The 1940's began at the end of the thirties. Since Disney had had such tremendous success with short films and now was out of the way with features. All the movie companies in Hollywood established animation departments. Or hired outstanding studios. The first was Warner Bros who had the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series with Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. These films were aimed at an adult audience, with lots of contemporary references. And since there was a war going on, the films became more and more violent. Many of them are still brilliant today.
Here is Bugs first appearance...

One of the most vivid films from warners was Bob Clampett's "Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs". The idea to make an all black cartoon came from Duke Ellington and the cast of his musical Revue. The film is today considered racist and is seldom used. It was meant partly as a parody of Disney's Snow White and a tribute to black jazz music.

 

MGM got Tex Avery in 1942 from Warners. He is the anarchist star of the period. The films often turns into complete lunacy. The animation, timing, pace etc is mostly brilliant.

 

Also at MGM, Joe Hanna and Will Barbera established the cartoons of Tom and Jerry. More or less the same story over and over again, the little clever mouse and the big cat crushes each other to pieces but rises again every time, like Phenix from the ashes. Probably therapeutic for the audience during the war.

The Fleichers dropped Popeye and started to make the Superman series. They were visually quite stunning and didn't look at all what they've done before.

 

 

 

1941, Norman McLaren came to Canada and The National Film Board to work and to establish an animation department. He spent most of his career in the field of abstract animation but also experimented with different techniques like drawing optical sound on the film strip and pixillation, animation of people.

 

 

In France, Paul Grimault had formed Les Gémaux, a production company which made shorts all through WW2. American films were unavailable and that created space for these special stories, made with a slower pace, maybe more European way of communication. The animation is very fine.

 

The studio closed in 1952, after the troublesome production of "Le Roi et l'Oiseau, which Grimault completed to his own likings almost 30 years later.