from 2009
JOE MESSERLI
talks about his career

by Scott Wolf

Out of all the people I've interviewed for Mouse Clubhouse, I've known Joe longer than any of them. That's because he lived two doors down from me for the first thirteen years of my life. As a kid, I knew he was an artist, but I had no idea what incredible projects he was working on! I had no idea that his wife, Evelyn, worked in animation and they met at UPA Studios. Interestingly, he eventually worked on comic books and activity books based on Disney and Hanna Barbera television series' that I had worked on. Today, Joe's work is seen daily at the "Tower of Terror" in Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios, and yet his legendary artwork was not created for the parks, but for Rod Serling. It's the famous logo for "The Twilight Zone" television series. Sadly, Joe passed away less than a year after I interviewed him for Mouse Clubhouse. I'll be forever grateful he took the time to share his story with me, and that I may share it with you. 

Scott Wolf: When I’d be playing with your boys, I knew you were working in your garage, but I didn’t know what you were doing.

Joe Messerli: We had a little studio there. We got it the year Evan was born. We got a studio and a boy the same year.

SW: What was your first job as an artist?

Joe Messerli: I was painting signs when I was going to high school and all kinds of things like that. I got a job with the movie theater and they had a little sign shop. In those days they did a lot of hand painted signs and the manager, who was leaving town, was an excellent show card artist and sign painter, and he bequeathed me this little shop. I think they paid me five dollars a week just to stay there, and in the meantime I was picking up all this work – so I felt like a professional. This was in Kingsville, Texas.

I hadn’t even thought of college because it was important to make a living. After high school I got a job – they had offered me this job doing show cards for a clothing store/department store in the Rio Grande Valley which is in the bottom of Texas. When I think back, it was just a span of a couple of years, but it seemed like ages then.

There was a cartoonist that I had heard of living in the Rio Grande Valley, Charlie Plumb, who did a comic strip called “Ella Cinders.” At one time he had been the highest paid comic strip artist in America when he was getting $100,000 a year. In those days that was a fortune.

To make a long story short, I went to work for him as his assistant, this was 1950. I worked for him for awhile. I have a picture of me when I was 19 years old in that little office that he rented in my home town, doing the comic strip. There was an article about me and about the comic strip in the college newspaper.

(Artist) Charlie Plumb sold the strip to the writer (Bill Counselman) who was in California, and I was part of the deal, so I drove out to California in a little Renault Bug, which was a brand new car. So there I was in California and it didn’t take me long to become a Californian.

From there I worked on the same comic strip with another artist, Roger Armstrong, who was doing “Ella Cinders.” This is neither here nor there, but he was in San Gabriel, California, and Charlie Plumb had lived in San Gabriel some years before. A friend of his opened a little coffee shop and he called it the Ella Cinders Café. It was still there when I lived there.

Then I went into the army for a couple of years and came back to the same job.

When I was in the army, just before I got shipped overseas, I got a job to do a six page Johnny Mack Brown comic book western story. It was for Western Publishing, it was Dell Comics.

Then I got the job of ghosting a comic strip called “Napoleon and Uncle Elby.” I did that for a couple years when I was going to Chouinard Art Institute on the G.I. Bill. There was a close connection between Disney and Chouinard, and it was financed by Disney for years. Later, Chouinard became Cal Arts.

SW: Do you remember any of your instructors?

JM: Yes, the top one was Donald Graham, he had taught people at Disney had to draw “Bambi” and that kind of thing. He’s the author of a great book called “Composing Pictures.” Another important teacher was William Moore.

So I was going there when I was doing the “Napoleon” comic strip. It didn’t pay very much, I was getting $50 and then $75, but I was going to school and I’d do one week of dailies all in one day or two. Then the next week I would do two Sundays. I’ve still got a lot of the original art in the basement. I can’t believe I turned that stuff out, I was just a kid. I got the job of doing “Napoleon” on my 23rd birthday.

Then I went to work for a guy who was doing “Dennis the Menace” comic books.

SW: Was that Al Wiseman?

JM: Yes. He took me up to the mountains with his family. He rented a little cabin and he was turning out these comic books and I was doing lettering and layout. It was a beautiful place, the Sequoia National Forest. I’ve got some great pictures of that. I remember talking to him about it’s great, but I can just imagine myself being 80 years old and still in that same little town, so I went down to L.A. He wished me good luck.

I spent a month doing samples of titles, and I wanted to go to work for UPA. Everywhere I went, it was just a matter of amazing coincidence and luck that got me from one job to another. I think back and it isn’t real, if you wrote it, wouldn’t make sense.

I went all over town trying to sell my titles and I went to UPA. I had a friend working there and I happened to get there and he said, “You’re in luck. The guy who’s doing the titles just got fired yesterday.” He got fired for putting the ping pong tables on the roof – he got drunk at lunch. So that’s how I got that job. If it hadn’t been for that guy, Evelyn and I never would have met! I met Evelyn there, and we got married.

SW: I never knew she worked there! What was she doing at UPA?

JM: She was an animation checker. They would keep track of it, frame by frame, for camera work, filling out forms. You have to know something about animation and camera work and all of that.

SW: What things did you do at UPA?

JM: I did the titles for “Mr. Magoo” and things like that, and I did a lot of stuff for commercials, doing airbrush version. I would take photographs and sharpen them up with airbrush and make them look super real. In those days it was a lot of black and white. In fact, the guy who hired me had worked for years at the drawing board as a background man, and he taught me how to do airbrush in about a day.

So I did that, and “The Twilight” Zone” logo came along.

SW: You actually designed that famous logo, right?

JM: Yes. And there was a cave and stars, I did the flickering stars that faded in and out. The guy who did the background is the guy I went to visit at UPA who got me the job there.

SW: Do you remember actually working on it?

JM: Yes, there’s a whole thing that I wrote, explaining what I did step by step. (Joe has given me permission to post this great article -LINK-)

Rod Serling didn’t really know what he wanted. He was supposed to be a great genius but he didn’t have the foresight for the title.

When I did the title, Marius Constant hadn’t done the famous music. It was music by Bernard Hermann for the first season.

SW: Your logo was used throughout the series, right?

JM: Yes. I went into this place where a guy was working on a new “Twilight Zone” logo (for the series). He was using my logo as a basis and he was reanimating it so it would all break apart into pieces and all that.

I left UPA just in time because they didn’t want to pay me any more money. Evelyn and I had gotten married and she went to work for some other studio.

Then I went to NBC and I got a job there doing titles. I ended up doing a bunch of drawings for the “Bonanza” credits.

SW: Didn’t you also do the “We’ll be right back” cards for the “Tonight Show”?

JM: Yes, but that was actually a few years after I left NBC, they called me back and I did a bunch of the “Tonight Show” things.

SW: Did they tell you what they wanted for those?

JM: No, they didn’t tell me a theme or anything. The first ones I did were L.A. landmarks, a whole bunch of them. Then I did movie theater marquees, old fashioned things. I went all over L.A. taking pictures of these marquees. Then I did the western theme. I understand that Johnny Carson liked that best of all.

SW: What happened after NBC?

JM: They didn’t want to pay me any more money and I was doing the work of three people, because they had a couple of incompetent guys there who were just putting in their time. Next thing I know I’m doing their work and my work.

I was talking to a friend of mine, he called me at NBC and told me about this studio, and they were doing “Clutch Cargo” and “Space Angel” and “Captain Fathom.” This was about 1960. They were doing this really cheap animation where they would take running footage of mouths and superimpose them on a drawing of a face. “Clutch Cargo” is a cult thing now.

SW: Were you doing titles for that?

JM: No, it was mainly drawing. That was Cambria Studios. So I went to work there and I worked awhile.

Then I went to Western Publishing, which was Western Printing and Lithograph Company, they were in Beverly Hills. They did most of the comic books, they did all of the Disney books at that time. I went there to see about getting work and they gave me the job to draw the “Three Stooges” comic books, and I did that for quite awhile. A lot of different people worked on “Three Stooges.” In fact, the guy who ended up owning it was a cartoonist named Norman Maurer, he was from New York. He married Moe Howard’s daughter, Moe of the “Three Stooges.” He worked on “Dennis the Menace,” too. That’s where I met him.

I was with Western Publishing a long time, and then I went to work for Hanna Barbera, inking and lettering “The Flintstones” daily and Sunday strip for Gene Hazelton, and “Yogi Bear.” When you boys were little, that’s probably what I was doing most of the time.

SW: I’ve always loved “The Flintstones” and I also worked at Hanna Barbera, but I never knew you did that. You also worked on the Foofur activity books, and that was the first show I worked on at “Hanna Barbera.” And I ended being an assistant producer on “TaleSpin,” and you did the inking on the comic books, right?

JM: Yes, I did some, but I also did a lot on “Darkwing Duck.” I did a lot of drawing of Darkwing for coloring books and activity books. I really enjoyed doing the coloring books.

SW: Why did you move to Connecticut?

JM: We came here on vacation in ’77 and then moved here in ’78. Evelyn was from New York and grew up there and she said, “You should see Connecticut sometime,” so we did, we spent a little time in New Jersey and New York City and Connecticut and I liked it and we decided to move here.

SW: And you knew you’d be able to work from your home?

JM: After we got back, I asked them if I could work by mail.

SW: What were you working on once you moved to Connecticut?

JM: I continued with Western Publishing. I guess the main thing I was working on was the Little Golden Books with the Warner Bros. characters. I probably did more Warner Bros. characters than anything else. Porky Pig books and Daffy Duck books. I did Woody Woodpecker, which wasn't Warner Bros.

SW: Were you inking those?

JM: I would do the whole thing, the drawing, other people would write. I did write a couple of stories for Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny.

SW: And you did everything from pencil to final color art, too?

JM: Yes.

SW: Have you ever retired?

JM: 2001 is the last time I went to “Sesame Street” for a symposium, I had done a bunch of “Sesame Street” things, and then I didn’t get any more work. They started reusing all my stuff. They still reuse it. Random House reissues my work with all different names, but they do give me credit.

Joe's article about designing "The Twilight Zone" logo

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