Bentley started his animation career in 1929 as an assistant animator at
the Van Beuren cartoon studio in
New York City, later working for Les Elton's independent studio on his 1931 cartoon "Simon the Monk". He moved to the West Coast in 1935 to work briefly at
Walt Disney's studio, then spent the next few years as a full-fledged animator in
Frank Tashlin's unit at
Leon Schlesinger's
cartoon studio for
Warner Bros. Pictures. In 1939, Bentley, along with other Tashlin animators like Joe D'Igalo and Nelson Demorest, moved to
Miami to work for
Fleischer Studios, as they were hiring experienced West Coast animators to tool up for their first animated feature,
Gulliver's Travels. In the early 40s, Bentley returned to
California to animate for the
Walter Lantz studio on
Andy Panda and
Woody Woodpecker cartoons, and by the mid-40s was a top animator of both
Tex Avery's and
Dick Lundy's animation units at
MGM's cartoon studio. Bentley spent the majority of the 50s animating back at Lantz's studio, before being hired by
Hanna-Barbera to work primarily on TV animation. From then on, he bounced between stints at numerous television animation studios like
DePatie-Freleng and
Filmation, where he contributed to such animated productions as
Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974),
Spider-Man (1967), and others. ==Selected filmography==