Background
McCabe was born in England and raised in the United States.
McCabe was born in England and raised in the United States.
In the mid-1930s, he joined Leon Schlesinger Productions (which produced cartoons for Warner Bros) as an animator in Frank Tashlin"s unit He moved over to Bob Clampett"s unit in 1938 where he animated and/or co-directed several classic black and white Looney Tunes. When Tex Avery left Schlesinger in 1941, Clampett took over Avery"s unit and McCabe took over Clampett"s old unit
In 1943, McCabe was drafted into the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Corps Training Film Unit (Tashlin took over McCabe"s unit after McCabe"s final cartoon).
In his final Warner cartoon before he left (a black and white World World War II-era cartoon called Tokio Jokio), he was billed as "Corporal Norman McCabe."
He served in the First Motion Picture Unit, headquartered at the Hal Roach Studios.
His commanding officer was Major Rudolf Ising. He returned to animation in 1963 joining DePatie-Freleng where he worked on the titles for the feature film The Pink Panther.
McCabe animated at DePatie-Freleng working on Pink Panther cartoons as well as Warner Brothers cartoons.
He also directed made for television cartoons at DePatie-Freleng. During that time, he was usually credited as "Norm Mccabe"
McCabe moved to the Filmation animation studio in 1967 working on several Saturday Morning cartoon series. He returned to theatrical animation with the adult animated feature film Fritz the Cat in 1972 before returning to DePatie-Freleng where he animated until the end of the 1970s.
An in-joke at the studio had the name of a villain in "The Houndcats" as being "McCabe".
In the 1980s, McCabe returned to Warner Brothers where he worked on new animation for Warner cartoon feature film anthologies. He also trained a new generation of animators in working with the classic Warner cartoon characters.
In the 1990s, McCabe was the animator in the 1990 motion picture Jetsons: The Movie. and he also did the animation director in 48 episodes of Bobby"s World in Film Roman Studios. McCabe died in January 2006, the last surviving director from the golden age of Warner Brothers
Cartoons to pass away.
He was 94 years old.