January 22 - John Hurt

On this day, in 1940, John Vincent Hurt was  born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. John was the son of a former actress turned engineer and a former mathematician turned vicar. At the age of eight, he began attending St. Michael's Preparatory, an Anglican school in Otford, Kent. It was here that he caught the acting bug after playing the role of a girl in The Blue Bird. John failed the entrance exam to the school his brother attended, was strongly discouraged from becoming an actor by his parents and enrolled in the Grimby Art School as art teacher was apparently an acceptable professional choice. In 1959, he won a scholarship to St. Martin's School of Art in London. In 1960, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he would finally get to indulge his true passion for the next two years.

Image copyright Columbia Pictures

Upon graduation from RADA, John performed his first film role in 1962's The Wild and the Willing. Four years later, he had his first major role as Richard Rich in A Man For All Seasons, with Orson Welles. Over the next five and a half decades, John would amass a body of work that easily put him the running for greatest actor of his time. With many dozens of films to his credit, the bare minimum highlights are the stuff most actors of today can only dream of. They include:

Caligula in the BBC's I, Claudius (1976)

Max in Midnight Express (1978) - Golden Globe win, BAFTA win, Oscar nomination

Image copyright Paramount Pictures

Kane in Alien (1979)

John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) - BAFTA win, Golden Globe and Oscar nominations

The Narrator in Jim Henson's The StoryTeller (1988)

Bird O'Donnell in The Field (1990) - BAFTA nomination

Mr. Olivander in the Harry Potter films (2001-11)

The War Doctor in Doctor Who (2013)

Image copyright Disney

John became part of the Disney family in unfortunate way. He voiced the Horned King in the 1985 animated disaster The Black Cauldron. From what I remember from the only time I've seen it, his performance created a superbly scary villain that was totally wasted in a decidedly sub par movie. Thankfully, John was also the narrator for the 2000 picture, The Tigger Movie. Whether or not that actually elevated his standing in Disneyana is a matter of personal taste, I'll just say that The Tigger Movie doesn't generally make people cringe like mentioning Cauldron does.

Image copyright BBC

In 2004, John was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and became a Knight Bachelor for services to drama in 2015. That same year, he went public with the fact that he had been diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer. He underwent treatment, declared his cancer to be in remission and continued working practically non-stop. He was set to star as Don Quixote in a Terry Gilliam project and as Former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the Gary Oldman film The Darkest Hour, when his health would begin to go downhill again. Both projects had to happen without him when he died at his home in Cromer, Norfolk on January 25, 2017, just three days after his 77th birthday.

November 1 - Retta Davidson

On this day, in 1921, animator Retta Davidson was born in Arcadia, California. She should not be confused with another female animator named Retta Scott (because every company has two women named Retta, right?). After graduating from high school in 1939, Retta joined the Walt Disney Studio in the the Ink and Paint Department. Her work from this era can be "seen" in Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia. The onset of World War II would change that.

As many of the studio's male animators were being drafted into various parts of the US war machine, the studio began to get desperate for people to continue making movies and therefore a profit. In 1941, the women of the Ink and Paint Department were invited to submit their own drawings to be considered as replacements. Retta became one of just 10 women to be promoted to animator. She would only be in the position a year, however, before the war would claim her as well. She went to work for the Navy for four years. In 1946, Retta returned to Disney and began working as an assistant animator to whoever was lucky enough to nab her for their project. She continued in this role until 1966, when, still reeling from the death of Walt, she left the studio to become a freelance artist.

Retta spent time in Hollywood creating television commercials and working with Chuck Jones on such projects as Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century. She would later move to Montreal, Canada to teach animation at Concordia College there and Sheridan College in Toronto. Retta would be a part of the team that produced the animated version of Lord of the Rings in 1978 and the team that created the 1981 Canadian animated movie Heavy Metal (which happened to feature the voice of yesterday's post, John Candy).

In 1980, Retta came back to the Disney family to help train a whole new batch of animators. She was given a coordinating animator credit on both The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Retta continued as a trainer until her retirement in 1985. She would pass away in Carlsbad, California on June 12, 1998. She was 76.