He was 90 years of age.
Arminio Lozzi was born on October 22, 1929 in Everett, Massachusetts to Guido Antonio and Elena Lozzi. His father was a shoemaker from Vittorito, in the province of Abruzzi, Italy, who came to the U.S. from Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1926 (coincidentally, his father was a week shy of 90 when he died). Lozzi went to art school in Boston and, at 21, was president of the Students Art Gallery, which displayed the works of local artists age 18 to 22. His older sister Adele was a painter as well.
Lozzi had worked at MGM along with Fernando Montealegre and Bob Gentle. After Hanna-Barbera opened at the old Chaplin studio at 1416 North La Brea Avenue in Hollywood in 1957, the three of them formed the original background department. Lozzi left in the 1960s to design interiors for Hilton Hotels and a cruise ship line, settling in Athens.
One of my favourite Lozzi backgrounds is in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon “Little Red Riding Huck.”
Here are two from “Yogi in the City,” from the Yogi Bear Show; I’ve never posted the second one before. Many of Lozzi’s backgrounds featured blue tones, even though the cartoons first aired in black and white.
Art told animator John Kricfalusi that he and Monte never airbrushed; they worked in acrylics and pastels, and pointed out there really was no time to airbrush as the backgrounds had to be churned out. Here’s a “limited” background from the Snagglepuss cartoon “Paws For Applause.” The colours are well-chosen and would show up as a range of greys on a black and white set. It’s simple enough that there is nothing that would distract the viewers’ eyes from the characters playing in the foreground.
Another Snagglepuss, “Arrow Error.” I believe the varied grass colours come courtesy of a sponge (background artists used rollers at times as well). The lettering is likely by Art Goble.
These two are from “Foxy Proxy,” with Fibber Fox. Excellent colours and the designs of the trees are inspired. One tree is transparent!
“A Wooin’ Bruin” features Lozzi’s lumpy clouds (which somehow fit the mountains in the background) and round and fan shaped blooms on trees.
Lozzi also worked with Quick Draw McGraw. This background is from “Mine Your Manners.”
More blue tints and lumpy mountains in “Missile Bound Yogi.”
One last example—this is from the Yogi Bear cartoon “Loco Locomotive.” You can find more examples of Lozzi’s work on this cartoon in this post.
No, the Yowp blog is not coming back. This is a special post to honour the work of Art Lozzi. I’m sure the many early Hanna-Barbera fans who read this blog wish to extend their sympathies to his sister and her family (Lozzi, it appears, never married). He is one of many artists who made the original Hanna-Barbera series enjoyable to watch.
It’s great to see the people responsible for those fun early Hanna-Barbera cartoons back in the studio’s heyday.
These pictures, I believe, are from Jerry Eisenberg’s collection, and courtesy of Tony Benedict. Jerry, if you don’t know, was a layout artist at the studio whose name can be found on The Huckleberry Hound Show and other great series. They have been sitting in a folder that was supposed to have been posted several months ago but got set aside somehow.
Here’s a snapshot of Art Lozzi. Art was working at the MGM cartoon studio at the time of its closing in 1957 and some months later was hired at Hanna-Barbera. He’s responsible for some really fun-looking backgrounds. Scooter Looter and Loco Locomotive, both with Yogi Bear, are his cartoons. Art is still alive and living in Greece, where he was working with one of the hotel chains. Lozzi told readersvoice.com that it would take days to two weeks to paint the backgrounds for a short cartoon.
This colour shot is of one of the other early background artists at the studio, Fernando Montealegre. Credit watchers will know he only went by his last name on screen. You may have seen his work on some of the final cartoons made at the MGM cartoon studio; his backgrounds were flat and stylised. They were less so when he arrived at H-B. He was originally from Costa Rica and died in 1991 in California.
Here are Art and Monty along with Jerry Eisenberg in the background department at, judging by the cinderblock wall on the right, the windowless studio at 3501 Cahuenga, where the staff moved by August 1960 while the Flintstones was beginning production. Oh, to be able to see those long backgrounds on the boards to the left (at least that’s what I think they are).
Jerry along with fellow layout artist Willie Ito checking out a gorilla for sale. Both of them had worked at Warner Bros. in the 1950s. Willie ended up at Snowball, which was the studio Bob Clampett set up to make Beany and Cecil cartoons (and several other animated projects that never got sold) before going to H-B.
If you don’t know who this is, you really are on the wrong blog.
I don’t know if that’s the Emmy that Hanna-Barbera won for The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1960. I imagine this picture was taken some years after that.
Here’s the Arthur Froelich-designed building (with a bomb shelter), the third studio, at 3400 Cahuenga. It’s under construction here and opened in 1963. That’s Cahuenga Boulevard on the far right where that car is parked next to the phone pole (a 1959 Chevy is near the centre of the picture). Next to Joe and Bill and some TV cartoon characters, it’s probably the most famous face of Hanna-Barbera, even though my favourite cartoons were made at the Kling Studios on La Brea.
During its short life, this blog has been blessed with the help of former artists of the Hanna-Barbera studio. They’re always friendly and willing to share their knowledge.
Mark Christiansen is one of them. He’s patiently answered my e-mails and, on one of his own blogs, has posted a few great, sometimes unique, things that I’ve been tempted to purloin. Today, I’ve given in to temptation because he’s posted a picture of my favourite cartoon writer, Mike Maltese. And, as Maltese might have Pepé Le Pew say, “Quel belle de bon-us!” Warren Foster is there, too.
The photos come from a 1961 article in the TV-Radio Mirror, yet another one of those We-Got-Kicked-Out-By-MGM-But-Had-The-Last-Laugh stories. But it’s got pictures of some of the staff, and I was quite happy to see some people I’d never seen before.
Fernando Montealegre and Art Lozzi both worked for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at the MGM studio and came along (Dan Bessie, an assistant at MGM, notes in his autobiography there were two Fernandos at MGM, both from Costa Rica). Art is still living in Greece as far as I know, and I would love to hear from him some time.
Roberta Greutert, the head of ink and paint, worked under Art Goble at MGM. I’ve presumed as her married name was Marshall, she married Lew Marshall.
Frank Paiker (his name is misspelled in the caption) goes back to the silent era. He worked for the Bray Studio, then as an inker at the Fleischer Studio in the 1930s before he rose into management. He was an MGM refugee as well.
Alex Lovy’s career is pretty known. He worked in New York, came west to work at the Lantz studio, stopped for a time at Columbia before UPA took over its release schedule, then left Lantz a second time around the end of 1958 for a story director’s job at Hanna-Barbera.
The reposting of the full article is HERE.