Career
He is best known for his work on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer"s Tom and Jerry animated shorts. Spence has been credited variously as Irven Spence, Irvin Spence, and Irv Spence. Spence"s earliest animation work was for Charles B. Mintz"s Winkler Pictures, and then for Ub Iwerks, where he worked on the "Flip the Frog" series.
He followed Avery to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after Avery left Schlesinger"s over a disagreement.
Spence provided animation for Avery"s first three shorts at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but soon moved over to the Hanna-Barbera unit Spence left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in August 1956 for Animation, Incorporated., a commercial production studio, before joining his former bosses at Hanna-Barbera Productions seven years later.
He provided animation for many animated television series, including Jonny Quest (1964), Frankenstein, Junior. and The Impossibles (1966), and The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (1971). In addition to his work for Hanna-Barbera, Spence also worked for Chuck Jones (1970"s adaptation of Horton Hears a Who!), DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (Roland and Ratfink, the Ant and the Aardvark), and Ralph Bakshi (Coonskin, Wizards, and the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings).
Spence"s last animation cr was on Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992).
Spence also conducted a workshop for animators under the auspices of the Association of Motion Picture and television Producers and Cartoonists Local 839. Spence married Alice Amelia Hossfeld in a Latter Day Saints ceremony on January 15, 1931. He was managing a Standard Oil station in Compton, California at the time.
They had one daughter.
Alice died in 1984 and Spence remarried. Spence died of a heart attack on September 21, 1995, in Dallas, Texas.
