Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American animator, filmmaker and painter.

Ralph Bakshi was born on October 29, 1938 in Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine, to a Krymchak Jewish family.

In 1939, his family migrated to the United States, and he grew up in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The family lived in a low-rent apartment, where Bakshi became fascinated with the urban milieu.

As a child, he enjoyed comic books, and often dug through trash cans to find them.

In the spring of 1947, Bakshi's father and uncle traveled to Washington, D.C., in search of business opportunities, and soon moved the family to the black neighborhood of Foggy Bottom.

Bakshi recalled, "All my friends were black, everyone we did business with was black, the school across the street was black. It was segregated, so everything was black. I went to see black movies; black girls sat on my lap. I went to black parties. I was another black kid on the block. No problem!"

The racial segregation of local schools meant that the nearest white school was several miles away; Bakshi obtained his mother's permission to attend the nearby black school with his friends.

Most of the students had no problem with Bakshi's presence, but a teacher sought advice from the principal, who called the police.

Fearing that segregated whites would riot if they learned that a white, let alone Jewish student was attending a black school, the police removed Bakshi from his classroom.

Meanwhile, his father had been suffering from anxiety attacks.

Within a few months, the family moved back to Brownsville, where they rarely spoke of these events.

At the age of fifteen, after discovering Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide to Cartooning at the public library, Bakshi took up cartooning to document his experiences and create fantasy-influenced art.

He stole a copy of the book and learned every lesson in it.

During his teenaged years, Bakshi took up boxing.

While attending Thomas Jefferson High School, he took little interest in academics, spending most of his time focusing on "broads, mouthing off, and doodling".

After participating in a food fight and being caught smoking, Bakshi was sent to the principal's office.

Believing Bakshi was unlikely to prosper at Thomas Jefferson, the principal transferred him to Manhattan's School of Industrial Art.

At the school, he was taught by African-American cartoonist Charles Allen.

In June 1956, Bakshi graduated from the school with an award in cartooning.

When Bakshi was 18, his friend Cosmo Anzilotti was hired by the cartoon studio Terrytoons; Anzilotti recommended Bakshi to the studio's production manager, Frank Schudde.

He moved to the animation division of Paramount Pictures in 1967 and started his own studio, Bakshi Productions, in 1968.

In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions.

Between 1972 and 1994, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, predominantly urban dramas and fantasy films, five of which he wrote.

He has also been involved in numerous television projects as director, writer, producer and animator.

Beginning his career at the Terrytoons television cartoon studio as a cel polisher, Bakshi was eventually promoted to animator and then director.

Through producer Steve Krantz, Bakshi made his debut feature film, Fritz the Cat, released in 1972.

It was based on the comic strip by Robert Crumb and was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and is the most successful independent animated feature of all time.

Over the next 11 years, Bakshi directed seven additional animated features.

He is well known for such films as Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), American Pop (1981), and Fire and Ice (1983).

Bakshi has received several awards for his work, including the 1980 Golden Gryphon for The Lord of the Rings at the Giffoni Film Festival, the 1988 Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation, and the 2003 Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film Festival.

In 1987, Bakshi returned to television work, producing the series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which ran for two years.

After a nine-year hiatus from feature films, he directed Cool World (1992), which was largely rewritten during production and received poor reviews, consequently being his last theatrical feature-length film to date.

Bakshi returned to television with the live-action film Cool and the Crazy (1994) and the anthology series Spicy City (1997).

During the 2000s, he focused largely on fine art and painting, and in 2003, co-founded the Bakshi School of Animation with his son Eddie and Jess Gorell.

According to an interview in 2009, Ralph said he was very poor and the walls of his neighborhood were constantly repainted.

He liked the feeling when he looked out the window and saw the sun as a little boy, and whenever he would walk out in the streets, someone would break open the wooden crates in the push-carts that were filled with food.

Ralph says this in the interview, "And the push carts were wood, and most of the buildings were made out of old wood, going back to the turn of the century, and they were repainted a lot but the paint was faded by, you know the hundred years of snow and rain, repainted and faded again."

Bakshi loved the faded colors, the nails, the wooden crates, and he would build his own toys from the wood.

Ralph recalls, "I had a great feeling with wood, cement, and nails".