Recognized as an authority on animation, Beck taught a nine-week course at the UCLA Extension on "Animation: The State of the Art" in 1992 and conducted seminars on "The History of the Hollywood Cartoon" for the American Film Institute in 1994.

Barrier, Michael (1999): Hollywood Cartoons.

Scholarly animation texts including Michael Barrier's Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, name Coal Black as Clampett's undisputed masterpiece.

Goldmark, Daniel (2005): "Tunes for 'Toons: Music and Hollywood Cartoons."

Such, at any rate, is the thesis of "Hollywood Cartoons," and Michael Barrier, formerly the publisher and editor of Funnyworld magazine, makes a strong case for it, in part because he is so rigorous a critic.

That research provided the basis of his landmark 700-page history of classic animation, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (published in hardcover in 1999 and reissued and revised as a trade paperback in October 2003).

Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age.

Tunes for 'Toons : Music and the Hollywood Cartoon.

Barrier, Michael (1999): Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age.