Jay Ward

For the baseball player, see Jay Ward (baseball).

Jay Ward
Born	J Troplong Ward September 20, 1920(1920-09-20) Berkeley, California
Died	October 12, 1989(1989-10-12) (aged 69) Hollywood, California
Occupation	Animator, Producer

J Troplong "Jay" Ward (September 20, 1920 – October 12, 1989) was an American creator and producer of animated television cartoons. He produced animated series based on such characters as Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Hoppity Hooper, George of the Jungle, Tom Slick, and Super Chicken. His company, Jay Ward Productions, also designed the trademark characters for Cap'n Crunch, Quisp, and Quake breakfast cereals and made commercials for those products, among others. Ward produced the non-animated series Fractured Flickers that featured comedy redubbing of silent films.

Life

Jay Ward was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and earned an undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He also received an MBA from Harvard University. His first career was real estate. Even when his animation company was at the height of its success, he continued to own his own real estate firm as a "fallback" business. Jay Ward was married to Ramona "Billie" Ward. He had three children: Ron, Carey, and Tiffany. He and his wife were avid collectors of African masks; their collection is now part of the permanent collection of the Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas.

Animation career

Ward moved into the infant medium of television with the help of his childhood friend, animator Alex Anderson. Anderson was the nephew of Terrytoons founder Paul Terry, and had unsuccessfully tried to sell Terry a concept for a cartoon series made specifically for the new medium. Together, Ward and Anderson took the character, Crusader Rabbit, to NBC and pioneering TV-program distributor Jerry Fairbanks. They put together a pilot film, The Comic Strips of Television, featuring Crusader; a parody of Sherlock Holmes named "Hamhock Bones"; and a bumbling Mountie named Dudley Do-Right.

NBC and Fairbanks were unimpressed with all but Crusader Rabbit (though Dudley would make his appearance, finally, 10 years later). Crusader Rabbit premiered in 1949 and ended its initial run in 1952. Adopting a serialized, mock-melodrama format, the series followed the adventures of Crusader and his dimwitted sidekick Rags the Tiger. It was, in form and content, much like the series that would later gain Ward enduring fame, Rocky and His Friends.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

Ward and Anderson, through a series of legal maneuvers against them, lost the rights to the Crusader Rabbit character, and a new color Crusader series under a different producer premiered in 1956. An unsold series idea from his Crusader Rabbit days, The Frostbite Falls Revue, would eventually earn Ward a permanent place in animation history. Taking place in a TV studio in the North Woods, the proposed series featured a cast of eccentrics such as newsman Oski Bear and two minor characters named Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle, described in the script treatment as a "French-Canadian moose." This was the genesis of what would become Rocky and His Friends and later, The Bullwinkle Show, when NBC gave Rocky's sidekick top billing. Bullwinkle was named for a car dealer at the corner of College Avenue and Claremont Avenue in Berkeley California, according to a longtime friend of Ward, John Hadsell.

Premiering on ABC in 1959 (and moving to NBC two years later) the series contained a mix of sophisticated and low-brow humor. Thanks to Ward's genial partner Bill Scott (who contributed to the scripts and voiced Bullwinkle and other characters) and a corps of top comedy writers, puns were used often and shamelessly: in a "Fractured Fairy Tales" featuring Little Jack Horner, upon pulling out the plum, Jack announced, "Lord, what foods these morsels be!" Self-referential humor was another trademark: in one episode, the breathless announcer (played by William Conrad) gave away the villain's plans, prompting the villain to grab the announcer from offscreen, bind and gag him, and deposit him visibly within the scene. It skewered popular culture mercilessly, taking on such subjects as advertising, college sports, the Cold War, and television itself. The hapless duo from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota blundered into unlikely adventures much as Crusader and Rags had before them, pursued by "no-goodnik" spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, perennially under orders to "keel moose and squirrel." The segments were serialized, generally ending with a cliffhanging peril; the announcer would urge the viewer to "tune in next time" for the next adventure, featuring two puns in the titles, like "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Gory, or, Moose's in the Cold, Cold Ground" and "When a Felon Needs a Friend, or, Pantomime Quisling," or "Portrait of a Moose, or, Bullwinkle Gets Framed."

In a running joke tribute to Jay Ward, many of his cartoon characters had the middle initial "J.", presumably standing for "Jay" (although this was never stated explicitly). Cartoonist Matt Groening later gave the middle initial "J." to many of his characters as a tribute to Jay Ward.

Publicity hound

Ward fought many heated battles over content with the network and sponsor, but had little fear of censorship or lawsuits. In fact, he begged organizations to sue him, quipping, "We need the publicity." Another story, re: the Kirward Derby, the hat that made everyone stupid and Bullwinkle a genius...was named for Durward Kirby, sidekick of 1950s, 1960s TV host Garry Moore. When CBS tried to sue, Ward uttered the aforementioned statement. In fact, it was often a punchline in running gags such as...

       Rocky: "I think somebody's trying to kill us!"
  Bullwinkle: "Well, don't worry.  We'll be renewed."
       Rocky: "I wasn't talking about the Bullwinkle Show."
  Bullwinkle: "Well, you'd better!  We could use the publicity!" 

An eccentric and proud of it, Ward was known for pulling an unusual publicity stunt that happened to coincide with a major national crisis. Jay Ward bought an island in Minnesota near his home and dubbed it "Moosylvania," based upon the home of his most famous TV character Bullwinkle. He and publicist Howard Brandy crossed the country in a van, gathering signatures on a petition for statehood for Moosylvania. They then visited Washington, D.C. and attempted to gain an audience with President John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, they arrived at the White House just at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and were escorted off the grounds at gunpoint.

Early in his career, Ward was involved in two nearly-fatal incidents. He was run over by a car just outside his office, and later received incorrect medical treatment while hyperventilating on an airplane. He subsequently developed agoraphobia. Ironically, friends and family believe his elaborate pranks and costumes were his way of dealing with his fears.

Death and legacy

He died of kidney cancer in Hollywood, California in 1989 and was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Jay Ward Productions (now managed by members of his family) is still located across the street from the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip.

Following Ward's death, Alex Anderson alleged that Ward had been signing his name to the characters originally created by Anderson, including Dudley Do-Right, Bullwinkle, and Rocky. Anderson sued Ward for illegitimately taking the rights without Anderson's knowledge. Anderson and the Ward family settled for an undisclosed amount outside of court.

In 2000, he was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, paid for as part of the publicity for the live-action and animation film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

In 2002, Jay Ward Productions established a partnership with Classic Media called Bullwinkle Studios; the partnership produced DVDs of the first three seasons of Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends in 2003, 2004, and 2005 respectively, and then switched to releasing "best of" DVD collections of segments from the series. Eventually, the complete fourth and fifth seasons would be released.

Until it closed in July 2004, the Dudley Do-Right Emporium, which sold souvenirs based on his many characters and was largely staffed by Ward and his family, was located on Sunset Boulevard.

Jay Ward Drive is a studio access road at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Further reading

Keith Scott, The Moose that Roared (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000) ISBN 0312283830

External links

• Jay Ward at the Internet Movie Database
• Shows produced by Jay Ward Productions, also from IMDb
• Bullwinkle Studios
• Rocky & Bullwinkle DVDs Pulled Out of a Hat, a June 2003 article from Video Business
• Frostbite Falls Page extensive fan site, not updated since 2003
• Toonzone
• Jay's album: The Moosylvania Jazz Festival
• Jay Ward Studios Catalog & Ephemera
• Jay Ward at FindaGrave
• Television Production Music Museum - Jay Ward's page