March 23 - Norman Palmer

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 2013, Norman Palmer passed away in his sleep at his home in Northridge, California. Norm was born on October 7, 1918 in Santa Ana, California the fourth generation of his family to be native to the area. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1937 and became a projectionist for the Walt Disney Studio the following year. After six months on the job, he moved into the Editing Department and stayed there for the rest of career.

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After helping edit features like Pinocchio and Fantasia, World War II came along and Norman did his patriotic duty, enlisting in the United States Navy. He quickly became part of the Field Photo branch and began working with the likes of legendary director John Ford. He spent most of his tour editing films for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington but he did spend some time on the front as an aerial photographer doing reconnaissance work.

When the war was over, Norman returned to Burbank and resumed his editing duties for Disney. It wasn't long before a young lady in the Ink and Paint Department caught his eye. In December 1947, Barbara Major became Mrs. Norman Palmer and happily remained his wife until her death 52 years later.

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As the Fifties began, Norman made two important contributions to the company. First, he created a whole new genre of wildlife pictures with the Tru-Life Adventure series. His ability to edit thousands of hours of raw footage down into entertaining nature films, perfectly paired with just the right music, set the standard for years to come. It's really his editing that won Oscars for movies like The Living Desert, Water Birds and In Beaver Valley. Second, he took on the potentially thankless task of mentoring the boss' kid. When Roy E. Disney joined his father and uncle's company, he started in the Editing Department and learned everything he needed to know from Norman.

After the Tru-Life Adventures ran their course, Norman continued editing other live action movies for the studio like The Incredible Journey, The Gnome-Mobile and The Shaggy D.A. He also edited more than two dozen episodes of the Wonderful World of Color (and all its later versions) right up to his retirement in 1983. In 1998, for his 45 years of hit making genius in the editing room, Norman was made an official Disney Legend. He also received a posthumous homage in the video game Bendy and the Ink Machine: one of the game's characters is a projectionist named Norman Polk. He was 95 when he died.

November 30 - Dick Huemer

On this day, in 1979, Richard Martin Huemer passed away in Burbank, California. Dick is one of those animators who was around for the early days of cartoons, did almost every job connected to cartoons and helped make the genre what it is. I would also wager that no one outside of real animation aficionados has any idea who he is.

Born January 2, 1898 in New York, New York, Dick was a student at P.S. 158 in Brooklyn. After graduating from high school, he attended the National Academy of Design and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, both in New York City. His first job in animation was at Raoul Barre's Studio in 1916. Seven years later, he'd moved over to the Max Fleischer Studio as an animation director where he also helped develop the character of Koko the Clown. By 1930, Dick had moved to Hollywood and taken a position at the Charles Mintz Studio, pumping out Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. Three years later, Dick joined Oswald's original studio, Disney, and stayed there for the next four decades.

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In his early years with Disney, Dick worked as an animator on Silly Symphonies like The Tortoise and the Hare and Mickey Mouse shorts like Lonesome Ghosts. Fellow animator Ward Kimball said his favorite piece of Dick's animation was Donald Duck in The Band Concert. Dick then directed a few shorts including 1938's The Whalers and 1939's Goofy and Wilbur. He moved on as a story director for features starting with Fantasia. Kimball, only partially tongue in cheek, credits Dick with introducing Walt to music that wasn't Sousa marches and therefore giving Fantasia some quiet, sophisticated moments it might not have had otherwise.

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Dick's writing skills came in handy on several of the features the studio produced during the Forties and early Fifties. The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, Peter and the Wolf, and Alice in Wonderland all benefited from his talents. The technique he employed while co-writing Dumbo may have been instrumental in getting the picture made. Instead of submitting a completed storyboard like typically happened, Dick and his writing partner, Joe Grant, kept giving Walt storyboard chapters that usually ended in a cliff hanger. Walt enjoyed them so much, his enthusiasm for the project just kept growing.

In 1948, Dick left the Disney company to draw a comic strip called The Adventures of Buck O'Rue and create animated commercials for the new medium of television. After three years of freelancing, he returned to Disney to elevate the studios television projects and help with its burgeoning publishing division. Dick's creation of a number of episodes breaking down and explaining the animation process for the Disneyland series rank among the finest work he ever did. He also adapted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Tru-Life Adventure movies into books (or into a new book version in 20K's case). He began writing a Tru-Life comic strip in 1955 and continued it until he retired in 1973.

In 1978, Dick received the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement at that year's Annie Awards. A year later, the man who was there for the birth of animation, suffered through the medium's growing pains and helped shape it into what we all know and love today, passed away at the age of 81. In 2007, Dick was made an official Disney Legend.

October 30 - Paul J. Smith

On this day, in 1906, composer Paul J. Smith was born in Calumet, Michigan. By the time Paul graduated from high school, the family had moved to Caldwell, Idaho where his dad, Joseph, was a professor at the College of Idaho. Not surprisingly, Paul spent three years studying music at that very same college. The boys in the family all turned out to be pretty musical. Joseph composed several songs for the college, Paul's brother Arthur became a studio musician and played on the soundtracks of all kinds of movies and television shows and Paul himself became a legend.

In 1925, Paul moved on from the College of Idaho to attend the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois. While there, his talent earned him a scholarship to Julliard but for some reason he never used it. After graduating from Bush, Paul would spend two years teaching at Elmhurst College. In 1932, he moved to Los Angeles, California to go back to school at UCLA. This time he majored in English and wrote four musical comedies during his time there.

When Paul landed a job at the Disney Studio in 1934, he hit the ground running. He loved to push the boundaries of scoring animation just as much as Walt loved to push the boundaries of the animation itself. After composing for some shorts, Paul co-wrote the music for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline. He would continue this pattern of scoring some shorts then creating music for a feature film over and over for the next few decades. All told, Paul wrote the score for over 70 of Disney's shorts. His feature credits include Pinocchio (which earned him an Academy Award), Fantasia, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, the animated portions of Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart, and Cinderella.

About the time of Cinderella's release, the studio began producing its Tru-Life Adventure series of animal documentaries. Paul would score most of them, using the same techniques that he used to compose music for animation. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston would later acknowledge that those films became immeasurably better because of Paul's innovative scores. Throughout the Fifties and early Sixties, Paul would move into scoring many of the studio's live action classics. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Shaggy Dog, Pollyanna, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Parent Trap are just a few of the movies that benefited from Paul's touch.

In 1962, after 28 years with the Disney studio, Paul officially retired from the company but not from making music. He scored 26 episodes of Leave It to Beaver and 35 episodes of the Wonderful World of Color. He's even credited with some of the background music in a special celebrating Donald Duck's 50th birthday in 1984. On January 25, 1985, Paul passed away at the age of 78 due to complications brought on by Alzheimer's Disease. In 1994, for all his marvelous musical contributions, he was made an official Disney Legend.

Also on this day, in American history: John J. Loud