American animator (1908-1980). Full name: Frederick Bean Avery. Born in
Taylor, Texas, he was supposedly a descendent of both
Daniel Boone and
Judge Roy Bean. He graduated from
North Dallas High School in 1927 and moved to sunny
Southern California in 1929. He used some samples of his cartoons to get a job at the
Walter Lantz Studios as an
animator. While there, he was
blinded in his left eye, thanks to an ill-advised bit of
horseplay.
In 1935, Tex was able to pass himself off as a
cartoon director and got hired to work at the
Schlessinger Studios that produced the famous
Warner Brothers cartoons. He was given his own animation unit and, along with other directors, like
Chuck Jones,
Bob Clampett, and
Friz Freleng, began pushing Warner's cartoons away from the
Disney model of sweet,
music-based, singing-and-dancing cartoons and toward
edgier, sharper-edged
animation. Tex himself had a flair for visual
puns,
physics-breaking
stunts, and "
wild takes."
Tex made important contributions to the development of
Daffy Duck,
Porky Pig, and
Bugs Bunny. He even came up with Bugs' catchphrase. While the animators were
brainstorming for something for the rabbit to say when
Elmer Fudd points his rifle at him in "
A Wild Hare," the first official Bugs Bunny cartoon, Tex remembered a common phrase from back home in
Dallas: "
What's up, Doc?"
After leaving Warner's in 1941, Tex ended up at
MGM, where his cartoons got even
wackier and
funnier than ever. Tex's best-known cartoon at MGM was 1943's "
Red Hot Riding Hood," which introduced the
shapely title character, usually just called "Red," and the enthusiastically
horny Big Bad Wolf (whose insanely wild takes were a large chunk of the inspiration for the
Jim Carrey movie "
The Mask"). Tex also created the eternally low-key,
deadpan Droopy Dog while at MGM.
After leaving MGM in the 1950s, Tex worked briefly at Walter Lantz again, directing
Chilly Willy in a couple of cartoons, then moved on to directing television
commercials, including a long-running series of ads for
Raid. He also did some TV cartoons for
Hanna-Barbera late in his life.
Tex died of
lung cancer in
Burbank in 1980.
Research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)