ANIMATION ART SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

Looking at the faces of familiar cartoon characters such as Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle in a Fullerton art gallery earlier this week, one could almost hear the booming voice of that famous red-blooded American moose from Frostbite Falls, Minn.: “Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!”

Scenes of Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale and other animated creations from the studios of Jay Ward Productions that decorated the walls of the Blue Frog gallery are part of an animation exhibit that opened Wednesday.

In addition to the Ward characters, there are color drawings from the Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, Popeye, the Smurfs, Huckleberry Hound and a large number of animated commercials. The show includes hundreds of individual “cels” (short for celluloids, the material on which cartoons were originally drawn) from dozens of cartoon programs spanning more than 30 years.

Continuing until the end of May, it is the first animation art show and sale to be sponsored in Orange County by the International Animated Film Society, a Hollywood-based, nonprofit organization formed to preserve animated films and advance the art.

Proceeds from sales of the cels are to help support the society’s special animation screenings and other programs it offers periodically.

A reception at the gallery Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., will honor June Foray, the characterization actress who created the voices of Rocky, Natasha Fatale and Nell Fenwick for the Ward cartoons, Broom-Hilda and Witch Hazel for Warner Bros., among others. Known as the feminine counterpart of Mel Blanc, Foray has perhaps the most widely used female voice in animation. Currently, she is the voice of Jokey Smurf, among others, and she is to be a regular contributor to Disney’s upcoming “Gummi Bears” cartoons.

Considering the hundreds of voices she has done over the years, could she retain special affinity for any one character?

“Hokey smoke! I sure do,” Foray retorted in Rocky the Squirrel’s high voice. As one of the founders of the Hollywood branch of the animation society, Foray, in an interview, spoke fondly of her years doing Rocky & Bullwinkle, although the animation on those shows was considered primitive next to the films of the 1940s and ‘50s made by Disney, Warner Bros., MGM and Fleischer studios.

“What a cult this has become!” Foray said, bubbling with enthusiasm. “It’s amazing. But when you think about it, it’s not all that amazing. The conception of the show was brilliant. The direction, the writing and the voices were all complementary to each other.”

After a long absence from Los Angeles television, Rocky & Bullwinkle recently returned to local airwaves in Sunday morning reruns of the original shows. “We’re delighted they are back,” Foray said. Her vocal partner on the show was Bill Scott, who gave Bullwinkle his voice. Scott is scheduled to make an appearance at the Fullerton exhibit on May 18, according to animation society vice president Ross Iwamoto, who oversees the organization’s exhibits.

It was Foray, during her mid-’70s tenure as president of the animation society, who came up with the idea of selling animation art cels to the public through society-sponsored shows.

For each of the past four years, the group has had an art show and sale in the San Fernando Valley, and Iwamoto said the society hopes to add Orange County to its annual stops.

At the Fullerton show, cels were priced from $5 for a drawing from the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon show to $125 for a female cat from an original MGM “Tom & Jerry” cartoon. (There are also less expensive “Tom & Jerry” cels from the program’s subsequent incarnation at Hanna-Barbera studios.)

Most are priced between $30 and $60 for scenes from Rocky & Bullwinkle, the Flintstones, George of the Jungle, Mighty Mouse, Huckleberry Hound and other shows, past and present.

There are two basic types of cels offered for sale, Iwamoto said: those that were actually used in the production of the cartoons, and those made by studio artists for exhibits and sales. (The same methods were used in both cases.)

In this exhibit, however, there is none of the rare--and most expensive--cels from classic Disney animated features or from the old Warner Bros. or Fleischer Brothers cartoons. Not even the society, whose archives hold between 3,000 and 5,000 cels, owns more than a few of those. “Those are in the hands of the collectors by now,” Iwamoto said.

In recent years, animation art has gained respect to the extent that even uncompleted cels, which Iwamoto said would have been discarded in the past, are now marketable. Years ago, however, most executives at the major movie studios attached little significance to the products from their animation departments and often destroyed the cels to save storage space.

The Blue Frog, at 209 N. Euclid St., landed the exhibit after some of the gallery’s partners attended the society’s animation show and sale in the San Fernando Valley last summer and inquired about bringing a similar show to Orange County.

If response approaches the enthusiasm shown for other animation exhibits, Iwamoto said, there’s a good chance it will become an annual event. The exhibit is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.