What The Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoons Actually Is
The Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoons by Jerry Beck is a reference book covering the history of animation from the early 1900s through the turn of the millennium. It's organized roughly chronologically, with entries covering studios, individual animated series, feature films, and key animators. The book runs about 400 pages and includes stills from many of the works it documents. I picked it up around 2004 because I needed a quick way to track down production company credits on vintage shorts. Most people treat it like a casual read, but that's not really what it's built for. It's a lookup tool. You don't sit down and flip through it for fun. You open it when you need a specific answer.
The Encyclopedia Of Animated Cartoons
The book uses a few different organizational systems depending on the era. Early silent-era work gets brief mentions scattered through the introductions. Then there are larger entries for the big cartoon series — Fleischer's Popeye, Ub Iwerks' Flip the Frog, MGM's Tom and Jerry. Each entry typically lists production dates, studio information, the number of shorts produced, and sometimes a short critical note. The later chapters cover TV animation more thoroughly, which makes sense since that's where the industry spent most of its energy from the 1960s onward. Here's the thing most people don't realize: the book isn't comprehensive in the way a filmography would be. There are gaps. Studios that operated on shoestring budgets or didn't maintain clean records get short shrift. I spent maybe twenty minutes once trying to verify the exact release date of a lesser-known 1940s Republic Pictures serial, and the book simply didn't have it. I ended up cross-referencing with the Internet Movie Database and a couple of old trade paper reprints before I could confirm anything useful. The workaround I use now is to treat Beck's book as a starting point, not an endpoint. Open it to get the general timeframe and studio context, then move to specialized databases and original sources for specifics. The book gives you the map. It doesn't give you every street name.
How To Use It Effectively
Start by skimming the chapter headings to figure out which era you're looking into. The chronological progression means early animation entries come first, then the golden age, then television animation, then direct-to-video and modern theatrical work. Once you know where your topic falls, jump straight to that section. The index is decent but not exhaustive. I found that the index misses some character names while over-indexing on others depending on how popular they remained. If you're looking up a obscure mid-tier cartoon from the 1950s, you might not find it in the index at all. Go to the chronological tables instead. Stills in the book are useful for identifying visual style and era, but the resolution on the printed reproductions is low. If you're trying to distinguish between two similar-looking cartoons from the same period, the images won't help much. I've had this happen with several UPA and DePatie-Freleng shorts that look nearly identical when reproduced at book quality. The text entries usually clarify the distinction, but only if you know what to look for in them.
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Common Pitfalls
The biggest issue with this book is that it reflects the state of animation scholarship as of its last major revision. Some of the attribution work on early cartoonists has been updated since publication. Names that Beck credits as definitive in one edition may have been reassigned in later research. If you're citing this book academically or for professional work, check the publication date and be prepared to verify any credit claims against more current sources. Another problem is the TV animation coverage bias. The book gives extensive attention to Hanna-Barbera and Filmation because those were the dominant studios. Smaller operations like Chuck Jones's Sib Tower 12 Productions or early Jay Ward Productions get comparatively thin coverage. If your interest lies in the independent or alternative animation scene, you'll find the entries frustratingly brief.
Where To Get It
The book is available through most major booksellers and secondhand markets. A first edition is usually easy to find used for under twenty dollars. New printings tend to appear occasionally depending on demand cycles. The ISBN for the commonly referenced edition is 080652127X. Nothing about this book requires a special edition or first printing to be useful. The content is stable across revisions. I keep a copy on my shelf next to other reference works and pull it when I'm doing background research on animation history. It's one of those books that becomes more valuable the more you use it, because you learn where the gaps are and how to work around them. That takes time. Don't expect the book to do all the research for you.
