Alexander Hume Anderson Jr. was born September 5, 1920, in
Berkeley, California, and Alexander H. Anderson Sr. He attended the
University of California, Berkeley, and the
California School of Fine Arts in
San Francisco. at his
Terrytoons animation studio. Anderson served in Navy intelligence during World War II. Anderson pitched a "limited animation" cartoon series for TV to his uncle, Paul Terry, but 20th Century Fox, who distributed Terrytoons cartoons, saw TV as a threat. After the war, Anderson and
Jay Ward, a former real-estate salesman and childhood friend, formed a business in the late 1940s to pitch cartoon ideas to television, including Crusader Rabbit, Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Dudley Do-Right. In 1948, Anderson and Ward created a television pilot, "The Comic Strips of Television" Only Crusader Rabbit was accepted, and after Anderson's other cartoon ideas failed to sell, he joined a
San Francisco advertising agency, becoming an art director, (sources differ), Anderson received a settlement and a court order acknowledging him as "the creator of the first version of the characters of Rocky, Bullwinkle and Dudley." Anderson died due to complications of
Alzheimer's disease at the age of 90 on October 22, 2010, at a nursing home in
Carmel, California. He was survived by his wife of 36 years, Patricia Larsen Anderson, his third spouse following divorces from first wife Gail and second wife Beverly. ==References==