
I would suggest that due to the sporadic nature of Munro's time at the board, the friendship was generally more social than work based, and indeed in 1965 when McLaren had moved into another apartment in his building to accommodate his painting equipment, he noted that while Guy was across the hall, Munro lived above them in the same building. In 1960, just before Munro returned to work at the board, he visited and stayed with McLaren and Glover in their Montreal apartment. He stayed for several weeks before going back to England. By 1962 however, he was outlining plans to make a film with Munro, one which looked at describing musical forms for children. They returned to the pixelation method, but before they could work on what would become Canon they were tasked with a shorter film, which would become Christmas Cracker (1963).
A new job for a Xmas film ... Grant Munro & I have been assigned to do a special sequence for this film. He is going to play the part of a Jester, who introduces the film and its titles, and who appears between each of the scenes, and who winds up the film at the end ... During all this coming week we are going to be shooting it, and during the following few weeks we will be editing it and arranging the music and special effects ... The musical cannon film has been put aside for the moment. (17 June 1962)[27]
In 1963 McLaren commented that Munro had moved on to another project and that he was working with the composer Eldon Rathburn on the music for Canon, as previously discussed.[28] Canon was finished by 1964 by which time Munro was beginning to work on several other projects. Munro's films during this period (and into the 1970s) took on the political or social issues of the day with a level of humour present in Neighbours, but not tackled directly by McLaren.
In 1966 Munro made one of his most well-known films Toys, which featured a mixture of live action, pixelation and stop motion to tell an unnerving story about the horror of war (just as they had previously in Neighbours) but this time depicted through the graphic use of children's toy soldiers. The film's social commentary was far more obvious than in his work with McLaren, which in their later collaborations moved more towards the whimsical.
From McLaren's letters (and Munro's filmography), it seems that Munro had a varied approach to his subjects and in 1966 was making a film which would 146 be released as The Animal Movie, 'He has finished his children's film on how animals move, and is starting on a new one.'[29] (The new film was presumably Toys.) Munro changed subjects again and in 1970 Munro once more used a comedic approach, this time in a live action film warning against the dangers of smoking called Ashes of Doom. The short film played off the horror genre of the day, and was particularly reminiscent of a Hammer Horror film, popular in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1983, Munro made McLaren on McLaren and also filmed McLaren giving a speech to take to a film festival in Holland. McLaren was unable to travel by this point and Munro went as his representative. By this time Munro was becoming more of a support for McLaren, particularly as he graduated into retirement from the board. McLaren's official retirement was in 1984, which was attended by 400 to 500 people from the board, and a smaller group for lunch.[30] This was despite his suggesting in a previous letter to his sister, Sheena, that he hoped 'like old soldiers, to quietly fade away'.[31] His fame and immense contribution to the board did not allow him to go so quietly. Munro himself retired from the board in 1988, one year after McLaren's death. In 1992, Cecile Starr interviewed Munro about his time at the board. He described the process of working with McLaren, reinforcing the supportive nature of McLaren's working style, 'You never worked for Norman, you always worked with him. He always encouraged us to come up with ideas.'[32]
In 2003, on Munro's eightieth birthday, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York held a retrospective of his films. Like McLaren he was awarded an honorary doctorate and given the 'Order of Canada' in 2008 – this included appropriate recognition of his work – 'One of the earliest and longest-serving members of the National Film Board of Canada, he developed innovative techniques that influenced both the film industry and other animators.'[33] Though Munro has been subject of special collections at the MOMA and National Film Board, he, like Evelyn is often discussed more for his contribution to McLaren's success, despite amassing his own body of award-winning work. However his collaboration with McLaren does not (or should not) diminish his own work; rather it should be recognized in terms of the supportive friendship and playful creativity he brought to McLaren's work.
Other Collaborations
Over the years, McLaren had the opportunity to work with numerous people at the film board. Performers and fellow animators, composers and producers, the list includes many names of people, well known in their own right – Maurice Blackburn, René Jodoin, Claude Jutra, George Dunning, Alexandre Alexieff. This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list and there are undoubtedly many others who worked closely with McLaren but have been neglected from this discussion. As suggested at the start of this chapter, there are limits 147 on the scope of the work due to constraints of both time and available information. The following section discusses those whom McLaren mentioned most frequently in his correspondence home.
Maurice Blackburn (1914 – 1988)
A Quebec native, composer Maurice Blackburn was, like McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, born in 1914. He studied music in Quebec and later Boston before joining the National Film Board in 1941, one of the first composers to be hired by the board. He arranged scores for the Chants Populaires series, which so many of McLaren's contemporaries worked on. He also composed soundtracks for animated films and documentaries. One of the earliest members of the board, he was included in McLaren's circle of friends and they shared an interest in a particular type of visual imagery. He worked with McLaren several times and created the scores for La Poulette Grise (1947), A Phantasy (1952), Blinkity Blank (1955), La Merle (1958), Lines Vertical (1960), Lines Horizontal (1962), Pas de Deux (1968) and Narcissus (1983).
When McLaren was in the final stages of filming Neighbours, he was also making A Phantasy – typically it was a film which had been started several years earlier and was being revisited. He told friend Biddy Russell about it, 'I am busy completing a new film called "love your Neighbour: – using alive people for animating. Also a film called Phantasy. Visuals done in 1948 & the music just completed by a Canadian composer Maurice Blackburn for saxophone and synthetic sound.'[34] This remark regarding the synthetic sound suggests that Blackburn was instrumental in helping McLaren develop this technique which would feature in so many of his films.
Blackburn was frequently mentioned in letters home over the years and during the initial experiments of what would become Blinkity Blank, McLaren wrote about trying to put something together before Blackburn's trip to Paris, 'I returned to Ottawa on Monday, and have been busy working with Maurice Blackburn on the music for another film, (before he leaves next week for a year's absence from the film board to study music in Paris).'[35]
Blinkity Blank (1955)
This rush to work created an experimental abstract film which saw McLaren scratching the surface of the film emulsion to create the image, rather than painting on the film. He did not scratch every frame,with the residual image instead leaving an impression on the eye once the frame had finished. Blinkity Blank would become one of McLaren's best-known films (apart from Neighbours) and though it won several awards, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, McLaren was rather dismissive of the film, suggesting that it had been done as an experiment with Blackburn rather than anything else. Though he 148 (arguably) proudly told his parents each time it was to be shown at a festival, or won an award, he also said he was not satisfied with it and wanted to revise it.[36]
In letters to Biddy Russell in 1955 McLaren told her of the origins of Blinkity Blank and why he didn't like it (he thought it won at Cannes due to 'novelty value') – Maurice Blackburn had a short space of time before going to Paris and wanted to work with him. He had several ideas (enough for five or six films) but Blinkity Blank was the result. McLaren implied to Biddy that he was rushed and not that interested in it. 'Thank God it is now finally finished. I'm none too happy about it. Its one of those for the high brows probably. But not the kind of film I want to make. As an experiment it has very considerable interest but experiment is not enough.'[37]
After Blackburn had returned to the board from his trip to Europe in 1959 they collaborated again, this time with Evelyn on the first of the Lines films (he also worked on the second variation). Over the years, Blackburn worked with numerous filmmakers at the board and was described as having 'great stylistic diversity, sometimes inspired by folklore, at others by contemporary music, but always lively and colourful. This adaptability charmed the producers who worked with him'.[38] This diversity can be seen in his work with McLaren as well as his larger body of work.
Like Munro, Blackburn is hailed as a great Canadian artist whose contribution to McLaren's success was never forgotten by McLaren. This friendship was entirely mutual with Blackburn once saying, 'The sincere and deep friendship that I feel for him includes both the man and his work; they are as inseperable as the heart and the egg of his animated poems.'[39]
Alexandre Alexieff (1901–1982)
Russian-born Alexieff moved to Paris when he was eighteen years old to study painting but like McLaren was inspired by other performing arts, namely ballet, and became a set designer. He was said to have been inspired by Fernand Léger's Ballet Mechanique (1924) and began to develop his own work, pioneering his own animation techniques. He used a 'pinscreen' technique to create metamorphosis and imagery in several films, including his best-known Night on Bald Mountain (1933). The pinscreen created a pastel effect, and had an aesthetic similar to McLaren's pastel animations. Despite this revolutionary technique, he did not use it very often; however he was invited to create films for the National Film Board of Canada during World War II and created En Passant (1943) using the technique. Alexieff and his wife, animator Claire Parker (1906–1981), became good friends with McLaren and Guy and over the years made sure to visit. McLaren was inspired by Alexieff's talent and innovation, and Alexieff once more used his pinscreen with Le Nez in 1965.[40]
McLaren referred to the Alexieffs many times over the years and the letters described their good friendship, 149
The Alexieffs were up here in Ottawa, but they didn't actually stay at the flat, but at a hotel. However they were much around the flat, and we had most of our meals together, and had a very pleasant time. Alexieff showed his films at a special screening at the Film Board, and gave a talk about them.[41]
Every time the couple visited Canada, they would get together and when McLaren travelled to Europe he would visit them too, in their home in Belgium.[42] In 1963 he was keen to fit in a visit home around another film festival, but he was also keen as this one was in Belgium and he would be picking up some equipment for the film board 'which our friends the Alexieffs have been building for us'.[43] That his friends were already in Europe made the arduous trips to festivals worthwhile. He was especially pleased to attend the Annecy Festival in 1965 as his friends Evelyn, Grant and Maurice Blackburn would be travelling with him and they would meet the Alexieffs there.[44]
Though McLaren did not collaborate directly with Alexieff, he admired him (and his wife) greatly (and was inspired to make Pinscreen in 1973) and was always pleased to have the opportunity to see them. After McLaren's death, the Alexieffs contributed to a document on his legacy, compiled by the NFB.
In McLaren's films none of the fundamental properties of living matter is absent: one may recognize emotion; mobility; plasticity; excitability and the extravagance of love. The entire work of Norman McLaren may be considered a sort of fundamental human comedy. It is refreshing to find that in his experiments there is always the idea of artisitic risk, the recognition of the dangers of creation and the affirmation of the importance of craft and execution. The quality of tolerance, which so became him, made him an ideal teacher.[45]
George Dunning (1920–1979)
Dunning was a Canadian animator who attended the Ontario College of Art and later became a member of the National Film Board in 1943 where he worked in a team editing films with McLaren. Dunning's early films include Grim Pastures (1944), Three Blind Mice (1945) with Grant Munro and Robert Verrall and Cadet Rouselle (1946) with Colin Low. In 1946 he went to Paris but returned to Canada to co-found his own production company in Toronto with his former colleague Jim McKay. In 1950 he collaborated with Evelyn Lambart on Family Tree, which won a Special Award from the Canadian Film Awards in 1951.[46]
In 1956 Dunning joined United Productions of America (UPA) in New York City. He then moved to London to open a production company with John Coates in 1957. Dunning's films from that period included The Apple (1962), Moonrock (1970), Damon the Mower (1972) and The Maggot (1973). Dunning is perhaps 150 best known for directing Yellow Submarine (1968), which was inspired by and set to the music of the pop group the Beatles. It was described as groundbreaking and featured psychedelic images and stylized movement, which influenced commercial design for many years.[47]
McLaren described Dunning as 'a fine painter'[48] and often discussed him with his parents. Dunning was clearly part of the social group in the early days of the film board and in 1946 helped McLaren with some equipment, 'George Dunning, one of the boys in the Animation Department made me a big wooden easel, which is of great help when I am painting'. McLaren and Glover went on to socialize with Dunning and other friends for the afternoon.[49] In 1948, when Dunning was leaving the board, McLaren described his going-away party, which they held at McLaren's apartment.[50] Though Dunning had left the board, McLaren kept in touch with him and in 1954 mentioned visting Dunning's studio during a trip to Toronto.[51]
George Dunning is another example of an early collaborator, in terms of technical collaboration, who was one of a small creative circle of friends and made up part of the early animation department at the film board. Though they did not work together directly once each had begun to establish himself at the board, Dunning was fondly recalled in McLaren's letters home. He is also noteworthy as another early film board member who became very well known in his own right, in this case for much later work. According to David Curtis, Dunning was influenced by McLaren, among others, and was 'encouraged to find his own style'.[52] Though this may be true to a certain extent, McLaren was the head of the animation department during Dunning's four years there; however at that time there was a particularly strong sense of collaboration and as such many others, including Grant Munro, could also be included in the realm of influence.
Dunning had this to say about McLaren,
Norman McLaren is a phenomenon almost as surprising and unique as the phenomenon of animated film itself. His name is synonymous with experimental animation to all students of the medium who have followed its development for the past twenty years and who have looked even further back. The medium is still at an infant stage because nearly everyone except McLaren who has worked in it has treated the medium from a creative graphic point of view and not as a part of cinema, that is, moving pictures. He is a great teacher, constantly alive to exploit the most unlikely leads to a new discovery and has awakened both artists and audiences to the medium.[53]
Among those who had some contact and arguably influence during McLaren's time at the National Film Board, particularly in the early days, were animator René Jodoin (b. 1920) and Claude Jutra. Quebec native Jodoin joined the board in c.1942 and collaborated with McLaren on Alouette (1944). He left the board in 1949 but returned in 1954 and remained for a further seven years. In 1966 151 Jodoin became head of a newly formed French language animation unit at the board. According to Don McWilliams, McLaren considered René the 'resident NFB philosopher'.[54]
Claude Jutra (1930–1986), another French Candian, considered McLaren to be a mentor and was greatly influenced by his work. Jutra performed in A Chairy Tale before going on to make his own films at the board. One of his best-known films À tout prendre (1963) was dedicated to McLaren. According to Leach, McLaren saw Jutra's short film Mouvemement perpetual at the Canadian Film Awards in 1949 and was 'so impressed ... that he invited its director to make an experimental film at the NFB. Their encounter is a virtual replay of McLaren's own meeting with John Grierson'.[55] Leach goes on to suggest that 'Jutra's encounter with McLaren left its mark in the traces of animation that remain in many of his feature films'.[56] His live action films were often made independently of the board, never feeling that he held a permanent post (according to Evelyn Lambart none of them were on long-term contracts, as Grierson felt it kept people motivated[57]). Jutra also felt that he was an outsider arriving before the true development of the French language division.
Like many others, he was something of a transient at the board, coming and going between various projects, in Jutra's case working in Europe and Africa for a time before coming back for a brief period from 1961 to 1963 when he left to make À tout prendre which according to Véronneau was an 'autobiography in fictional guise [which] broached such subjects as interracial love, homosexuality, and bohemian life, and launched the new Quebec cinema'.[58] Thomas Waugh noted that Jutra had to leave the board to make 'his gay film' and that 'the freedom of financial autonomy (as well as poverty) is apparent ... and thus also, because the film appeared twenty years earlier than Narcissus, the recklessness of an imagination ahead of its time'.[59]
He later went on to make several films for cinema and television, which Waugh suggests were thematically linked by issues of youth and and struggles with sexuality. In this lengthy quote he sums up the themes of Jutra's films as well as connecting McLaren's last film and their work overall.
Though the quixotic protogay rebel of À tout prendre is no longer present in this fifteen-year series of intense and poetic youth films, another aspect of the artist's sociosexual imagination is almost as vivid, his compassion for the flame of childhood struggling under the weight of society. It is significant that the theme echoes Narcissus' prison and the vision of Jutra's mentor McLaren. Our two great gay filmmakers were allied in their art, after all, just as they were in their careers and they were in the season of their deaths.[60]
Jutra suffered from Alzheimer's disease and disappeared in 1986; his body was found in the St Lawrence River in April 1987, three months after McLaren's death. The NFB held a tribute to them both in the February of that year, though 152 at the time they considered Jutra to be missing and McLaren would never have known what had happened to his friend.
[1] Quote taken from McLaren (1980) published by the National Film Board of Canada, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
[2] Montreal Star, 27 May 1961.
[3] Ibid.
[4] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1947/9.
[5] He decided that the job would be silly, even if the money was good, and declined the offer.
[6] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1948/1.
[7] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1951/1.
[8] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1951.
[10] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1944/10.
[11] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1946/5.
[12] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1951.
[13] Loader, '3D or Not 3D?'.
[14] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1952.
[15] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1954.
[16] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1955.
[17] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1959 9 August 1959.
[19] Not catalogued.
[20] University of Stirling Archive GAA:31:198.
[21] University of Stirling Archive, not catalogued, 15 August 1965.
[22] Sunday, 10 April 1966.
[23] Jayne Pilling (ed.), 'Evelyn Lambart, an interview with Joan Churchill', " in Women and Animation ( Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk : St Edmundsbury Press, 1992), Suffolk, pp. 31–32 .
[24] Donald McWilliams, Creative Process, 1990.
[25] The series took in five parts over two years running from 1976 to 1978.
[27] University of Stirling Archive, not catalogued.
[28] 27 October 1963.
[29] 6 March 1966.
[30] Letter to sister Sheena, 18 May 1984, outlined the full retirement party and the speeches which were made.
[31] Saturday, 24 September 1983.
[32] Cecile Starr , 1995 "Conversations with Grant Munro and Ishu Patel: The Influence of Norman McLaren and the National Film Board of Canada'", Animation Journal , no. 2 (Spring 1995): 44–53 .
[34] National Library of Scotland Acc. 5649/3 Xmas letter 13 December 1951.
[35] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1953 (Halloween Saturday 1953).
[36] In a letter home dated 1 May 1954 he describe how he wants to alter the film but won't have time before going to Brazil.
[37] National Library of Scotland Acc. 5649/6 January 1955.
[39] University of Stirling Archive GAA/31/F/5/28. Excerpts from a catalogue compiled for the Annecy animation festival in 1965 by Journées Internationales Du Cinema D'Animation Annecy with Cinemathéque Canadienne, Montreal.
[40] Jerry Beck (ed.), Animation Art ( London : Flame Tree Publishing, 2004), 48–49 .
[41] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1944/10, 27 November 1944.
[42] 1 May 1958 (4.30 pm) – small notelet from Cannes to say he has arrived – 'Brussels was extremely arduous work, but worth it for me' and also that he will be able to catch up with some friends there including the Alexieffs.
[43] Not catalogued, 19 October 1963.
[44] 19 May 1965.
[45] This quote is taken from a legacy document compiled by the NFB on McLaren's death. University of Stirling Archive GAA/31/PC.
[47] This biography was transcribed from N. Dobson , Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons ( Lanham MD : Scarecrow Press, 2009).
[48] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1943/18, 20 November 1943.
[49] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1946/4, 23 April 1946.
[50] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1948/9, 29 April 1948.
[51] University of Stirling Archive GAA31/C/1/1954, 12 May 1954.
[52] David Curtis, 'Animated Cinema', 'The Movie', The Illustrated History of the Cinema, Issue 33 (London: Orbis Publishing, 1980), 654.
[53] University of Stirling Archive GAA/31/F/5/28. Excerpts from a catalogue compiled for the Annecy animation festival in 1965 by Journées Internationales Du Cinema D'Animation Annecy with Cinemathéque Canadienne, Montreal.
[54] Personal correspondence.
[55] Jim Leach , Claude Jutra, Filmmaker ( Montreal : McGill-Queens University Press, 1999), 35 .
[56] Ibid. 41.
[57] Described in an interview with Joan Churchill, in Jayne Pilling (ed.), 'Evelyn Lambart, an interview with Joan Churchill ', in Women and Animation ( Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: St Edmundsbury Press, 1992), 31.
[59] Thomas Waugh , The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writing on Queer Cinema ( London : Duke University Press, 2000) 202 .
[60] Ibid. 207.
153 154
The Drawings Of Norman Mclaren
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