Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi was born in October 1938 in Haifa, Israel [1]. In 1939 his family came to New York escaping the war. He grew up in Brooklyn [2, 3] and went to the High School of Industrial Arts [4] now called High School of Art & Design [5]. Bakshi ended up graduating with an award in cartooning in 1957, [6] Bakshi went to work for Terrytoons Animation Studio [7, 8] in New Rochelle as a cell polisher, graduating to cell painting. Practicing nights and weekends he quickly became an inker, and then directly to animator (by claiming an empty desk on the animators floor and, claiming that he was promoted to animator, [9] asked for scenes to animate for characters such as Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle, [10] Deputy Dawg, Foofle & Lariat Sam. By 25 he was directing these shows as well as Sad Cat, James Hound and others. At 28 he created and directed The Mighty Heroes [11] and was made Creative Director of the studio[12].

In 1967 Bakshi [13] accepted the position of Producer and Director of Paramount Cartoon Studios (aka Famous Studios) which had been the Max Fleicher Studio. There he did four theatricals: Marvin Digs, Mini Squirts, Super Basher and Bop, and the Fiendish Five. Here he hired Mort Drucker, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Joe Kubert, Jim Steranko, Gray Morrow and Roy Krenkel. As the theatrical market abruptly stopped, the studio closed and Bakshi was hired by Steve Krantz Productions to go to Toronto to take over direction and production of Rocket Robinhood at Al Guest Studios. There he produced and directed Spiderman- bringing it to life for the first time out of it’s comic book pages.