August 4 - Don DaGradi

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On this day, in 1991, Don DaGradi passed away in Friday Harbor, Washington. Born on March 1, 1911, on the East Coast in New York City, Don actually spent most of his childhood growing up on the West Coast in San Francisco, California. After graduating from high school, he took his artistic talents south to Los Angeles and the Chouinard Art Institute. He honed his skills for a few years before joining the Walt Disney Studio in the mid-Thirties, at the height of the Great Depression, as a background painter. He was quickly bumped up to the Story Department, where he contributed gags and minor plot points to many of the studio’s shorts produced at the time.

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As the studio grew, Don's responsibilities grew as well. By 1940, he was the production designer on Dumbo. Throughout World War II, he was put in charge of layouts for in the Shorts Department (really the only thing the studio was producing in those lean years). His work can be seen in classic films including Der Fuehrer’s Face and Victory Through Air Power. Following the war, Don added features to his plate as the layout artist for The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free.  At the end of the Forties, he started designing the color schemes and the overall feel of features. He sharpened the look of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.

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As successful as all of Don’s endeavors were up to this point, he didn’t really start hitting his stride until he became a senior member of the story department in the mid-Fifties. He has a full story credit on Lady and the Tramp and contributed additional story elements to Sleeping Beauty (as well as being part of that production’s design team). Then, in 1959, he made the leap into live action movies and blossomed like never before.

Don’s Legendary co-workers, the Sherman Brothers, once said that he wrote scripts with a sketch pad and pencil, meaning that Don’s pictures were worth more than a thousand words. He could draw a quick picture of what a scene looked like in his head and everyone else could see it too. Pages of words could flow from each drawing, most of the time with very little effort. Don’s first effort in the live action arena was at Walt’s personal request. He designed and wrote the underground cavern scenes in Darby O’Gill and the Little People. He followed that up by developing sequences in The Absent-Minded Professor, Pollyanna, Kidnapped and The Parent Trap. For the sequel to Professor, Son of Flubber, Don teamed up with the Legendary Bill Walsh, completely writing that film’s script between the two of them. It was a professional match made in heaven that would last until Don’s retirement nearly a decade later.

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After Flubber, Don and Bill created the script for what is arguably the Walt Disney Studio’s magnum opus, as far as live action films go. Mary Poppins turned out to be as whimsically delightful as it is because of the two men wrote it. Don is credited with creating the visions of everything from people popping out of chimneys and flying through the air to how a tea party on the ceiling might look. His sense of wonder paid off. Audiences have adored the film since its debut and it was honored with five Academy Awards. Don and Bill’s script had also been nominated for an Oscar but lost out to Beckett.

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The overwhelming success of Mary Poppins basically gave Don and Bill carte blanche as screenwriters. While they would never reach those same heights again, they add several more classic Disney films to their resumes. Over the next seven years, the duo wrote Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., Blackbeard’s Ghost, The Love Bug, Scandalous John and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

During his career, Don was also tapped to occasionally do some moonlighting over in Imagineering. He designed costumes for Disneyland cast members including the outfits the resident marching band wore. He also designed the look of the exteriors of attractions, like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, keeping them in line with the looks he helped create for the animated features they were based on. And then, in 1970, after 34 years of making magic on and off the silver screen, the man who often described himself as a misplaced cartoonist retired from Disney.

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Don and his wife of many years, Betty, moved north to the state of Washington, enjoying their post-work life away from the hubbub of Hollywood for the next two decades. When Don passed away in August 1991, it was just a few months before his old company would honor him, and his writing partner Bill, as official Disney Legends. He might have been 80 years old at his death, but in his heart he still saw magic everywhere he looked.