A truly great cartoonist and a helluva nice guy died last night at the age of 87. Jerry Eisenberg had been sick for some time — the official cause of death was Pneumonia — and the news is already shaking up the animation community. Everyone knew him. Everyone adored him.
Jerry was a second-generation great cartoonist. His father, Harvey Eisenberg, had quite a history in animation and comic books…and both Eisenbergs were responsible for some of the better things that the Hanna-Barbera studio ever did. Jerry broke into the field as an animator for the MGM cartoon studio in the fifties, then when it closed down, he worked for H-B for years, designing many of their characters including — this is a very partial list — Peter Potamus, all the racers on Wacky Races, most of the gang on Jabberjaw…oh, I shouldn't have started this list either. Suffice it to say there probably wasn't a single Hanna-Barbera production done between 1961 and 1977 that didn't have characters in it designed by Jerry. He even worked on the super-hero shows.
'77 was when he moved over to the then-new Ruby-Spears cartoon studio — the one I was writing about earlier today on this blog — and became a producer of most of their shows including Fangface, Plastic Man, Thundarr the Barbarian…again, a list I shouldn't have started. Later, he worked for Marvel Productions, Disney, Warner Brothers…just about everywhere in town. He was one of the fastest artists I've ever seen and one of the nicest, jolliest guys.
Condolences go out to Raymonde, his wife of many years…and our thanks because she took great care of him.
Wanna know more about this man? Here's a three-hour interview with him. You can learn all about him and even if you just watch a few minutes of it, you'll see why everyone loved him. I certainly did.