Friends of the Pomona Fox Announces Panelists for Top Ten Funniest Hollywood Cartoons of All Time Program

Friends of the Pomona Fox has announced a special guest panel for its March 4 program, The Top Ten Funniest Hollywood Cartoons of All Time, at the National Register landmark Pomona Fox Theater. The cartoons will screen at 2:00 pm, doors open at 1:00 pm. Prices are $8 for Adults, $3 for Children 12 and under.

The program, originally produced by Steven Paul Levia in 1991 for the Montreal Juste pour Rire/Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, will include a screening of the ten films chosen by a panel of expert advisers, as well as a panel discussing the influence of these classic shorts on the renaissance of animation features that started with The Little Mermaid and continues to this day.

The panel will be a conversation between Leiva, Roger Allers, co-director of The Lion King, winner of the Tony Award for writing the Broadway adaptation of the film and director of the upcoming animated feature based on Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet; and Mark Dindal, effects animator and director, who directed The Emperor's New Groove and Cats Don't Dance.

Roger Allers, in addition to The Lion King, was co-creator, writer for Animalympics (1980) which featured the voices of  Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner, and Harry Shearer. He also served as a storyboard editor on Tron, as well as working on animation for such television programs as Sesame Street, Electric Company, and Make A Wish. At Disney in the 1980s-90s, he worked on such films as: The Little Mermaid, The Prince and the Pauper, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Mr. Allers is currently directing an animated feature adaptation of Khalil Gibran’s classic, The Prophet for Salma Hayek’s Ventanarosa Productions.

Mark Dindal is an effects animator and director, who directed The Emperor's New Groove, Chicken Little, and Cats Don't Dance. He worked in many Disney projects as an effects animator, and also led the special effects for several classic movies such as The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. Also at Disney, he worked on The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Aladdin, The Emperor’s New School, and The Great Mouse Detective, as well as the live-action film The Rocketeer.

Steven Paul Leiva, who grew up locally in Azusa, produced this program originally in 1991 for the Montreal Juste pour Rire/Just for Laughs Comedy Festival and went on, the next year to produce The Top Ten Toons in Tune, a show of musical cartoons, and he continued to produce shows for Just for Laughs until 1996, including one on The Simpsons, and a tribute to producer-director Ivan Reitman. He produced the animation for Space Jam, pairing Bugs Bunny with Michael Jordan and Stay Tuned, a comedy adventure. Leiva served as a publicist for classic animators Chuck Jones, Bill Melendez, and Richard Williams and later co-founded and served as the president of Chuck Jones Productions. He also worked for Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz at his Kinetographics film company. Leiva is currently a writer. His play, Made on the Moon, had its world premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His novelization, The 12 Dogs of Christmas, based on his own film adaptation of the best-selling picture book of the same name, won the Scribe Award for the Best Young Adult Adapted Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He is also the author of The Fixxer series of Hollywood suspense novels. His latest novel is the science fiction satire, Traveling In Space.

The 10 cartoons to be screened are:

• One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones–Warner Bros.)
• Bad Luck Blackie (Tex Avery–MGM)
• Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones–Warner Bros.)
• Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery–MGM)
• Bear For Punishment (Chuck Jones–Warner Bros.)
• Birds Anonymous (Friz Freleng–Warner Bros.)
• The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Bob Clampett–Warner Bros.)
• Quiet Please (Hanna-Barbera–MGM)
• King Size Canary (Tex Avery–MGM)
• The Clock Cleaners (Ben Sharpsteen–Disney).

John Clifford, President of Friends of the Pomona Fox stated, “I’m really impressed with the quality of the panel that has been put together for this program. Anyone with an interest in animation, or the history of animation will want to be part of this important event.”

Additional information and advance tickets available at the Friends of the Pomona Fox web site: www.pomonafox.org.

Friends of the Pomona Fox is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation (Pomona Fox Corp.). All proceeds from programs presented by Friends of the Pomona Fox go toward educational and preservation efforts.