The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals is a 1994 book by animation historian Jerry Beck, consisting of articles about, and rankings of fifty highly-regarded animated short films made in North America, as well as many other notable cartoons. It generated a significant amount of notice and discussion at the time, and is still commonly cited. The list itself aimed to be authoritative by taking votes from 1000 people w...
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The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals is a 1994 book by animation historian Jerry Beck, consisting of articles about, and rankings of fifty highly-regarded animated short films made in North America, as well as many other notable cartoons. It generated a significant amount of notice and discussion at the time, and is still commonly cited. The list itself aimed to be authoritative by taking votes from 1000 people working in the animation industry.
Each cartoon on this list had to be under thirty minutes long and cel animated (with Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) being an exception noted in the book). The results leaned heavily toward the output of Warner Bros.'s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, and the work of director Chuck Jones (four of the top five, below). All the works cited fell within a narrow space of time between 1923 and 1957, with the exceptions of Gertie the Dinosaur, the 1985 short The Big Snit (at #25), the 1988 short The Cat Came Back...
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