October 11 - David Dodd Hand

On this day, in 1986, animator David Dodd Hand passed away in San Luis Obispo, California. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey on January 23, 1900, Dave wanted to start a career as a newspaper comic strip artist. He moved to Chicago to take some commercial art classes. He ran out of money to pay for those classes and began to work for Wallace Carlson, a pioneer in the art of animation. Dave discovered he loved the medium and moved to New York, where he would do work with most of the animation studios around at the time. In late January 1930, almost on his 30th birthday, he moved again, this time to California and began working for the Walt Disney Studios.

Dave worked as an animator on all kinds of shorts throughout the early Thirties. He got assigned birds a lot. There was just one problem. He wasn't very good at animating. His co-workers described him as being very mechanical. Most of the animators would let the drawings dictate how a character would move, flowing along as the art moved them. Dave would chart out the flight of his birds with a military precision that had nothing to do with how birds actually fly. Luckily, he was good at something else. Directing.

In 1933, Walt had Dave direct his first short, a Minnie and Mickey story called Building a Building. He was clearly better at directing than he was at animating birds. Some of the best Disney shorts over the next few years would be produced under the leadership of Dave: 1934's The Flying Mouse, 1935's Who Killed Cock Robin? and The Orphan Kittens and 1936's Thru the Mirror. Dave's secret was that he didn't worry about every little detail in the short. He put the animators on the team that, by playing to their individual strengths, would produce the best work. And then he drove them pretty hard. His mantra was "You've got to make decisions and as long as you're right 51 percent of the time, you're right." This system worked out well, for Dave and for the studio. The studio got great shorts and Dave got promotions.

When Walt decided that he wasn't going to direct the studios first feature himself, the job went to Dave.  As Supervising Director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the future of the studio was literally in Dave's hands. He pulled it off with flying colors. For the remainder of the Thirties and part of the Forties, he would be a surrogate for Walt around the studio, watching over the shorts, returning as Supervising Director again for Bambi. Dave was Walt's right hand man. Which caused another problem for him. What sort of future do you have at a company when literally the only job left for you rise into is held by someone younger than you who has no intention of ever leaving? As much as Dave revered Walt, he eventually grew tired of being a second banana who had to watch the first banana get all the credit. In 1944, he left Disney to go across the pond for a new venture.

Dave approached the largest entertainment company in England at the time, The Rank Organization, with a plan to expand British animation. J. Arthur Rank, the organization's founder, gave him the green light to start a studio, Gaumont British Animation. Dave would produce two different series, Animaland and Musical Paintbox, creating a total of 19 shorts. Unfortunately, he couldn't find an American distributor and GBA would close its doors in 1950. Dave returned to the United States, settling in Colorado Springs. He would spend the next 18 years working for the Alexander Film Company. Alexander made advertisements that played during the intermission at drive-in movie theaters as well as industrial films.

David Hale Hand, Dave's son, currently owns the rights the films his father made in England and hopes to produce new films in both series. Dave was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 1994.

Also on this day, in American history: Alaska P. Davidson