April 26 - Eyvind Earle

Image courtesy eyvindearle.com

On this day, in 1916, Eyvind Earle was born in Manhattan, New York. When he was just two, his family moved to Hollywood, California. When he turned 10, his father, looking to stimulate his young son's mind, gave him an ultimatum: read 50 pages every day or paint a picture every day. Eyvind thought a moment before replying why not do both? His dedication paid off sooner rather than later. At 14, he had his first one man show at a gallery in Paris.

Image courtesy amazon.com

When he was 21, Eyvind moved from Hollywood to New York City, traveling the entire way by bicycle. Naturally, he paid for the trip by painting and selling watercolors all along the journey. When he finally reached the East Coast, he had a showing at the Charles Morgan Gallery. Each of the next two years saw another showing at the same gallery, the 1939 one ending with the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchasing one of his works for their permanent collection. Throughout the Forties, Eyvind had a contract with the American Artist Group and produced over 800 different Christmas cards for them.

Image courtesy ha.com

In 1951, Eyvind signed on with the Walt Disney Studio as an assistant background painter on Peter Pan. By 1953, he was no longer an assistant and was earning credit for his work on films like For Whom the Bulls Toil, a Goofy short, and the Academy Award winning Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom. He kept busy for the next few years doing the backgrounds for more shorts like Paul Bunyon and Working for Peanuts and features like Lady and the Tramp.

Image copyright Disney

As work began on Sleeping Beauty, Eyvind was basically given free rein to develop the look and color scheme of the film. He took inspiration from medieval tapestries, adding his own flair to create the movie’s highly stylized look, purposeful in his intention to not adhere to any current beauty standards. As part of his work in the film, he also created the dioramas that can still be seen throughout Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland. His artistic vision didn’t come without controversy, though. As Sleeping Beauty’s production schedule dragged on, changes kept being made in the leadership on the project. When Clyde Geronimi became supervising director rather late in the process, he was less enamored of Eyvind’s backgrounds than his predecessors. The two men had extreme creative differences over how much detail needed to be included, with Clyde’s specific complaint being that he needed backgrounds for the important stuff, the animation, not Christmas cards. As a result of the fighting, Eyvind would leave Disney in March 1958, before production was finished, and Clyde would have Sleeping Beauty’s background paintings softened up a bit before being filmed. The end results are still pretty stunning.

Image courtesy pinterest.com

Eyvind began working for John Sutherland Productions after his hasty departure from Disney (John was a fellow former employee of Walt and was probably quite sympathetic to Eyvind’s tales of woe). John Sutherland Productions produced mainly instructional cartoons for Harding College, but Eyvind also managed to do other types of work as well. One notable project from this period is a 1963 short he animated for a Tennessee Ernie Ford television special called The Story of Christmas. Contemporary reviews declared it beautiful and thought it should be aired every season for years to come. That hasn’t quite happened, but it was digitally remastered in the late Nineties

Image courtesy walnutst.com

In 1966, Eyvind retired from show business permanently to focus on painting. Over the next 34 years he created hundreds of paintings, sculptures and drawings, working steadily right up to his death. In the mid Seventies, he began releasing limited edition prints based on his work, but even with those series, and all the one man exhibitions he had over his lifetime, the majority of his work was never presented to the public. His estate continues to release prints of ‘new’ works to this day based on pieces held in private collections. In spite of walking away from the industry after only fifteen years of work, the Annie Awards presented Eyvind with the Windsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, his contributions over that short period of time were that significant. In 2015, he was declared an official Disney Legend for bringing his spectacular style to Sleeping Beauty and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom. His Legendary status was bestowed posthumously, though. Eyvind had passed away from esophageal cancer at his home in Carmel-by-the-Sea on July 20, 2000. He was 84.

April 24 - Clyde Geronimi

Image courtesy Disney.wikia.com

On this day, in 1989, Clito Enrico Geronimi passed away in Newport Beach, California. Born in Chiavenna, Italy on June 12, 1901, Clyde (as he was known) and his family  immigrated to the United States before he turned seven. Clyde began his career, briefly, at the Hearst Studio before becoming part of the early animation powerhouse of J.R. Bray in the early Twenties. He worked as an animator alongside Walter Lantz. Eventually Lantz moved up to the position of director and used Clyde as one of his lead animators on series like Dinky Doodle (not many people remember Dinky anymore but he did get a shout out in Who Framed Roger Rabbit). By 1926, Clyde was starting to get director credits himself with an occasional screenwriting nod to boot. When Lantz started his own studio in 1930 and began producing new Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts, Clyde continued to support his old friend, not knowing that only a year later, he’d be working for the guy who created, and painfully lost, Oswald.

Image courtesy cartoonresearch.com

By 1931, the Bray Studio was completely out of the cartoon business (and almost out of business entirely). As a veteran animator, Clyde had no problem getting a position over at the Walt Disney Studio. He was immediately put to work in the Shorts Department. He worked on Silly Symphonies, Mickey Mouse cartoons, Pluto shorts, pretty much everything the studio was producing. In 1938, he was moved up to Director status and the promotion quickly paid off. He directed the Silly Symphony The Ugly Duckling and won the 1939 Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoon. Clyde’s work would win a second Oscar just two years later for the Mickey Mouse/Pluto short Lend a Paw.

Image copyright Disney

During World War II, when a large chunk of the studio was overseas fighting, Clyde was given the task of Segment Director on The Three Caballeros. After the end of the war, he was moved permanently into the Feature Department as a director. Over the next 14 years, Clyde directed segments on Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp. He’d been bumped to a Supervising Director position by One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but he didn’t stick around long enough to see the film get released (he did still get a directing credit though). By that time the Shorts Department at Disney was gone and, after the release of Sleeping Beauty, the features were on seemingly rocky ground. Clyde figured he’d get out while he could.

In 1959, Clyde started a new career in television animation, mostly with United Productions of America. He spent the next several years directing episodes of The Dick Tracy Show, The Adventures of Mr. Magoo, The New Casper Show, and Linus the Lion-hearted, ending his career with Spider-Man. He retired in 1969, after nearly 50 years in the animation business.

Image courtesy animatedviews.com

In 1979, at the eight Annie Awards, Clyde was presented with the Windsor McCay lifetime achievement award. It was presented to him by none other than his old co-worker, Walter Lantz. In 2017, for his 28 award winning years with the Walt Disney Studio, he was declared an official Disney Legend. His legend status was awarded posthumously, his children accepting on his behalf, for the Legend himself had quietly passed away at his home in Newport Beach, California on April 24, 1989. He was 87.

March 29 - Jack Kinney

On this day, in 1909, John Ryan Kinney was born somewhere in Utah. By his teens, Jack's family had moved to Los Angeles, California where he was a football player at John C. Fremont High School with Roy Williams (who would later become the Big Mooseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club). In February 1931, he began working at the Walt Disney Studio as an animator. He worked on Mickey Mouse shorts like The Band Concert and Silly Symphonies like The Cookie Carnival. He then moved into the story department and became a story director for Mickey and Pluto shorts. Some of his credits in this phase are the classics Brave Little Tailor, Mickey's Trailer and Bone Trouble.

By 1940, Jack had moved to sequence director for feature films. He worked on sections of Pinocchio, Dumbo, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. During World War II, Jack help direct the animated documentary Victory Through Air Power and won an Academy Award for the Donald Duck short Der Fuehrer's Face.

Image copyright Disney

During the same time Jack was directing sequences for the feature films, he was one of two directors for all the Donald shorts (Jack King was the other) and he was the main director for all the Goofy shorts from 1940 until 1945. He is credited with the creation of Goofy's How to... series and directed the only Goofy short to ever receive an Oscar nomination, How to Play Football.

Image copyright Disney

As the Fifties began, Jack began directing some of the Walt Disney Specials series of shorts. 1954's Pigs Is Pigs nabbed him a third Academy Award nomination. The same year, he also directed The Lone Chipmunks, Chip and Dale's final short. Jack then briefly moved into television animation, putting together episodes of the Disneyland series, but the writing was on the wall. When the Shorts Department was dissolved in 1958, so was Jack's position. After 27 years with Disney, he no longer had a place to hang his hat.

Image courtesy amazon.com

Not to be deterred, Jack started his own studio with Hal Adelquist, another former Disney man looking for a new home. Their first project was a feature for UPA/Columbia featuring Mr. Magoo, an adaptation of 1001 Arabian Nights. He then teamed up with his younger brother Dick (who had also been an animator for Disney) to produce a new television series of Popeye the Sailor. Then he became a story man for The New Three Stooges. He eventually landed at Hannah-Barbera in the late Seventies as a story director for Saturday morning fare like Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and it was there that he ended his career in 1983.


Also in 1983, Jack was awarded the Windsor McCay Award at that years Annies for his lifetime of contributions to the art of animation. In 1988, he published a short memoir titled Walt Disney and Other Assorted Characters, detailing his years in Burbank. On February 9, 1992, Jack passed away quietly at his home in Glendale, California. He was 82.