In Hollywood Cartoons, Michael Barrier takes us on a glorious guided tour of American animation in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, to meet the legendary artists and entrepreneurs who created Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Wile E. Coyote, Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, and many other cartoon favorites.

Beginning with black-and-white silent cartoons such as Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, Barrier offers an insightful account of animation's first flowering, taking us inside early New York studios and such Hollywood giants as Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM. Barrier excels at illuminating the creative side of animation— revealing how stories are put together, how animators develop a character, how technical innovations enhance the "realism" of cartoons. Here too are colorful portraits of the giants of the field, from Walt and Roy Disney and their animators (including Ub Iwerks, Bill Tytla, and Ward Kimball), to Dave and Max Fleischer, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Along the way, Barrier gives us an inside look at the making of such groundbreaking cartoons as the Out of the Inkwell series (with KoKo the Clown), Steamboat Willie (the first successful sound cartoon), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Bambi.