November 23 - Fred Moore

On this day, in 1952, animator Fred Moore passed away in Los Angeles, California following complications as a result of a car accident the day before. Born in the same city on September 7, 1911, Fred had very little formal training as an artist. He attended a handful of art classes at the famous Chouinard Art Institute, which he paid for by bartering janitorial services, but the rest was all natural talent. Shortly after graduating from Polytechnic High School, Fred took advantage of the situation when a friend of his had to bail on a job interview at the Walt Disney Studios. The then 19 year old went to apply instead and got the job.

Fred started out in the Shorts Department (mainly because the Features department wouldn't exist for several more years). He became an expert at drawing the studios scrappy little mouse. He was also the main animator for the Silly Symphony of The Three Little Pigs. Walt's comment after seeing the finished Pigs was "at last, we have achieved true personality in a whole picture." The picture won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1934. Fred would work on over 35 shorts, earning another Oscar and an additional Oscar nomination in the process.

Image copyright Disney

Shortly after the release of The Three Little Pigs, Walt put Fred in charge of another group of characters, the dwarfs from the studio's first animated feature. Fellow animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston once declared that the dwarfs were Fred's crowning achievement saying "in the public's eye there have been no more memorable characters than the dwarfs." Fred would continue to contribute to features with the characters of Lampwick in Pinocchio (generally considered to be a self portrait), Timothy Q. Mouse in Dumbo, some of the scenes with the mice in Cinderella, the oysters in Alice in Wonderland and the mermaids in Peter Pan.

Image copyright Disney

Contrary to Frank and Ollie's assertion about the dwarfs, I think Fred's biggest, longest lasting contribution to Disney was the redesign of Mickey Mouse for 1940's Fantasia. He did principal animation for Mickey on the short Brave Little Tailor, which was the last time the mouse appeared as a "pie-eyed" character. For Fantasia, the biggest change Fred gave Mickey was actual pupils in his eyes, something that made the character exponentially more expressive. He also made Mickey's body more pear shaped than round and changed his skin tone from white to be more Caucasian. Not much has changed for Mickey since then other than his fashion sense.

Photo taken from traditionalanimation.com

One of Fred's other legacies are the sketches he would do of young ladies. Sometimes they were nude, sometimes (at least partially) clothed but they were always in humorous poses. Other animators were constantly asking Fred for drawings of his girls and they even influenced the looks of the centaurettes in Fantasia and Casey's daughters in the short Casey at the Bat, among others.  His unique design eventually became a class of its own known as a Freddie Moore Girl. Animators still refer to that look today.

Fred left the Disney studio for two years in the late Forties to work for Walter Lantz's studio, where he helped redesign another iconic character, Woody Woodpecker. His life would be tragically cut short during work on Peter Pan when he and his second wife, Virginia, were in a head-on collision returning from a football game in November 1952. Fred would survive long enough to make it to St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, across the street from the Disney studio. 14 years later, Walt would pass away in the same building. For all of his genius at the drawing board, Fred would be given the Winsor McCay Award in 1983 and be made an official Disney Legend in 1995.