From the May 1996 Peg-Board

1992 Golden Award winner TONY SGROI died on July 16, 1998. Since 1942 he worked as a storyboard artist, layout and model designer for Warners, Lantz, Snowball, UPA, Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, DeTiege, Hanna-Barbera and Disney. He is survived by his family, including Warners breakdown artist Allison Sgroi.

Tony was a layout artist on the original Jonny Quest series in the 'sixties. When I met him twenty-five years later, he was one of the first artists I had the nerve to strike up a conversation with. I couldn't help myself -- he worked on Jonny Quest, for God's sake!

Tony let me clean up his wonderful rough models for practice. Those clean-ups got me hired on the show and therefore into the business as an artist. Tony's work was so easy to clean up, he was a safety net while I learned my craft.

Later, I was amazed to see that he could draw cartoony stuff as well as realistic. I learned he could draw in any style as well as anyone. Did I mention modesty? He had everyone beat there, too. If anyone had a right to be full of himself, it was Tony; but you never knew it by talking to him.

As I began to put together model crews for various series, I acquired a rep for being able to handle the most challenging and/or troubled shows. I'm not bragging -- my "secret weapon" was Tony Sgroi.

Because of Tony's ridiculous commute from Orange County to the Cahuenga Pass, he preferred to work from 3 am to 10 am. So he was in his office at H-B, right in the middle of a spooky Stephen King audio book, when the Northridge earthquake struck, knocked over all the furniture, killed the lights and trapped him in his office. After the security guard rescued him, Tony sat down at an outside picnic table -- and finished his work for the day!

After a spell at other studios, I was honored to return to Hanna-Barbera as a writer, to work with Tony on the latest Jonny Quests. It was a great honor to work with Tony again, on the very series that had first sparked our friendship.

Tony was a great, great friend to me, to the business, and to anyone who worked with him. Though it embarrassed him to hear it, I never made a secret of the fact that the guy was my hero, and he always will be.

-- Lance Falk

Contents © by TAG Local 839 IATSE. All rights reserved.

BACK TO INDEX