A public service presentation of Aetna Life & Casualty
Produced by United Productions of America
Producer: Stephen Bosustow
Direction: William T. Hurtz
Story: Bill Bernal, William T. Hurtz
Animation: Fred Grable, Ben Washam, C.L. Hartman, Casey Onaitis
Design: Robert Dranko
Color: Robert Dranko, Michi Kataoka
Music: George Bruns
Production Manager: Herb Klynn
Film Notes
Look Who’s Driving, an educational short commissioned by Aetna Casualty and Surety Company, was designed to be shown to driver’s ed classes. The film’s director, Bill Hurtz called this short one of his personal favorites, second only to his adaption of James Thurber’s The Unicorn in the Garden (1953). The short stresses the importance of emotional stability while driving and effectively illustrates how losing control of one’s emotions can have deadly consequences.
The film serves as a fascinating companion piece to Flat Hatting, a UPA Navy training film also currently available on CartoonBrewFilms. (Hurtz had been an assistant director on that earlier short, produced a decade before this film.) Look Who’s Driving borrows a key visual storytelling concept from Flat Hatting: the image of a character who loses control of his emotions, and as a result, turns into a child.
“I’m kind of eclectic when I get in on the story end of things,” Hurtz admitted in a 1970s interview with Milt Gray. “If I can steal a previous theme or idea, to make a point, and transform it into the new point, I will. But it’s in my handwriting.” Ironically, co-writer Bill Bernal and Hurtz struggled mightily with how to get the message across, before finally settling on the Flat Hatting-esque story. According to Hurtz, earlier versions of the film had included “wild notions about a mythical kingdom, the kingdom of Runovia.”
Look Who’s Driving was designed by Bob Dranko, a key designer at UPA who worked there for much of the 1950s. Dranko’s typically decorative approach is particularly effective in this short; his light-hearted design sensibilities and colorful palettes lend an appropriate tone of levity to the film’s serious subject matter. The film’s composer was George Bruns who composed regularly for UPA in the early-1950s. Bruns’s subsequent work at Disney is far better known; he composed the music for 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book, as well as co-wrote songs like “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” for the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean. —Amid Amidi
About the Director: Bill Hurtz
Chicago-born William T. Hurtz (1919-2000) began taking drawing classes at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles at age 13. Throughout his teen years, he took classes with Don Graham, Herp Jepson, Phil Dike and Phil Paradise. In 1938, Hurtz was hired at Disney and eventually worked in Art Babbitt’s unit, first as a breakdown artist and then as Babbitt’s animation assistant, working on Gepetto in Pinocchio and “The Pastoral Symphony” and “The Nutcracker Suite” in Fantasia. Hurtz participated in the Disney strike in 1941 and afterwards became a member of the animation unit of the US Army’s First Motion Picture Unit.
While still in the military, Hurtz worked with John Hubley on the storyboard for the first major UPA production Hell-Bent for Election. Following his military discharge, Hurtz joined UPA full-time in the mid-1940s and worked there as both a designer and director through 1954. Hurtz served as a designer on the first Mister Magoo short, Ragtime Bear, and the Oscar-winning Gerald McBoing Boing, as well as directing the Oscar-nominated short Man Alive! (for the American Cancer Society) and The Unicorn in the Garden.
Following UPA, Hurtz directed and produced at Shamus Culhane Productions in the mid-1950s, on the Bell Science series as well as numerous commercial projects. He was the animation director of many Saul Bass-designed film titles including Around the World in Eighty Days, Anatomy of a Murder, Psycho and Ocean’s Eleven. Hurtz joined Jay Ward Productions in 1959 where he was instrumental in the success of shows like Rocky and His Friends and George of the Jungle, and continued working there until the studio closed in 1984. Hurtz also co-directed the Japanese/American feature Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992) and storyboarded on the TV series Rugrats.
