Ben Hardaway

Ben Hardaway
Background information
Born	Joseph Benson Hardaway May 21, 1895 Belton, Missouri, U.S.
Died	February 5, 1957 (aged 61) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alternate names	J. B. Hardaway Ben Hardaway Buggsy Hardaway B. Hardaway Bugs Hardaway
Occupation	Storyboard artist, animator, voice actor, gagman, writer, director
Years active	1915-1956
Spouse	Hazel Arnold (1920-1957; his death)
Children	Bob Hardaway

Joseph Benson Hardaway was an American storyboard artist, animator, voice actor, gagman, writer and director for several American animation studios during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation.

Career

Hardaway started his animation career working for the Kansas City Film Ad Service. He later worked for the Walt Disney Animation Studios and the Ub Iwerks Studio, after which Hardaway was hired by the Leon Schlesinger studio as a gagman for the Friz Freleng unit. He was promoted to director for seven Buddy animated shorts. Afterwards he resumed working as a gagman and storyman. He started receiving film credits in 1937. His writing credits include Daffy Duck & Egghead and The Penguin Parade.

While at the Schlesinger/Warner Bros. studio during the late 1930s, Hardaway served as a storyman, and co-directed several Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts with Cal Dalton during Friz Freleng's two-year exodus to MGM. Leon Schlesinger needed a replacement for Freleng, and Hardaway's previous experience in the job resulted in his promotion. In 1938, Hardaway co-directed Porky's Hare Hunt, the first film to feature a rabbit. When this unnamed, embryonic rabbit was given a new model sheet for a later short, designer Charles Thorson inadvertently offered a permanent name by titling the model sheet "Bugs' Bunny" since it was meant for Hardaway's unit. By the time the rabbit was redesigned and refined for the film A Wild Hare, the name was already being used in relation to the character in studio publicity materials.

When Freleng returned to Warner Bros. in 1939, Hardaway was demoted back to storyman. In 1940, Hardaway joined the staff of Walter Lantz Productions, where he helped Walter Lantz in creating the studio's most famous character, Woody Woodpecker. Hardaway wrote or co-wrote most of the stories for the 1940-1951 Woody Woodpecker shorts, as well as supplying Woody's voice between 1944 and 1949. Shamus Culhane, the director of the Woody cartoons in the 40's, thought Hardaway's humor was crude and formulaic. Nevertheless, the collaboration worked, and many consider this the golden era of Woody cartoons. During his second year at Lantz, he wrote the story for Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat, whose reissue got withdrawn by Universal in February 1949 due to multiple complaints from the NAACP for its racist stereotypes of African-Americans.

Hardaway died in 1957 from cancer, supposedly a long-term effect of exposure to chemical weapons during World War I. The last thing he worked on was Adventures of Pow Wow, although he only wrote two episodes, which have lost audio.

Filmography

• I've Got to Sing a Torch Song (1933)
• Buddy's Beer Garden (1933)
• Buddy the Gob (1934)
• Buddy and Towser (1934)
• Buddy's Garage (1934)
• Buddy's Trolley Troubles (1934)
• Goin' to Heaven on a Mule (1934)
• How Do I Know It's Sunday (1934)
• Shake Your Powder Puff (1934)
• The Merry Old Soul (1935)
• The Lady in Red (1935)
• Little Dutch Plate (1935)
• Billboard Frolics (1935)
• I Wanna Play House (1936)
• Let It Be Me (1936)
• Bingo Crosbyana (1936)
• Sunday Go to Meetin' Time (1936)
• Toy Town Hall (1936)
• Milk and Money (1936)
• Boulevardier from the Bronx (1936)
• Don't Look Now (1936)
• Pigs is Pigs (1937)
• Picador Porky (1937)
• She Was an Acrobat's Daughter (1937)
• Porky's Duck Hunt (1937)
• Uncle Tom's Bungalow (1937)
• Dog Daze (1937)
• I Wanna Be a Sailor (1937)
• Daffy Duck & Egghead (1938)
• The Penguin Parade (1938)
• Confederate Honey (1940)
• The Bear's Tale (1940)
• Porky's Baseball Broadcast (1940)
• Little Blabbermouse (1940)
• A Bone for A Bone (1951)

Director

• Buddy of the Apes (1934)
• Rhythm in the Bow (1934)
• Buddy's Adventures (1934)
• Buddy the Dentist (1934)
• Buddy of the Legion (1935)
• Buddy's Theatre (1935)
• Buddy's Pony Express (1935)
• Buddy in Africa (1935)
• Porky's Hare Hunt (1938)
• Love and Curses (1938)
• Porky the Gob (1938)
• Count Me Out (1938)
• It's an Ill Wind (1939)
• Gold Rush Daze (1939)
• Bars and Stripes Forever (1939)
• Porky and Teabiscuit (1939)
• Hobo Gadget Band (1939)
• Hare-um Scare-um (1939)
• Sioux Me (1939)
• Porky the Giant Killer (1939)
• Fagin's Freshman (1939)
• Breakdowns of 1939 (1940) (animated sequences)
• Busy Bakers (1940)
• Confederate Honey (1940) (uncredited)

Actor

• Porky's Hare Hunt (1938) - Happy Rabbit (one line) (voice)
• Having a Wonderful Time with Angels in Dirty Places (1938) - Guy entering and running out of the studio, Guy getting pestered by a fly
• It's an Ill Wind (1939) - Dizzy Duck (voice)
• The March of Time (1939) - Person Entering Studio

External Links

• Ben Hardaway at the Internet Movie Database

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page Ben Hardaway. The revision history lists the authors. The text on Warner Bros. Entertainment Wiki and Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA).