Hal Seeger
{{Short description|American animated cartoon producer and director}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Infobox person
|name= Hal Seeger
|image=
|birth_name= Harold Seeger
|birth_date= {{Birth date|1917|5|16|mf=y}}
|birth_place= Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
|death_date= {{Death date and age|2005|3|13|1917|5|16|mf=y}}
|death_place= New York City, U.S.
|occupation= Animator
|spouse=
}}
Harold Seeger (May 16, 1917 – March 13, 2005) was an American animated cartoon producer and director who owned his own studio, the Hal Seeger Studio (Hal Seeger Productions). He is most famous as the creator of the 1960s animated series Batfink, Milton the Monster and Fearless Fly. During the 1930s and 1940s he was also active as a comics writer and artist, most famously for the Betty Boop comic strip and Leave It to Binky.{{cite journal|url = https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/seeger_hal.htm|title = Hal Seeger|date = 2020-04-25|journal = Lambiek Comiclopedia|author = Kjell Knudde|accessdate = February 18, 2021|archive-date = November 19, 2020|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201119032432/https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/seeger_hal.htm|url-status = live}}
Biography
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Seeger began working as an animator for Fleischer Studios in the early 1940s. His credits included "A Kick in Time" for the Color Classics series and a sequence for the feature film Mr. Bug Goes to Town.
During the later part of the 1940s, he worked as a screenwriter for a series of movies featuring well known Black performers, including the 1947 Cab Calloway musical Hi-De-Ho and two films featuring Dusty Fletcher and Moms Mabley, Killer Diller and Boarding House Blues".
In 1950 he wrote and directed a Warner Bros. short subject Hands Tell the Story featuring a story told with only human hands.{{IMDb title|id=tt1523450|title=Hands Tell the Story}}
In 1962, his studio produced and syndicated 100 new Out of the Inkwell cartoons, based on the Koko the Clown character, originally created by Fleischer Studios.
Seeger then took control of animating the opening & ending sequences for The Porky Pig Show in 1964.{{IMDb title|id=0279588|title=The Porky Pig Show}}
He is best known for having produced the animated programs Milton the Monster (1965–66) and Batfink (1966–67). He also produced Fearless Fly (1965), the adventures of a bumpkin fly who is physically helpless and practically blind without his trademark oversize rectangular glasses, but on putting them on he is invincible. This cartoon was a feature of The Milton the Monster Show.{{cite web |last1=Markstein |first1=Don |website=Don Markstein's Toonopedia |access-date=April 2, 2020 |url=http://www.toonopedia.com/fearless.htm |title=The Fearless Fly}}
Production list
- Out of the Inkwell
- Muggy-Doo
- Batfink (1966-67)
- The Porky Pig Show
- The Milton the Monster Show (1965–66)
- Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter (1972)
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{IMDb name|0781511}}
- [http://www.toonopedia.com/fearless.htm Fearless Fly at Don Markstein's Toonopedia]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeger, Hal}}
Category:Animators from New York (state)
Category:American animated film directors
Category:American animated film producers
Category:Television producers from New York City
Category:American comics writers
Category:American comics artists
Category:Fleischer Studios people
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