August 26 - Retta Scott

Image courtesy greatwomenanimators.com

On this day, in 1990, Retta Scott passed away in Foster City, California. Born on February 23, 1916 in the tiny town of Omak, Washington (it had less than 1,000 residents at the time), Retta and her family moved four hours east to the Seattle area when she was a fairly young girl. Art was her favorite subject in school and she first thought about doing it as a career when, in the fourth grade, she won a scholarship from the Seattle Art and Music Foundation. She was able to stretch that award into nearly ten years of art classes, continuing to get local training well past her 1934 graduation from Roosevelt High School. Her dedication to honing her craft paid off when she then won a second scholarship, this time for three years of study at the famous Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, California. Retta packed up her belongings, moved a couple of states south and set her sights on becoming a fine artist. She ended up making history.

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While at Chouinard, Retta would spend a lot of her free time at the Griffith Park Zoo, just a short distance from the school. Her bold sketches of the animals there caught the attention of one of her professors. He recommended that she apply for a job at the Walt Disney Studio. Retta said no thanks, cartoons did not appeal to her. The professor explained he had more of the type of artistry present in the recently released Snow White in mind and understood, through some contacts of his, that the studio was looking at doing an adaptation of Bambi next. Retta’s expertise with animal drawings would be a natural fit. Retta was finally convinced to apply and, almost to her surprise, was hired.

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Retta began her Disney career in 1938 in the Story Department, a fairly unusual start given that most women at animation studios were almost always relegated to the tediousness of the Ink and Paint Department. Her time spent at the zoo came shining through in her story sketches and character development work. Both David Hand, Bambi’s director, and Walt himself were impressed with the intensity of her drawings. When the movie moved into the actual production phase, Retta was moved into the actual animation department, put under the tutelage of the Legendary Eric Larson and assigned to the sequence where the hunting dogs are chasing Faline. Her amazing work led to a full-fledged on-screen credit as an animator for Bambi, making her the first woman at Disney ever to receive that honor.

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Over the next few years, Retta continued on as an animator for both Fantasia and Dumbo (although she gets no official credit on either of those films) as well as contributing to at least two Donald Duck shorts, Donald’s Snow Fight and Donald Gets Drafted (again sans credit). Retta was working on animating the weasels for the studio’s adaptation of The Wind in the Willows when she made an on-screen appearance during the filming of The Reluctant Dragon in 1941 (she presents the film’s star, Robert Benchley with a caricature of him as an elephant). Later that year, as things became increasingly tight for Disney just prior to World War II, she was briefly laid off with a number of other animators, but by the beginning of 1942, she was hired back into the Story Department. She worked on several animated shorts and educational films until she married a submarine commander and retired from Disney in April 1946.

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Retta and her husband, Benjamin Worcester, moved east to Washington, DC where she continued her art career as an illustrator. She would work with the Walt Disney Company several more times over the years, most notably on Little Golden Book editions of Disney movies. Her illustrations for the Cinderella Big Golden Book are what make that book a must have for collectors. She was praised for a picture book that didn't look exactly like the film but yet still felt like it came directly out of it. Other vintage non-Disney Little Golden Books she is famous for include The Santa Claus Book and Happy Birthday.

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In the late Seventies, Retta returned to the world of animation when she was hired by Martin Rosen, a British filmmaker, to help animate The Plague Dogs released in 1980 (it's said to be a pretty decent movie in spite of a terrible title). She moved to San Francisco to work on the picture (having divorced her husband around the same time), teaming up with a youngish Brad Bird (who would go on to direct The Iron Giant and The Incredibles). And even though four decades had passed since the last time she had to prove herself in an animator's workroom, the men in the room were reportedly both surprised by her talents and awed by them. Unfortunately, some things take longer to change than we might like.

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After production wrapped up on Dogs, Retta would join another future member of Pixar, Bud Luckey, at his studio, doing animation for commercials like Cookie Crisp Cereal. She worked there until 1985, when she suffered a stroke that spared her life but robbed her of the ability to produce quality work. She would live quietly for another five years before passing away at her home in Foster City. The pioneering animator who helped open doors for generations of women after her was 74. Ten years later, in 2000, Retta would posthumously be declared an official Disney Legend, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

December 29 - Duncan Marjoribanks

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On this day, in 1953, Duncan Marjoribanks was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Duncan grew up in a liberal family and was considered a far-out hippy type in high school. Painfully introverted, he was also incredibly smart and extremely talented at drawing. His talents would take him to the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Canada’s premiere school for animation located in Oakville, Ontario. Following his graduation from Sheridan in 1978, Duncan became part of a group that was hired by Hanna-Barbera prompting a move to Los Angeles, California. Duncan quickly became one of the studio’s top animators, working on shows like Scooby and Scrappy Doo and Godzilla. Then the great Animator’s Strike of 1982 happened. 

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The strike began as the union protested how much work was being sent overseas (where it was much cheaper to produce) and lasted for several months. The end result, ironically predictable, was that most US animation production disappeared. Duncan changed his career focus to designing characters and began freelancing for several studios. One of the projects he would work on, and his first as animator in a decade, was a short lived television series called Family Dog. It was created and directed by a guy named Brad Bird who was thoroughly taken with Duncan’s style and talent. Brad recommended Duncan to a friend of his, John Musker. John was starting a little project over at Disney about a mermaid and hired Duncan as the first animator on the team.

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Duncan became supervising animator for Sebastian the Crab on Disney’s 28^th animated feature, The Little Mermaid. He took Samuel E. Wright’s marvelous vocal performance and the basic character designs that had already been done and created one of the most endearing and enduring characters that had been seen in decades. Don’t believe me? Just watch the scene when Sebastian finally decides to help rather than hinder Ariel and get back to me.

The success of The Little Mermaid led to Duncan staying on with Disney and supervising again for the next feature film, The Rescuers Down Under, this time for the villain, McLeach. While this film did end up being less successful, it was the grueling schedule that really took its toll on Duncan. By the time the last frame had been drawn, he needed more than a vacation and actually took a year off to live in England. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t work. He provided some character design for a short-lived Hanna-Barbera show called The Pirates of Dark Water.

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In 1991, Duncan returned to the states, and Disney, to begin supervising work on another great sidekick, Abu in Aladdin. As if his previous work wasn’t impressive enough, now he would create a memorable character without using words at all. His work in the film can also be seen in the opening sequence with the shady salesman. Duncan went right from Aladdin onto the team for Pocahontas and once again supervised a villain, Governor Ratcliffe. His portrayal of Ratcliffe was more cartoonish than the other characters, which give him more of a presence, but still this side of overly flamboyant, so he remains believable. Duncan was then slated to supervise Megera for Hercules but that never happened.

Image copyright Dreamworks SKG

Around this time, Jeffrey Katzenberg was making his spectacularly messy exit from Disney and starting his own studio, Dreamworks SKG, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. With big plans to stick it to his former employer, especially in the animation department, one of the first big talents Katzenberg poached was Duncan. The relationship didn't blossom the way anyone hoped. Duncan started out as supervising animator on Moses for Prince of Egypt but struggled with the job so much his only credit on the picture is plain old animator. He did some work on The Road to El Dorado, animating a few scenes with Tzekel-Kan and contributed some story ideas to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron before leaving Dreamworks for good. He spent a year over at Warner Brothers, working on the animated parts of the box office bomb Osmosis Jones (he did pretty good work on the movie but left before it was finished, unhappy with the direction it was taking), before returning to the fold at Disney in 2000.

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Unfortunately, Duncan's return to Burbank came at a time when the studio was producing its worst picture since The Black Cauldron. As supervising animator for Mrs. Calloway on Home on the Range, Duncan managed some moments of greatness but the movie was a critical and financial failure. Following that disaster, he was trained in computer animation and contributed to the Bowler Hat Guy for Meet the Robinsons. Duncan then got the privilege of working on Disney's last hand drawn feature, The Princess and the Frog, as head animator for Big Daddy La Buff. 

In 2009, Duncan and Disney parted ways once again. The company had decided to stop using traditional animation techniques and Duncan didn't feel comfortable working with CGI. The only thing he's really done since then was a hand drawn short utilizing the characters from Kung Fu Panda. Which is really a shame. Hopefully some day the talent behind Sebastian and Abu, who has inspired so many animators still working today, will himself find inspiration in some new project and give us all a reason to smile again.

October 18 - The Jungle Book

On this date, in 1967, Walt Disney Pictures 19th animated feature, The Jungle Book, was released in theaters. Based on Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name, The Jungle Book is also the last animated film from Disney that Walt had a hand in producing as he died several months before it opened. It was also the first animated film in a while that Walt actually paid attention to.

For 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone, Bill Peet, a long time animator and story man for Disney, had been allowed to develop the script pretty much on his own. Dalmatians had been a success for Bill and the company, Stone decidedly less so. When his initial script for Jungle Book was closely aligned with the dark tone of the book, Walt told Bill to lighten it up. Bill for some reason refused and subsequently left the company. Walt then took an active interest in developing the story and characters and the improvement of this film over Stone shows it.

In a break with his casting practices of late, Walt decided to hire more well known stars to voice some of the characters in his version of Jungle Book. Comedian and jazz singer Phil Harris was brought in for the role of Baloo, his first of three major Disney characters. Phil would confound the script team by ad libbing most of his lines because, as he put it, the written ones "didn't feel natural." Fellow jazz artist Louis Prima became King Louie. Sebastian Cabot, who also narrated the Winnie the Pooh shorts, was tapped for Bagheera. Also included in the cast were Disney stalwarts like Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O'Malley and Verna Felton, in her last film role. Walt had wanted to cast the four members of The Beatles as the vultures and have them sing the song "We're Your Friend", but when John Lennon refused, the vultures simply became Beatle-esque.

The Jungle Book cost the studio four million dollars to make but was released to critical acclaim and financial success, reaping box office receipts of over 378 million worldwide to date. Several current animators, including Brad Bird and Glen Keane, will tell you that Jungle Book was their inspiration to get into animation in the first place. The movie has spawned an animated sequel, two different live action versions, the Disney Afternoon series Talespin and the animated series Jungle Cubs.

Also on this day, in American history: Candy Cummings

September 24 - Brad Bird

On this day, in 1957, Phillip Bradley Bird was born in Kalispell, Montana. Since his grandfather was CEO of the Montana Power Company and his father was in the propane business, you might have thought that Brad would have had leanings toward a career in energy. You would have been wrong. Brad decided pretty early in life what he was going to do with his and it had more to do with using electricity rather than producing it.

On a family trip at the age of 11, Brad was taking a tour of the Walt Disney Studios when he met Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's Nine Old Men. This meeting prompted him to turn to his family and announce that he would be part of Disney's animation team some day. For most 11 year olds, that would have been the end of it. Brad returned home and actually began working on a 15 minute animated film. And it only took him two years to complete it. By the age of 14, Brad was getting mentoring from another of the Old Men, Milt Kahl. It's no surprise that Disney would eventually give him a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. It's also no surprise that one of the people Brad made friends with at CalArts was a student by the name of John Lasseter.

After graduating, Brad of course went to work for Disney. He contributed to The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Then he got fired. But that was okay, it happens to the best of us (right Tim Burton?). Brad moved into television animation. He did an episode of Amazing Stories. He co-wrote the movie *batteries not included. Then, in 1989,  he started working at a little animation studio called Klasky Csupo. One of the first assignments Brad got was taking these one minute filler animations on The Tracey Ullman Show and developing them into a full half hour stand alone program. For the first eight years of its life, Brad helped develop the look of The Simpsons and even directed a few episodes. Some might also recognize that Klasky Csupo was the company that produced The Rugrats. Brad was an animator for the pilot of that show as well.

In 1999, Brad's feature directorial debut, The Iron Giant, was released by Warner Brothers. The movie was a huge critical success (it still has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and a huge box office failure (it only managed to earn 31 million dollars on an 80 million dollar budget). Because Warner had decided they were getting out of the animation game, the studio basically did the equivalent of heaving Giant out of a moving car and squealing off. Zero marketing, zero caring, zero anything. Which of course meant that Giant would become a cult classic. Nevermind the fact that it's also a great movie. Again, the movie's financial woes were okay: that's when Brad made the move to Pixar.

The first project Brad pitched to his old friend now new boss, John Lasseter, was a superhero flick. It would be the first Pixar film to be mostly populated by human characters, which are much harder to animate than animals or toys. Brad got the go ahead to write, direct and act in the movie, so he wrote, directed and did voice work for his second feature film, The Incredibles. This time around, Brad achieved both critical and box office gold. And like any good director, he saved (in my opinion) the best character for himself, Edna Mode. That's right. Edna is voiced by a guy and yet she's still fabulous! You may have also noticed that Mr. Incredible looks a bit like Brad. Supposedly, he didn't realize the animators had done that until too far into production to change anything. Supposedly.

After The Incredibles, Brad went on to write and direct another Pixar hit, Ratatouille. He became part of the senior creative team at the studio, overseeing such gems as Up, Toy Story 3, Brave, Monster's University, Inside Out and Coco. At some point in there he got the opportunity to direct his first live action film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol for Paramount. That led to a second live action movie, Tomorrowland, this time for Disney, which he also wrote, produced and did some design work. Then, earlier this year, he finally released The Return of Edna Mode, more popularly known as The Incredibles 2. It was worth the 18 year wait.

Brad's work has earned him numerous Annie Awards, Oscars, Golden Globes, Saturn Awards and BAFTA Film Awards. He reportedly has several project ideas in the works. I'm pretty sure that whatever the future brings for Brad, he's going to need more shelf space in the den.