The Music Sheet Illustrations of William “Pud” Lane

Born in New York in the early 1900s, William “Pud” Lane was an American illustrator, cartoonist, graphic artist, and advertising executive who was active during the late 1920s through the 1950s. Best known for his Jazz Age music sheet cover illustrations, he was a foundational figure in slide-film animation and early commercial television. Lane worked as a freelance cartoonist and commercial graphic artist in New York City during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He became one of the prominent designers of illustrated sheet music covers for songs that captured the exuberant mood of the Jazz Era.

In the early 1940s, New York City began a transitional era in which the spirit of the Jazz Era and the economic worries of the 1930s Great Depression gradually transformed it into a energetic wartime commercial city. The 1940s also marked the permanent demise of elaborately illustrated sheet music covers. These custom illustrated covers virtually disappeared by the mid-1940s and were replaced with standardized typography, promotional photographs, and basic geometric graphics.

After finishing his career of doing freelance cartooning and illustration in New York, William “Pud” Lane transitioned into the growing industry of commercial animation. By the late 1940s, he was working at Transfilm Inc, a prominent New York City-based film production company that was primarily known for their educational short films, promotional films for industries, sponsored travelogues and early television commercials, both animated and live-action.

Lane served as Vice President in charge of the Slide-film division of Transfilm, Inc. which was headquartered on 45th Street in Manhattan, New York. During a major corporate restructure, he oversaw that division’s corporate slide-films, filmographs, and specialized multi-media accounts. After the corporate merger of Transfilm and Caravel Films by the Buckeye Corporation, Lane became an executive and shareholder of  the newly formed Visualscope, Inc, an expanding New York media and  communications firm established in 1964.

During William “Pud” Lane’s position at Transfilm, the 1947 short color documentary travelogue “Southern Highlanders” was produced for the Ford Motor Company’s advertising program “Americans at Home”. Lane is credited with creating the character concept and design of the Nestle Company’s trademark “Quick Bunny” which introduced the company’s chocolate milk powder to the public. Debuting on widespread television commercials in 1973, the character, who is known as “Quicky”, became one of the most recognizable advertising mascots in advertising history.

Notes: There is, unfortunately, very little information online  on Wiilliam “Pud” Lane outside of what is in this article. If anyone has additional information on Lane, please feel free to contact me through the comment window at the end of the article. If the comment section is not visible, it will appear if you click on the article’s title.

In essence, slide-film animation is an animation technique in which an animator draws sequential frames of an action such as a person walking. Each frame is cut out and mounted into individual plastic or cardboard frames. These are then loaded into a carousel slide projector. When quickly advanced through the tray, the sequential projection creates an illusion of motion. In modern digital media, this process refers to replicating the appearance of a vintage camera film strip rolling across a screen.

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Top Insert Image: Pud Lane, “I’m Nuts About Mutts”, 1933, Music Sheet Cover, Mort Dixon and Harry Woods

Second Insert Image: Pud Lane, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Lewis & Young and Harry Warren

Bottom Insert Image: Pud Lane, “As Long As It’s You Dear, O.K.”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Edgar Leslie and Walter Donaldson