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Home , Chouinard Art Institute, Floyd Norman, Harriet Burns, Lillian Disney, The Imagineering Story

Monthly Program Synopsis: Disney Women Animators and the History of Cartooning February 26, 2019, MH Library

Suman Ganapathy

VP Programs, Yvonne Randolph introduced museum educator from the Museum, Danielle Thibodeau, in her signature vivacious style. It was followed by a fascinating and educational presentation by Thibodeau about women animators and their role in the history of cartooning as presented in the Museum located in the Presidio, San Francisco.

The talk began with a short history of the museum.

The museum, which opened in 2009, was created by one of Walt Disney’s daughters, . After discovering shoeboxes full of Walt Disney’s Oscar awards at the Presidio, Miller started a project to create a book about her father, but ended up with the museum instead. Disney’s entire life is presented in the museum’s interactive galleries, including his 248 awards, early drawings, animation, movies, music etc.

His life was inspirational. Disney believed that failure helped an individual grow, and Thibodeau said that Disney always recounted examples from his own life where he never let initial failures stop him from reaching his goals. The history of cartooning is mainly the history of Walt Dissey productions. What was achieved in his studios was groundbreaking and new, and it took many hundreds of people to contribute to its success.

The Nine Old Men: Walt Disney’s core group of animators were all white males, and worked on the iconic Disney movies, and received more than their share of encomium and accolades.

The education team of the Walt Disney museum decided to showcase the many brilliant and under-appreciated women who worked at the Disney studios for the K-12 students instead.

Margaret Winkler: Was a successful film distributor and was known as MJ Winkler. She gave unknown Disney his very first break in Hollywood by signing a contract with him for six ‘Alice in Cartoonland’ comedies. She helped establish the first animation studio in Hollywood. She was very accomplished as a promoter and helped establish animation as a standard while going for the movies. Walt Disney ultimately made 57 Alice comedy shorts.

Lillian Bounds Disney was hired as an ink artist and was also Walt Disney’s secretary. They wed in 1925. She is credited with suggesting the name . It was also due to her that Minnie Mouse was created by Walt Disney at the same time as Mickey. She was married to Disney for 41 years until his death in 1966.

Lillian Disney pledged $50 million for the construction of a new concert hall in . Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in 2003, six years after her death. She also helped fund the founding of the Institute of the Arts.

Female Artists (Ink and painters): The “ink and paint girls” were originally hired to trace over designs and colours made by the men, manily the nine old men. They prepared celluloid sheets or cels with their perfect pen and brush strokes. Some were trained chemists and made thousands of different colours in the paint laboratory for which they were awarded patents (e.g. Donald Duck yellow). Around 100 in number and mostly below 25 years of age, life in double shifts was taxing and tiring. Women artists were paid only $18 a week compared to $300 for a male animator.

Retta Scott, Animator was the first female animator hired by Disney and was given screen credit for her work. She made the animations for . She worked in the story department and created the storyboards for scenes for Bambi where her talent was noted by Walt Disney himself, and she was given more complex responsibilities thereafter. Though is most recognized, it is Retta Scott who opened the doors for women as animators.

Bias in the Workplace: There was constant and ongoing bias in the workplace, Thibodeau noted.

Women were not allowed to take on any creative roles for a very long period of time, and were only given the considerably less paying ‘ink & paint girl’ jobs in physically separate environments, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.

Even the facilities for men and women were wildly different. Men had access to a fully equipped penthouse gymnasium “a womanless paradise” as it was called, whereas women had very basic facilities to relax, with no frills at all. Walt Disney’s crew went on strike to demand better pay and equal opportunities, after which a few changes were made.

Despite these drawbacks, many notable firsts in the workforce were hired by Disney.

Kathleen Dollard: First employee and woman to be hired in in 1923.

Wa Chan: First Chinese employee was also hired by Disney.

Floyd Norman: First African-American animator still working at Disney at 81 years old, was hired in the 1950s.

Mary Blair, artist, animator, designer LOCAL MH CONNECTION

She is the most well-known woman hired by the Disney company. She worked on some well- known films like Alice in Wonderland, Peter pan, Cinderella, and also created designs in for ‘It’s a Small World” and many others. She was part of the goodwill tour of Disney greats in Latin America with Walt Disney and the crew, where she faced the sexism of the time when all the others’ names were mentioned in the documentary and newsprint at the time, whereas she was only referred to as “the artist”.

She was inducted in the group of in 1991.

[The local connection: Blair was a 1929 graduate of Live Oak Union High School, Morgan Hill, CA, and went on to study fine art at SJ State College and the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. A watercolor painting by Mary Blair hangs in the Morgan Hill Historical Museum. It was a wedding gift to her high school classmate Virginia Horton Sword in 1934. In 2009 Virginia gave the painting to the Historical Society. Currently, it is on loan to the Pasadena History Museum for their exhibit on California Women Artists.] (Credit Chris Hopwood. Not part of the talk.)

Harriet Burns, Imagineer: She was the first woman to be hired in the Imagineering department. She was prop and set designer for TV shows and made prototypes for the future Disneyland theme park, including models of the , the Matterhorn, , haunted mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, among many others. She was honored with a window display on main Street USA, the first woman to have that accolade.

A clip from upcoming documentary about imagineers called “The Imagineering Story” was played. https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The_Imagineering_Story It is a yet to released documentary series of 6 films about the history of and theme parks.

Museum Details: Location: 104 Montgomery Street in the Presidio, San Francisco, CA 94129, (415) 345-6800, www.waltdisney.org. Museum hours: 10 AM – 6 PM with last entry at 4.45 PM, Open daily, except on Tuesdays, January 1, Thanksgiving Day, and December 25. The museum has free community days and also holds classes and workshops on animation. Field trips can be arranged, and the classes are meant for all ages. In the second building behind the museum, an exhibition of the entire life of Mickey Mouse runs from May 2019 – January 2020.

Questions from the Public: Thibodeau answered various questions from the public, and imparted interesting information such as the techniques used in hand animation (which included celluloid sheets and panes of glass, and loading 7 layers on the camera to create an illusion of depth – it was all painstaking and highly skilled work. These days it is all digital),

She shared the fact that the first ever full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (released 1937, 1 hour 28 minutes) had taken 5 years of meticulous work, and initially, Disney had been told that it would fail and bankrupt him. It was a critical and commercial success.24 painted frames contributed to one second, 350 to 15 seconds. About 600 pictures per day were painted during the making of the film.

Advice for people wanting to be animators: Asked to give some advice for young people who want to be animators, Thibodeau recommended doing as much as they can. This included taking college level courses – a Fine Arts degree, Claymation etc., develop your skills, recording and sharing as much as possible online, the new way to get noticed, and creating a standout portfolio and demo, get internships, freelance work or at least volunteer in the departments of interest . Most importantly, early failure shouldn’t stop you the way it didn’t stop Disney, who was close to bankruptcy many times in order to see an idea through.

Conclusion: It was an interesting and enthralling evening. Danielle Thibodeau was knowledgeable and passionate about her area of expertise, and the Morgan Hill public and AAUW members in attendance were so fortunate that she graciously drove all the way from the Presidio for her presentation.