Joe oriolo biography

Joe Oriolo

Oriolo was a cartoon animator who was born in Union City in 1913. He created the famed Casper the Friendly Ghost character, and directed more than one thousand cartoons, including the first syndicated television series of Felix the Cat. 

Born into an Italian immigrant family, with five other siblings, Oriolo adored drawing a child and dreamed of becoming a cartoon animator when he was young. After graduating from Union High School and Cooper Union, Oriolo found a job show-card writing (designing signs using typography) for Sears, and this was his first foray into the arts field. 

At the age of 19, in the midst of the great depression in 1932, Oriolo managed to find a job as an animator working in Max Fleischer’s renown studio house as an errand boy. His ambitious drive as well as talent as an illustrator led him to the position of an animator within one year there, where he was paid $10 a week. Oriolo stayed at Fleischer studios for the next 10 years, working as an animator as well as a story man on the popular cartoon series such as Betty Boop, Popey

Classic Cartoon Corner

  • Oriolo began working at Fleischer Studios in 1933 as an errand boy, but his ambition upgraded him to an animator job in less than a year.

  • His first work on the Popeye series was in 1936 for “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” (de-facto dir. Dave Tendlar.)

  • He didn’t receive his first credit on a Popeye cartoon until 1940’s “Child Psykolojiky” (de-facto dir. Bill Nolan.)

(I Wanna Be a Lifeguard, de-facto dir. Dave Tendlar)

(Child Psykolojiky, de-facto dir. Bill Nolan)

(A Hull of a Mess, de-facto dir. Al Eugster)

  • Oriolo got his own unit in the early years of Famous Studios, although he didn’t stick around for long.

  • He left the studio in 1944, with his last credits appearing in the 1945 season.

  • He found greater success in co-creating Casper the Friendly Ghost and later took the reigns from Felix the Cat artist Otto Messmer to launch a successful TV cartoon.

  • As evidenced by his comic work, Oriolo loved to draw circles, wrinkles, and cross-eyed animals.

  • More earmarks of his style include puffy ears, large portions of negative space,

    Joe Oriolo

    American cartoonist

    Joseph Dominic Oriolo (; February 21, 1913 – December 25, 1985) was an American cartoonanimator, writer, director and producer, known as the co-creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost and the creator of the Felix the Cat TV series.[2][3] He provided the voice of the Italian barber in Gulliver's Travels.[4]

    Early life

    Oriolo was born in Union City, New Jersey in 1913, the son of Italian immigrants. He graduated from Union Hill High School and moved to New York City, and enrolled in the Cooper Union.[5]

    Career

    In 1933, at age 20, he went to work for Fleischer Studios as an errand boy, where his talent as a draftsman and his ambitions advanced him to the position of an animator within one year. During the late 1930s, he worked on a number of studio shorts, and when the studio moved to Miami in 1938 he went with it. There, in addition to the shorts, he worked on both of the studio's feature-length films, Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town, as well as the two-reel Raggedy Ann

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