May 13 - Burny Mattinson

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1935, Burnett Mattinson was born in San Francisco, California. Burny’s father, Bernie (the spelling of the second syllable is the only way to keep them apart), was a jazz drummer who later became a session drummer for Elvis Presley. When Burny was five, he saw his first animated film, Pinocchio, and fell completely in love with the medium. Every waking minute was spent drawing Disney characters on everything and dreaming of one day getting paid to do it. In 1945, Burnie’s jazz band broke up and he moved the family moved to Los Angeles. Burny barely made it through high school before he applied for a job at the Walt Disney Studio. In classic movie style, he was hired as part of the mail room in 1953, although he dreamed of one day actually meeting an animator. It didn’t take long for him to exceed his wish and actually become one.

Image copyright Disney

Burny got the opportunity to become an inbetweener in the Features Department in 1954. His first project was Lady and the Tramp. By 1959, he was an assistant animator for Sleeping Beauty. Following the end of production on 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Burny became number two to Eric Larson, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men. The pair worked together on The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and The Aristocats.

Image copyright Disney

By the early Seventies, Burny, who’d never had any formal art training, was good enough to be on his own. He was a full-fledged character animator on Robin Hood and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. As the decade came to a close, Burny moved from the animation desk to the Story Department. He was a lead storyboard artist for The Rescuers and received a story by credit for The Fox and the Hound.

Burny expanded the number of hats he wears by adding producer and director on Mickey's Christmas Carol, the first original Mickey Mouse cartoon to be released in theaters in three decades. He contributed a few story elements to The Black Cauldron but mostly stayed away from that mess by concentrating on the alternative project that a large chunk of the staff was doing, The Great Mouse Detective. Burny started out as a co-director on Mouse with John Musker, but when Michael Eisner became studio head partway through production and cut the budget and moved up the release date, he became the film's producer and John co-directed with Ron Clements for the first time. Since Mouse, Burny has worked as a story man, starting with most of the movies that made up the Disney Renaissance, including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan and Tarzan.  

Image courtesy d23.com

In 2008, Burny was declared an official Disney Legend, but even though he'd been with the company for five and a half decades at that point, the honor may have been given a little prematurely. He was made senior story supervisor on the 2011 Winnie the Pooh feature, returned to doing storyboards for Big Hero 6 in 2014 and did it again for Zootopia in 2016. You see, Burny still works at Disney full time, even today. He is officially the longest continuous cast member in the company's history. They had to make a special statue for his 65th anniversary last year because no one had ever made it that far before. And he still loves coming in to work every day. Will he retire anytime soon? Well, he's has an idea for another feature length vehicle for Mickey that he's been trying to get made for a while now. So if that project gets the green light, maybe. But until then, someone better start designing his 70th statue...