George Dunning

This article is about the Canadian animator. For American composer, see George Duning.

Artwork from Dunning's unfinished "The Tempest"

George Garnett Dunning (November 17, 1920 – February 15, 1979) was a Canadian film maker and animator. He is best known for animating and directing the 1968 Beatles' film Yellow Submarine.

Biography

He was born in Toronto and studied in Canada at the Ontario College of Art, and soon found freelance work as an illustrator. Dunning joined the NFB of Canada in 1943, where he worked with Norman McLaren and contributed to several episodes of the Chants populaires series. From 1944 to 1947 Dunning created many original short films and developed his skills animating articulated, painted, metal cut-outs.

In 1948, he spent a year working for UNESCO in Paris under the mentorship of Czech-born animator Berthold Bartosch. Then in 1949, he and fellow NFB grad Jim McKay created one of Toronto’s first animation studios, Graphic Associates, where he produced commercials and gave Michael Snow his first job in film. In 1956 he moved to England to manage UPA’s new London office. After the office went under, he hired many of the UPA staff to work for him and his newly established production company, TVC. By 1961, TVC was producing about one hundred commercials a year. During this time Dunning also managed to make many personal short films noted for their surrealistic atmosphere and Kafkaesque themes.

Dunning also oversaw the cartoon series The Beatles for ABC, and this led to his involvement with the film he will always be associated with, Yellow Submarine. Dunning was also responsible for the opening credits of Blake Edwards' A Shot in the Dark, along with a series of shorts, "The digger", for Vision On.

About the time of his death he was working on animated version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was never completed.

Sources

• Axelrod, Mitchell. Beatletoons: The Real Story Behind The Cartoon Beatles. Wynn, 1999. Lenburg, Jeff. Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books, 1999.
• Lehman, Christopher P. American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961-1973. McFarland, 2007.
• TV.com.
• The Big Cartoon Database.

External links

• Canadian Film Encyclopedia [A publication of The Film Reference Library/a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group]
• George Dunning biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline