Darnell Rehberg

Darnell Schultz Rehberg (February 19, 1913 – January 14, 1985) was an American producer, animator, and secreenplayer famous for his character, Mayor Hochmeister, created in 1949. He began his career as an animator in 1936, working at, having worked with on the early  and  shorts. At 40s, he left Universal and created his own animation company (Rehberg Animation) based in, , where he created his most famous character.

Born into an a family with good finances and profits, Rehberg was an only child and only studied until he completed high school, where he already demonstrated mastery in animation and had good grades in arts.

The main phase of fame of Rehberg's work came in the 50s and 60s, having been somewhat eclipsed from the 70s onwards, although popularity still remained for himself and his magnum opus, since he produced a total of 23 scripts of Mayor Hochmeister's misfortunes and stories, 9 of which were in film format, and the rest as TV specials. Another factor that reduced his weight in animation in the 70's was thanks to the disorders which he was diagnosed in 1975, which forced him to leave much of the production of new animations and dedicate himself to plotting.

He died on January 14, 1985, aged 71, having left one last animation of Mayor Hochmeister unfinished, The Mayor and Madam Demon, the screenplay for this however was released in book format in 1998. In 2002, his name was inducted into the Walk of Fame alongside his character's name, and in 2010, the name of the town hall of, his hometown, was renamed the Darnell Rehberg Executive Salon.

Early Life
Darnell Schultz Rehberg was born on February 19, 1913, the son of Klara Rehberg (né Söllner) and the local businessman of Austrian descent Olaf Rehberg, he grew up in an means of coexistence linked to the business branch, far away from animation, which would be his branch one day. His education was paid for by his parents at private schools in neighboring counties to, it is known that he lived a considerable portion of his pre-adolescence in the home of his uncle Rudolph Rehberg in , the boy Darnell showed a knack for art, acting in school plays, dancing and especially drawing, already in high school, he won school prizes for his active participation in the arts, which made him famous regionally, but among all the prizes, the one that undoubtedly changed his course completely was the prize in a drawing competition, in which he won designing a cartoon character merging the characteristics of father Olaf and his uncle Rudolph. After completing his high school, he continued to participate in drawing, and one day in 1936 he sent a letter to, where he showed his skills in drawing and animation, the studio executives were facially fascinated by the boy's gift for animation, and then they decided to contemplate the boy with a few weeks of evaluation, and if he pleases the company's bosses, he would be hired.

Career at Universal Pictures
After doing well in this evaluative test run by the company, Rehberg was hired, having animated around 42 shorts between 1936 and his departure in 1947, he also scripted 10 of these 42 shorts that he made under his own idea. He worked with big names in the company in the production of short films, standing out for his participation in the productions of, creator of , in which Rehberg already participated before the creation of this character. In the 40's however he began to seek more freedom within the company, which displeased some who appreciated and needed his hand to animate shorts for them, Darnell however wanted to stop making animations and shorts for others and do it for his own recognition. In 1947, Darnell decided to withdraw from Universal after 11 years, claiming that he was tired of having to lower himself to the creativity of other studio producers, and that he would look for other ways and other ideas to continue working, whether they liked it or not. He even invited Lantz to go work in his own company later on, but the veteran rejected it and preferred to end his career at.

Early career as an independent producer: 1947–1951
After leaving Universal Studios, Rehberg received no new job offers, so he joined a group of other independent animators, including some Walt Disney veterans who had left the company, to work on a new independent work. Rehberg then took on the "authoritative" producer role he would use for the rest of his career and decided to create the entire history of the work alone, from the first drafts to the final version, without admitting interference from another person of the group, from the beginning it was set that the story of the work would take place in a small town in Texas during the Reconstruction Era, and that the protagonist of the plot would be the mayor of this city, who goes through misadventures and misadventures and who often tarnishes his reputation with the people.

Creation of Mayor Hochmeister
Rehberg wanted the main character of his work to have Germanic descent and appearance just like his family and himself, so he lightly captured a portion of the appearance of his father and uncle, and threw them into his character, who became a blond-eyed man. greens (inspired by his father) and that he was always seen with a hat or top hat on his head to hide his baldness, in addition to liking clothes in colder and darker colors (inspired by his uncle), this one would also have a more German accent, like Darnell's uncle, and would have a fat body and be short and quarrelsome, based on Rehberg's father.

Gerxan Mayor (1949)
After preparing the entire animation script, Darnell began to work together with the group that gathered in the animation itself, the team traveled and stayed in Texas for 3 months to be inspired and based to produce the work, when they returned for California, the work had already had a phenomenal advance, because in addition to his group, Darnell managed to gather investors and pay other aspiring animators to make such a production complete faster. In 1948, Rehberg and his group were in the process of completing the film, and were already looking for distributors for the film, the main candidate and chosen to distribute the film was (currently ), which was also responsible for the marketing, the film's total budget was around $978,000, and the company expected the film to earn at least $3,500,000 in order to also pay investors and the distributor itself.

Although completed in 1948, the film was only released in April 3, 1949, in response to Darnell's own request, who wanted the film to be released when Monogram's marketing targets were actually interested in paying for tickets to see the film, it was a great success for the time and managed to raise $4,341,000, having surprised and stayed with the 3rd position of the highest grossing films of 1949, the film was a great success for the time and managed to raise $4,341,000, having surprised and stayed with the 3rd position of the highest grossing films of 1949, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, having won and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Sound for "Texas Winds". The film's title is a pun on the words "Texan" and "German", which form a rhyme, and also featured the dubbing of, and , who was 3 of the 10 making money stars of that time.

Instant success and Rehberg Animation
With the overwhelming success of his work, Darnell got investment and sponsorship to create his own animation studio, so then the entire group responsible for animations moved to New York City, where they built a large studio in Manhattan, with Darnell hiring more animators and even creating a room where aspirants were taught to animate. However, time was short for the animator and Darnell was already preparing another film while the public was still applauding Gerxan Mayor, and in 1950, during the move to the new studio, the film was already having its initial scenes completed and the entire script ready, and with the arrival of new animators, the process was even more streamlined. Darnell sometimes said he was bothered by his automatic success, as it interfered with the way he made his films and the concentration to build a script.

Hochmeister and the Cattle Monster (1950)
After stabilizing after the frenzy his first worked on and tempers calming after the move, Rehberg and his group finally finished production on Mayor Hochmeister's second film, Hochmeister and the Cattle Monster, the production had more than 40 animators who worked at least 15 hours a day and lasted 2 years, being a fast and efficient production at the time, in addition to having presented an evolution of quality in comparison to Gerxan Mayor, its predecessor. Monogram Pictures was again tapped to distribute and manage the film's marketing, given the previous successful collaboration between Darnell and this distributor. Another notable increase was the studio's expense for this film, which rose from $980,000 to $1,320,000, being expected a box office of at least $3,100,000, so that all the expenses of the team were paid, which added up to around $610,000, which together with the budget of the film would give an expense of $1,930,000, and subtracting by $3,100,000 would be left $1,170,000 to spend on other production, signings, or whatever.

The film was as successful as its predecessor and earned $3,845,000 at the box office, being the eighth highest-grossing of 1950, that year Darnell had to face the giant Walt Disney, who released , and was a little Disney, nothing more than threatened his growing fame. Unlike Gerxan Mayor, Cattle Monster did not have the presence of big stars in its cast, Bing Crosby, who previously voiced Hochmeister did not return to his role, as well as Gary Cooper and Betty Grable, Darnell did this so that he would not get more costs and had to increase the demand at the box office for that film, but he did not rule out that in future projects "Crosby, Cooper and Betty would return and that we would also add new stars, such as, and , for example, everything is a question of finances and budget, not of choice or much less personal disapproval".