Roland Davies (comics)
Roland Oxford Davies was born in Stourport, Worcestershire, on 23 July 1904. He studied Art at Ipswich Art School from 1926 until 1928, where he took a particular interest in lithography. It was not long before he found himself apprenticed as a lithographer at a printer in West Drayton, designing lithographic cinema posters by the traditional lithography method of drawing and etching on stone. At the end of his four year apprenticeship he became a freelance illustrator, then with Temple Press drawing cartoons for magazines like Autocar and Motor Cycle.
By 1928, he was drawing illustrations and covers for the magazine Modern Boy. As early as 1932, Roland Davies made his big breakthrough as a comic artist. In the pages of the Sunday Express on the 6th March 1932, his great comic creation, 'Come On, Steve!' appeared for the very first time. This title came from the cries of the race-going crowd as Jockey Steve Donoghue rode to victory after victory. Roland was paid £4 a week, a fee that would shortly doubled.
The 'Come On, Steve!' strips were masterpieces of mime, as the strips had no dialogue or text; all the humour was achieved through sight gags and the occasional poster or sign that Steve would read and act upon. The strip continued in the Sunday Express until 7 May 1939, when it dropped the strip, but Roland had wisely retained the copyright, and took the strip over to the Sunday Dispatch. They snapped up Steve with glee, and soon gave Roland the added post of cartoonist. 'Come On, Steve!' was to become one of the longest-running strips in the history of the medium only finally coming to a close in 1949. With the end of the war, Roland moved into children's books, a full colour series for Perry's Colour Press, plus 'Come On, Steve!' Annuals. He created a number of new books about Steve, including Steve Goes to London (the lost Steve cartoon) and various others.
'Come On, Steve!' was soon so popular that Roland conceived the idea of animating the old carthorse. Buying a stop-frame cine camera for 18 shillings, he set up a studio in his kitchen and spent seven months making a short animated cartoon. Although full of faults, the film when projected gave him the thrill of his lifetime. 'The biggest thrill in the world was to see his drawings move, even if I had got the speed all wrong, and Steve looked as though he was floating, 'Davies remembered. In his ignorance he had placed his cel-pegs at the top of his camera rostrum instead of the bottom, causing all kinds of odd distortions. 'Well, I learnt animation from a three page chapter in an old book,' he said. However, he had the nerve to show his film to John Woolf of General Film Distributors. Woolf would not give a decision until a soundtrack was added. Davies hired a studio, improvised a track - and was turned down yet again. He lowered his sights and showed his film to Butcher's, a minor distributor of B-pictures. They promptly gave him a contract for six eight-minute cartoons at £800 each. With finance from his father-in-law, Roland launched his own cartoon film company Roland Davies Cartoon Films Limited in Ipswich, staffed by students from the Ipswich Art School and headed by one professional animator, the young Carl Giles. One by one the six cartoons were made, this time complete with a signature tune composed by John Reynders, whose orchestra supplied the music track and sound effects. Steve Steps Out was the first, released in December 1936, and a children's book-of-the-film was published by Collins. Best was Steve of The River (1937), a burlesque of Edgar Wallace's recent film, Sanders of the River.
Six cartoon films for the cinema were made during 1936 and 1938, plus an advertising film for Ford Tractors. Sadly the studio closed down in 1938, The last of the Steve cartoons was to be in colour but Steve Goes to London was never put into production due to lack of funds and technology, so Roland turn his back on animation altogether, sadly he died on the 10th December 1993.
Steve Steps Out (1936) Steve's Treasure Hunt (1936) Steve's Cannon Crackers (1937) Steve of The River (1937) Steve in Bohemia (1937) Cinderella Steve (1938)
(Here are the six Steve films plus the Ford Tractor Film on Roland Davies Animation YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=roland+davies+animation)
