Spaghetti Western Directors, Screenwriters, Cinematographers

Spaghetti Western Director – Joseph Barbera

Joseph Barbera was born on March 24, 1911, New York City, New York. He was an American animator who, as part of the team of Hanna and Barbera, created popular cartoon characters such as Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and Scooby-Doo.

Barbera was working as a bank accountant with the Irving Trust Company in New York City during the early 1930s when he started submitting cartoons to magazines; he sold his first to Collier’s magazine and decided to give up banking for cartooning. Barbera joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) as a sketch artist in 1937, the same year as William Hanna. Hanna and Barbera produced more than 100 episodes in the Tom and Jerry series for MGM between 1940 and 1957. Several of these—including Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943), The Cat Concerto (1946), and Johann Mouse (1952)—won Academy Awards for best animated short subject. In all, they won seven Academy Awards for their cartoons between 1943 and 1952.

The pair left MGM and formed Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1957, where they made a number of cartoon series for television. For these shows they developed a much-derided technique of “limited,” or reused, animation that allowed them to produce cartoons much more cheaply by drastically reducing the number of original drawings required to film an episode. For example, the clean line created by Yogi Bear’s signature shirt collar and tie enabled the studio to animate only his head in conversation scenes, leaving his body static. To compensate for the reused animation, the pair stressed character and witty dialogue instead of action. They were praised for the quality of writing found in their most successful productions.

In 1996 Warner Brothers bought Hanna-Barbera, eventually closing the studio and marketing its properties under the Cartoon Network brand. Hundreds of episodes of their animated works continued to be broadcast around the world. The Hanna-Barbera team had produced more than 3,000 half-hour shows for 150 television cartoon series, and they won eight Emmy Awards.

Joe co-directed two animated Euro-westerns films: “Lucky Luke: The Daltons on the Run” in 1982 with William Hanna, Morris and Ray Patterson and the ‘Lucky Luke’ TV series from 1983 to 1984 and again in 1991 with William Hanna, Morris and Philippe Landrot.

BARBERA, Joseph (Joseph Roland Barbera) [3/24/1911, Little Italy, Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S.A. – 12/18/2006, Studio City, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.] – producer, director, writer, animator, composer, songwriter, married to Dorothy Earl [1910-1995] (1934-1964) father of production manager Jayne Barbera [1941-    ], writer Neal Francis Barbera [1944-    ], telephone operator Lynn Merideth Barbera [1938-2018], father of a son [1948-1948], married to make-up artist Sheila Constance Holden [1927-    ] (1964-2006), co-founded Hanna-Barbera Studios [1957-1996], inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame [1994].

Lucky Luke: The Daltons on the Run – 1982 (co) [as Joe Barbera]

Lucky Luke (TV) – 1983-1984, 1991 (co)

Spaghetti Western Screenwriter – Sascha Arango

Sascha Arango was born in Berlin, German on December 2, 1959. Arango is one of Germany’s most prominent screenplay writers. Since 1989, Sascha has been writing screenplays for radio, television and cinema. Since 1994. he taught at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg and the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin. In 1996, he won the Grimme Prize for the television drama ‘Zu treuen Händen’ (With Confidence). He also wrote the scripts for the first five episodes of the television series ‘Eva Blond’ on the Sat1 channel. For the ARD series ‘Tatort’ (Crime Scene), he wrote the script for the sequels that take place in Kiel: ‘Borowski in the Underground’, ‘Borowski and the Girl from the Swamp’, Borowski and the Woman at the Window; and Borowski and the Silent Guest’. His first novel, The Truth and Other Lies, has been published in sixteen countries in 2015. He has also authored audio plays and stage plays

Sasha Arango has written two screenplays for Euro-westerns:  “Tom Sawyer” in 2011 and the sequel “Die Abenteuer des Huck Finn” (The Adventures of Huck Finn) in 2012.

ARANGO, Sascha [12/2/1959, Berlin, Berlin, Germany -     ] – author, screenwriter.

Tom Sawyer – 2011

The Adventures of Huck Finn – 2012

Spaghetti Western Cinematographer – Maurice Barry

Maurice Georges Édouard Barry was born in Paris, France on March 17, 1910. Barry began as a director of photography in 1933 and worked in the cinema in this position until 1963. In the meantime, he worked with directors Gilles Grangier, Jacques Daroy, Robert Vernay, Richard and Pottier,Guy Lefranc.

He was also a director of photography for television, contributing between 1956 and 1968 to two series ‘Les Cinq Dernières Minutes’ (The Last Five Minutes) and ‘La caméra explore le temps’ (The Camera Explores Time), and fifteen television films (directed by Claude Barma and Marcel Cravenne, among others), and for Claude Santelli's program ‘Théâtre de la jeunesse’.

In addition, Maurice Barry was occasionally a screenwriter on four films and one television film, as well as a director of one film in 1956.

Barry died in Paris on December 8, 1984, at the age of 74.

Maurice Barry was the cinematographer on one Euro-western “Fernand Cowboy” in 1956.

BARRY, Maurice (aka Barry, M. Barry) (Maurice Georges Édouard Barry) [3/17/1910, Paris, Île-de-France, France – 12/8/1984, Paris, Île-de-France, France] – director, assistant director, writer, cinematographer, cameraman.

Fernand Cowboy – 1956