June 22 - Floyd Norman

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1935, Floyd Norman was born in Santa Barbara, California. While still in high school, Floyd began dabbling in the art of animation, creating short films on his own. One of his first jobs out of school was as an assistant to comic book artist Bill Woggon, the creator of the Katy Keene character featured in Archie Comics. During this same time he took classes at the Art Center School in Pasadena, focusing on illustration. After two years of instruction, Floyd was hired at the Walt Disney Studio as an inbetweener in 1956, the first black man to ever do so with Disney.

Image courtesy laughingplace.com

And now we have to take a small detour from our regularly scheduled post into the Land of Finer Points. When asked the question “Who was Disney’s first black animator?” a large number of people will give Floyd’s name as their answer. And yes, Floyd was the first black man to work in the animation department at the Walt Disney Studio. However, as another section of the populace will be quick to point out, while he did many marvelous things in other departments at the studio for years, he never actually ascended to the position of Animator. For decades at Disney, an artist had to produce over 100 feet of film in order to get screen credit as an Animator. As petty as it might sound to people outside the industry, only a select few ever earned the title of Animator. By those standards, Ron Husband, who joined the studio in the Seventies, is Disney’s first black Animator, having risen to the position for Cody in The Rescuers Down Under. Ron worked on most of the movies that came out during the Disney Renaissance only to find himself out of a job in 2004, when the company mostly stopped doing hand drawn animation. So there you have it: first black man doing animation at Disney, Floyd Norman, first black Disney Animator, Ron Husband. Now back to our post.

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Floyd’s first project with Disney was doing inbetween work on Sleeping Beauty. Shortly before that film’s production wrapped up, however, his career was interrupted with a draft summons from the United States Army. He fulfilled his patriotic duty, returning to the studio when his tour was over in 1960. He continued as an inbetweener on One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone. At this point, Walt saw some of the sketches Floyd periodically made to entertain his co-workers, saw some potential in him and moved him into the Story Department. He spent the next couple of years with Walt and Larry Clemons, trying to turn the darkness of The Jungle Book into a light, breezy animated movie. When Walt died in December 1966, Floyd decided to strike out on his own and created Vignette Films, Inc. with Leo Sullivan, another black man working at the studio (I hesitate to say the other black man, but let’s just say the studio got a lot less colorful when these two talented guys left; it was not good for the studio’s diversity).

Image courtesy atlantablackstar.com

It didn’t take long for Floyd and Leo to become involved in several high profile projects. They began writing and animating segments for Sesame Street, which debuted in 1969. They were instrumental in developing the original Hey Hey Hey It’s Fat Albert television special that came out the same year. They also produced training films for the United States Navy and made some of the first movies to document black history. Floyd also began his long association with Hanna-Barbera during this period as a layout artist on the Josie and the Pussycats and Sealab 2020 television series.

Image copyright Hanna-Barbera

In the early Seventies, Floyd returned to Disney briefly as an uncredited assistant animator (the level just under the coveted Animator) on Robin Hood. He spent the rest of the decade at Hanna-Barbera, working mostly as a layout artist on series ranging from Goober and the Ghost Chasers to Scooby’s Laff-A-Lympics to Godzilla. As the calendar rolled on into the Eighties, Floyd was promoted to the position of Story Director and contributed to The Smurfs, Pac-Man, Snorks, and Super Friends.

In the mid-Eighties, Floyd returned to Disney again, this time in the Comic Strip Department. He has the distinction of being the last writer and layout artist of the syndicated Mickey Mouse comic strip before the company discontinued it in 1995. At that point, Floyd was sucked back into the House of Mouse as a regular player, folding right back into the story department of the animation studios. The sad part of that statement is that he turned down the opportunity to help a little studio called Pixar develop a little movie called Toy Story in favor of (what he saw as) steadier work at Disney (they were two separate companies at that point). He contributed story to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, The Tigger Movie and Dinosaur. When Pixar asked for his help again (who says opportunity never strikes twice), Floyd made sure he said yes and earned additional story credits for Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.

Image courtesy imdb.com

When Floyd turned 65, he was given retirement from Disney, whether he wanted it or not. Turns out he didn’t. He combated his ousting by just constantly showing up at the studio, mostly driving his longtime companion, Adrienne, to her job every day. They’d met at the company and she still worked in the Publishing Department. Simply by his presence, Floyd would continue to contribute to all sorts of projects including story elements to Cinderella II and Kronk’s New Groove. His latest productions have been non-Disney related things like the movie Free Birds and Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken.

Image courtesy netflix.com

It should come as no surprise that Floyd has racked up a number of awards and honors over the course of his career. In 1979, he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. In 2002, he was the recipient of the prestigious Winsor McCay Award at the Annies. In 2007, he was declared an official Disney Legend. In 2008, he was awarded the Inkpot Award for his dozen years on the Mickey comic strip. He won a Sergio Award in 2013, a DFC Disney Legend Award from the Disneyana Fan Club in 2014, The Friz Freleng Award in 2015, a Special Achievement Award from the African-American Film Critics in 2016 and the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society earlier this year. Whew.

Even at 84, Floyd still occasionally makes appearances at Comic Cons around the country but if you’d like to learn more about his life and career, check out the documentary that came out a few years ago, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life, currently available on Netflix and, for a fee, Amazon Prime Video.