Rollin "Ham" Hamilton's 110th Birthday!

Rollin Clare* Hamilton was born 110 years ago today in South Dakota. His parents were William Clarence Hamilton and the former Ella Stevens, both natives of Iowa.

Two years earlier his older brother, Louis had been born in Iowa, but shortly after that, the young family was on the move to South Dakota where William worked as a druggist. His work had the family on the move every few years throughout the area.

In the first two decades of the new century they lived in Edgeley, Grafton and Grand Forks, North Dakota as well as Casper, Wyoming. In 1906 the family grew once again when they welcomed Irene Martha. By 1922 the family had made the move to Los Angeles, California.

In February, 1924, the twenty-five year old Hamilton was the first outside animator hired at the Disney Bros. Studio. He immediately began working on what would be the fifth of the Alice Comedies, Alice's Spooky Adventure. Later in 1924 Disney hired his younger sister Irene as an inker.

Rollin would remain animating with Disney throughout the remaining Alice shorts and all of the Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoons until early May 1928 when he was among those who exited the studio when Charles Mintz took over physical production of the Oswald cartoons.

Mintz, with the studio headed by his brother-in-law George Winkler would only produce the Oswalds for about a year. In April 1929 Universal who distributed the shorts and owned the character took over production themselves. Their new cartoon studio was on the lot and run by New York transplant, Walter Lantz.

Hamilton, who had become close with Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising during the years they spent together at Disney's and the Winkler studio, joined them when they struck out on their own after earlier failed attempts. Success came when they sold the idea of a cartoon series to Warner Bros. The series, starring a new character Bosko, would be produced by Leon Schlesinger.

Rollin stayed animating for the Warner Bros. cartoons even after Harman and Ising ended their production of the shorts a few years later. Schlesinger took over and physical production was moved to a Looney Tunes studio on a corner of Warner Bros. Sunset Blvd. lot.

Hamilton's last known credits were on some Looney Tunes shorts directed by Tex Avery in 1938.

On June 1, 1952 Rollin Hamilton suffered a heart attack and passed away two days later at the age of fifty-two. He was laid to rest at Forest Lawn in Glendale.


* Most records have his middle name spelled as "Clare," but has also been found listed as "Claire."

Century Birthday - Mel Blanc

The legendary Man of 1000 Voices was born 100 years ago today. Mel Blanc was born Melvin Jerome Blank to Frederick and Eva (Katz) Blank in San Francisco, California. Mel arrived four years after an older brother, Henry Charles.

By 1910 the family was living comfortably at 3332 Twenty First Street* in the Mission District of San Francisco and for at least a while there, they had a live-in servant. The two story house still stands today having survived the past 108 years, including 1906 when the Great Quake and subsequent fire leveled much of the city.

Shortly after Mel turned six, the family had moved to Portland, Oregon. For a few years the family made their home at 225-1/2 Sherman Street. By 1920 they has moved to another home at 543 SW Fifth Avenue. A decade later April of 1930 they would be listed next door at 541. While growing up Mel developed a good singing voice and he also learned the violin. After he graduated from Lincoln High school he found work at the local radio station KGW as whatever was needed; singer, announcer, musician. He would eventually become part of the station's orchestra, though at this point playing the tuba. He moved for a brief time back to San Francisco when he found work with the much larger KPO radio orchestra. In 1930 he was offered the job of pit conductor at the Orpheum Theater back in Portland. Mel jumped at the opportunity.

During this period however, the vaudeville circuit was beginning to cool down with most of the major acts migrating to radio. Mel would soon find himself working in radio, and again back in San Francisco at station KGO. He was emcee of "The Road Show," a variety program, but the position also afforded him the chance to do a fair amount of acting -- often using his growing library of different dialects. In 1932 he succumbed to his urge to seek his fortunes in Hollywood and he soon packed his car and headed south.

MORE SOON...










* I have several sources that confirm the family at this address from 1910 through late 1914. Mel specifically noted in his wonderful 1988 autobiography, That's Not All Folks! that they lived at Bush and Divisadero streets; where they may have been prior to 1910.

Century Birthday - Joe Grant

Disney artist Joe Grant was born a century ago today in New York City. His parents Eva and George Albert Grant made their home at at 611 W. 136th Street in Manhattan, where George worked as an art director at the New York Journal. Eva was a native New Yorker whose parents immigrated from Russia and George arrived with his parents from Poland (or Russia) at the age of five and settled in Philadelphia.

Joseph Clarence Grant* was born in the spring of 1908 and before he was three years old, the family had relocated to Los Angeles when his father was hired as art director on the Los Angeles Examiner. After a couple years they had returned to New York and soon Joe was joined by a sister, Geraldine.

For Eva and the children the bounce from Los Angeles and back to New York would be repeated over the years as George had issues with alcohol and frequently lived apart from his wife and children, even when they were in the same city.

When he was ten, Joe, Geraldine and their mother were back in Los Angeles living with her father, Abe Green. Two years later they had returned to New York, but lived with aunt Sophia, (his mother's sister) at 105 113th Street. His father was a short walk away on 110th Street. By the time he was in high school in 1924 they had returned to Los Angeles where they lived at #28 Avenue 24 in Venice, just a few doors from the beach.

Following high school, Joe would further his art studies at Chouinard near downtown Los Angeles, where a decade later he would return as an instructor. He soon after got a job as an artist for the Los Angeles Record (with a little help from his father) and in a short time he was asked to create caricatures for the paper's Drama section. His illustrations here would eventually catch the eye of Walt Disney. The newspaper clipping at left is an example of Joe's caricature work for the L.A. Record in August, 1932.
(click for a larger view)

In 1929 Joe had married and was living at 1224 S. Norton Avenue. A year later they had moved up the street to 1337½ S. Norton Avenue.

He was hired at the Disney Studio in 1933 based partly on his ability to caricature celebrities -- a talent needed for Mickey's Gala Premiere, a short being made at the time. Pictured here is an early gag drawing he drew later that year for the Silly Symphonies short, Funny Little Bunnies. In time he would come to head the Character Model Department at the studio.

By the mid 1930s Grant had moved to 4930 La Roda Avenue** near Eagle Rock, a much shorter drive to the Hyperion Avenue studio.

By 1938 Jennie and Joe had settled in the Verdugo Woodlands neighborhood above Glendale. The house at 1346 Opechee Way would be home they would share for more than half a century. They would raise their two daughters, Carol and Joann in this house.

Grant's first association with the Disney Studio ended in 1949 when the Character Model Department was broken up. He would return to work at the studio in the late 1980s. In the four decades in between Joe continued his artwork and formed Castle Ltd. (for the creation of greeting cards) and along with his wife, Opechee Designs a ceramics studio. Some of the tiles he created are shown below***.
Sadly, his wife Jennie passed away in June, 1991

Joe passed away on May 6, 2005 in his studio doing what he loved. He was a few days shy of his 97th birthday.

* When I asked Joe what the "C" in his name stood for he laughed and said Clarence, and he added that it was the kind of name that could get you beat up when you're a kid!

** In the 1935 city directory he is listed at 3950 La Roda -- an address that today doesn't exist. The addresses may have been re-numbered that year, in which case it is probably the same house.


*** The artwork for the tiles is owned by the estate of Joe Grant [Jennifer Grant-Castrup]
Tiles shown are from the collection of the author.

Century Birthday - Godfrey Bjork

Iwerks animator Godfrey Bjork would have been 100 years old today.

Please see the earlier post from last May for more about this almost forgotten figure.

In the months since then, I have found that he was married at the time to a woman named Lydia. They apparently did not have any children.

Noted in the earlier post was information that Bjork is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The exact plot location is shown on the map below.


View Larger Map

Century Birthday - Art Babbitt

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Arthur Harold Babitzky entered the world in the unlikely city of Omaha, Nebraska, at the eastern edge of the state on the Missouri River.

His parents Solomon* and Zelda were married in 1898 in their native Russia. His father first came to the United States in 1903 and his mother arrived in 1906. Solomon worked in the clothing/textile industry, in dying and cleaning.

Arthur was the first of four children to survive beyond infancy. A sister, Louise, born a year after him, also did not live more than a few years. It wasn't long before he was joined by brothers Issie and William. The family home was at 1436 S. 13th Street, just south of downtown Omaha.

In 1913 the family moved a hundred miles up the Missouri River to Sioux City, Iowa. In a short time the family had grown again with the birth of Arthur's sister, Fannie (or Hannah) in 1914. Their first home there was at 705 W. Seventh Street but after a few years they had moved across the street to 822 W. Seventh.

When Art was in his late teens the family relocated once again to the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York and Art soon moved out and went to work in the field of animation. In 1929 he went to work for Paul Terry and Frank Moser where he animated on the Aesop's Fables cartoons and later on TerryToons.

Frustrated with the low pay, Babbitt moved west to Hollywood hoping to find work with the Walt Disney Studio. He succeeded and was hired in July of 1932. There he would animate on Mickey Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphonies; notable among them, the award-winning Three Little Pigs.

In the summer of 1934, Art embarked on a trip to New York along with some other studio employees including Frank Churchill, Les Clark and Dick and Juanita Lundy. After sailing on the Santa Elena through the Panama Canal they arrived back in Los Angeles on September 3.

Babbitt was continually trying to convince Vladimir "Bill" Tytla, his friend from Terrytoons, to come west to Disney's and by mid-November 1934 he had started at the studio. Babbitt invited Tytla to move in with him at his home in the Hollywood Hills at 5600 Tuxedo Terrace. In this home they began offering life drawing classes in the evenings after work.

Art grew to become on of the top animators at the studio during the 1930s and is credited with creating the character of Goofy (initally known as "The Goof.") He was a directing animator on the feature films, known for the characters of the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the stork in Dumbo. Perhaps his most well known is the scene of the the dancing mushrooms in the Nutcracker Suite segment of Fantasia.

In 1936 Babbitt and Tytla moved to another home they shared just a short distance away at 5700 Hill Oak Drive. It wasn't long though, before Art had married Marge Belcher, a dancer (and Snow White reference model.) Tytla moved out and soon was married himself.

In May of 1941 Babbitt was the primary figure behind the artists strike of the Disney Studio. This action would help lead to the establishment of what is now The Animation Guild, Local 839. Much more has been written about this incident elsewhere.

Art would go on to work at other studios including UPA and the studio of a former Disney co-worker, Shamus Culhane. He was also a co-founder of Quartet Films where he would be involved in the production of numerous commercials.

With an apparent fondness for homes in the Hollywood Hills, he and his second wife, Annamarie lived in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl at 6902 Los Tilos Road during the 1950s. During this decade they had two daughters, Linda and Karen.

When Art married again in the 1960s to Barbara Perry, they lived in a home just up the road in the same neighborhood. They remained there for many years including the time that Art was animating on the Raggedy Ann and Andy feature for Richard Williams.

Art Babbitt passed away at the age of 84 on March 4, 1992.

During his lifetime Art had been honored with dozens of awards for his work, and this week he will be among those honored by The Walt Disney Company as a Disney Legend.


* Solomon would later change his name to Samuel.

Century Birthday - Dick Lundy

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Richard James Lundy, an only child, was born to parents James and Minnie Lundy a century ago today. He was born in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan on the eastern tip of Lake Superior at the Canadian border. The family would soon move south to Detriot where James began work as an inspector for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.

By the time Richard was ten years old, his parents were separated and he and his mother had moved north to Port Huron, Michigan. A short time later he and his mother were back in Detroit where she, now divorced, was employed as a waitress at a nearby restaurant. The home they lived in was on Tillman Street very near where highways 96 and 94 intersect today.

Late in the 1920s Dick was in Los Angeles and by the middle of summer,1929 he had arrived at the Disney Studio on Hyperion where he began in the ink & paint department. That September he was moved up and began inbetweening. With the departure of Ub Iwerks the following January, production began to slip behind. Lundy was soon promoted to animator to help with getting production deliveries back on track. He animated on several classic shorts including Three Little Pigs and Orphans Benefit, the film that would begin his association animating "the duck" later to become known as Donald.

Dick had several residences throughout the area during the 1930s, his first was an apartment at 1740 N. Gramercy Place, just north of Hollywood Boulevard. He moved closer to the studio by 1931 when he lived at 4637 Melbourne Avenue**. Lundy had moved again the next year to an apartment at 6514 Cerritos Place, near Cahuenga Boulevard.

Soon he would be married and he and his new wife, Juanita would settle into an apartment at 3335 Rowena Avenue. In 1934 they were on the move again, to a home at 4115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks. Following his work on the landmark feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Lundy was given to opportunity to direct some of the cartoon shorts beginning in 1939. By this time Dick was divorced from Juanita and he and his second wife, Anne, were living at 4615 Strohm Avenue in North Hollywood where they would stay until the late 1940s.

He remained a director at Disney's until fall,1943 when he departed to work for Walter Lantz. Dick started as an animator, but quickly moved back to directing on shorts starring Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker as well as the musical Swing Symphonies. When the Lantz studio closed down in 1948, Lundy moved into making commercials at Wolff Productions.

In the spring of 1950, an offer for more money and directing work landed him at MGM where he briefly took over Tex Avery's unit and directed Caballero Droopy and several Barney Bear shorts. Throughout most of the1950s and 1960s, Lundy lived in Glendale, tucked up against the hills near the Brand Library at 1553 Western Avenue.

He returned to animating when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera in early 1959 where he worked on The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo shows among many others. Aside from a period when he animated on Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, Lundy remained at H-B until his retirement in late 1973. He continued to stay busy with freelance work for several years following that 'official' retirement.

Dick Lundy later moved south to beautiful San Diego County. He passed away there on April 7, 1990 at the age of 82.


**Note: Lundy's boss, Walt Disney, had lived next door to this house (at 4639 Melbourne) six years earlier, a short fifty yard walk from his studio at the time on Kingswell Avenue.

Century Birthday - Virgil Ross

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Virgil Walter Ross was born a century ago today in Watertown, New York. His parents, Bertha Mary (Hart) and Ellwood Burdsoll Ross, both natives of New York state, married in 1901 and made their home at 142 Washington Street. Their first son, Ellwood Hart Ross, (known by his middle name as a child) arrived in late April in 1906 and Virgil followed about 15 months later.

By the time Virgil was ten, the family had moved to 41 Auburn Street in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park, Michigan where the his father worked as a tool-making foreman at the Ford Motor Company.

By 1920 the family had relocated to 2857 E. Theresa Street in Long Beach, California and Ellwood continued his trade, but was now working in the nearby shipyards. They had settled further north in the late 1920s at 211 W. 126th Street in Compton a home currently in the shadow of the 110/105 freeway interchange. While in high school he picked up a pencil and signed up for a class in cartooning.

Shortly after he graduated Virgil began working as a commercial illustrator with an office on Figueora in downtown Los Angeles. Having been turned down when he brought his portfolio to the Disney Studio, he did find work at the Mintz Studio.

His stay at Mintz did not last long and he soon found himself inbetweening at Ub Iwerks' Studio. A short time later he had moved on to Walter Lantz where he eventually became an animator. There he worked with many rising stars of the industry including a young (six months younger than himself) man known by the nickname of Tex.

When Tex Avery was hired in 1936 by Leon Schlesinger to direct cartoons at his studio, he brought along a few of his Lantz co-workers including Sid Sutherland and Ross. He animated in Avery's unit until Tex departed the studio in 1941. Then after a short stint with director Bob Clampett he settled in with Friz Freleng beginning an association that would last nearly three decades!

While at Schlesinger's he met an inker at the studio, miss Frances J. Ewing. They were later married and made their home at 5933 Carlton Way. By 1945 they had moved to 3337 Bennett Drive in the hills above the Cahuenga Pass. They would live on Bennett Drive for more than fifty years!

Following the closing of Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the early 1960s, Ross worked at Filmation, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng and Marvel, among others.

Virgil Ross passed away at his home on May 15, 1996 at the age of 88. He had lived long enough to receive the recognition of his peers in the industry and cartoon fans around the world.

Century Birthdays - Al Coe and Roy Williams

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Al Coe, and animator known for his work on shorts at Disney and Lantz and Roy Williams, long time story man at Disney were both born a century ago today!

Sorry everyone, but I lost the articles I wrote on these two (and for Dick Bickenbach which should have been up on August 9th) with the crash of my computer. This was made worse by the fact that my internet connection was down for several days and even now is sometimes on, sometimes off (thank you Verizon!) To add to the confusion, I have family in town for the next week or so.

I apologize for missing these posts, but they WILL be up as soon as I can get them finished and posted.

Century Birthday - Edward Plumb

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Disney composer and orchestrator Edward Holcomb Plumb was born and raised in Streator, Illinois, a town on the Vermilion River 100 miles southwest of Chicago. His parents Samuel and Anna already had two sons by the time Edward was born. Along with his older brothers Samuel Walter, Jr. and Gordon, his grandmother, Levancia Plumb lived with them at 206 Wilson Street.

Plumb arrived in California in the early 1930s and found work as a composer and orchestrator in the movies. His first work for Disney was for the memorable short, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

He married Louise Mason and they welcomed a daughter, Susan in May of 1938. They made their home on a winding street in the hills near Silver Lake. With the addition of two more daughters Anne and Elisabeth in the early 1940s, the family was complete.

While Frank Churchill wrote the songs for Bambi, the poetic score for the film was executed by Ed Plumb. His work on Bambi would earn him the first of his four Academy Award nominations.

Although Disney seemed like home base for Ed, he frequently worked on projects beyond Walt's Studio during the 1940s and early 1950s. He worked on titles for Republic, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox. At one point he even lent his talents to MGM for the Tom & Jerry short, The Missing Mouse (1953.) It is unclear where Scott Bradley may have been for this one!

By the early 1940s Plumb had moved his family to 12203 Laurel Terrace in the hills of Studio City. Here he was a neighbor of other Disney composers Charles Wolcott, whose home was at 12185 and Joe Dubin who was later at 12373 Laurel Terrace.

Edward worked as orchestrator at the nearby new location of the Disney Studio on the animated features The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp.

When Disney entered the field of television, Edward was tapped to work on The Disneyland TV show, notably Ward Kimball's "Man in Space" show. He orchestrated on the Davy Crockett films and on Westward Ho The Wagons, that also starred Fess Parker. His final film project, also for Disney, was Johnny Tremain in 1957.

Edward Plumb passed away on Friday April 18, 1958.


(If you haven't already clicked on the location links above, check out the Google Maps Locations for Ed Plumb.)

Century Birthday - Cecil Surry

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Cecil Hays Surry was born in the state of Washington and raised on a fruit farm in Chelan County in the center of the state. His parents, Bert and Eliza (who went by Lydia) were from Ohio and Kentucky respectively. Following the death of Lydia in the mid 1920s, Bert moved Cecil and younger brother Paul south to San Diego, California.

Cecil moved to Hollywood in 1929 when he went to work for Walt Disney where he worked on the Silly Symphonies. After a short time with Disney, he migrated to Walter Lantz where he animated beside Sid Sutherland and Tex Avery. In 1936 Avery was offered an opportunity to direct at Leon Schlesinger's Studio. Surry and Sutherland joined him as animators in his unit a couple of months later.

In the mid 1930s Cecil met and married Constance Berry and they had three children, Kathleen, Sheila and John.

In the mid 1940s Cecil began doing comic book work for Western Publishing. By 1950s Cecil had a home on Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Woodland Hills and was animating at United Pictures of America, know better as UPA. At UPA he primarily worked on Mr. Magoo cartoons including the Oscar-winning shorts "When Magoo Flew" and "Magoo's Puddle Jumper."

Cecil Surry died suddenly on September 19, 1956 at the age of 49, the result of a heart condition.

Century Birthday - Hardie Gramatky

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Hardie Gramatky, perhaps best known for his classic childrens book, Little Toot, was born 100 years ago today in Dallas, Texas. He was also a prolific illustrator, watercolorist and, in the early 1930s, an animator at the Disney Studio.

Named for his father, Bernhard August Gramatky, Jr. was the middle of three sons born to Bernhard and Blanche Gramatky. The family's early home on San Jacinto Street in downtown Dallas was at a site now occupied by the J.P. Morgan-Chase Tower. Following the death of his father from tuberculosis, Blanche moved the family in with her sister, Minnie Ott, in Southern California. They lived around the corner from the Paramount Studio at 5433 Romaine Street for a short time before settling in the nearby suburb of San Gabriel.

Hardie gained early recognition for his art in the Junior Times, an insert in Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times. Among the many other young artists who had their work published in the Junior Times were future Disney co-workers, Fred Moore and Ed Benedict.

Gramatky moved north to attended Stanford University in the mid 1920s and later enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute back in Los Angeles. At Chouinard he would meet and fall in love with another artist, Dorothea Cooke. They dated while at school and were married in 1932.

He was hired at the Disney Studio in 1929 to work on the Mickey Mouse comics and in short order moved into animation. The smiling and energetic Gramatky can be seen in action throughout the softball game footage released on the DVD set More Silly Symphonies and detailed here in recent posts. He spent six years at Disney and in mid-1936 he and Dorothea moved to New York where he found work with various magazines including Fortune.

Inspired by the tugboats he saw from the window of his studio, he painted and penned the story of Little Toot, published in 1939 by Putnam. A restored classic edition of Little Toot is slated to be published this spring by Penguin Putnam.

Nine years after it was first published, the story of Little Toot was animated by the Disney Studio and included as one of the seven musical segments in the feature Melody Time.

For a couple of years during World War II, Hardie was back in Los Angeles supervising the production of training films for the Army Air Corps. Shortly after their return to the east coast, he and his family settled in Westport, Connecticut. Their home was at 60 Roseville Road, just a short walk from the Boston Post Road, the colonial-era route between New York City and Boston.

Hardie remained a resident of Westport for the remainder of his life. He and Dorothea continued their work for many magazines and Hardie also had several more books published. Beyond what grew to become a series of Little Toot books, he also wrote and illustrated a list of charming childrens literature including Loopy, Sparky, Creeper's Jeep and Hercules.

Hardie Gramatky passed away from cancer at the age of 72 in late April 1979 and although he died too soon, his work continues to be enjoyed by the world.

I encourage you to visit gramatky.com, a website maintained by his daughter, Linda Gramatky Smith. Here you can read many more stories and see dozens of examples of his wonderful artwork. This is a prime example of what so many other artists should have and unfortunately don't!

Century Birthday - Leigh Harline

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Leigh Adrian Harline, the youngest of Carl and Matilda Harline's thirteen children, was born March 26, 1907 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received music training from J. Spencer Cornwall, conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and following his graduation from the University of Utah, he began working for a string of radio stations.

His radio work sent him to San Francisco and, by 1929, to Los Angeles where he was music director and announcer at KHJ radio. He went to work at the Walt Disney Studio in 1932 arranging and scoring animated shorts. As Disney began production of his features, Harline was enlisted to write songs along with Frank Churchill and Paul J. Smith. His most famous composition, When You Wish Upon a Star, was written for Pinocchio and the following year he received an Academy Award for it and another for the film's memorable score.

By this point Leigh had started also working for Columbia Pictures, scoring several features a year, among them the films of the "Blondie" series with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake. He did his last work for Disney in 1941 with his music for the Pluto short, The Sleepwalker. Over the next twenty years Harline was recognized by the Academy with five more nominations for the Best Music Oscar. In 1947 he was commissioned to write an orchestral work for the centennial of the settlement of Utah. He later wrote the musical scores for two well-known films for the Church, Man's Search for Happiness, and In This Holy Place.

From the late 1940s he worked almost exclusively for 20th Century Fox but he also composed for Paramount and later MGM. In the mid 1960s he worked on several television shows and he even was involved with music for a New York World's Fair film.

Leigh Harline passed away on December 10, 1969 from complications of throat cancer.

Century Birthday - Johnny Cannon

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

John William Cannon was born on March 17, 1907 in Terre Haute, Indiana. At the time, his father was working as a switchman for the railroad.

His parents, John and Maybelle, had married in 1906, and they had three sons; Johnny, Guy and Maurice. By the time Johnny was eleven, his parents had divorced. His brothers were taken by their father to live with their grandmother in Decatur, Illinois and Johnny stayed with his mother.

While in his late teens he moved to California and lived just a few steps from the beach on Ozone Avenue in Ocean Park near Santa Monica.

He was hired at the Disney Studio in 1927 to work on the Oswald cartoons. In 1928 Charles Mintz pulled the Oswald contract and a majority of the artists departed, Johnny was among the few who stuck with Walt. He wouldn’t have know that Mickey Mouse was about to make his appearance.

He was promoted to animator on the Mickey Mouse shorts and it seems that he remained on shorts throughout his time at Disney’s.

Following his departure from the Disney Studio in 1940, it is not known where he worked, but he was an artist at one of the studios when, sadly, he suffered a fatal heart attack on December 6, 1946.

Note: Cannon is among those featured playing softball in the rare footage recently released on the DVD set, “More Silly Symphonies” In Leonard Maltin's commentary he is said to have been thrown out at second base (although it is clearly not Cannon! -- it is in fact, Hardie Gramatky.) Cannon can be seen later in a challenge for a bat with director Jack King.) In a few days I will be posting a detailed listing of the softball players.

Century Birthday - Tom Johnson

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Thomas A. Johnson was born on March 14, 1907 in New York to parents Calvin and Daisy Johnson. He had an older brother, Richard and a younger sister, Rose. He lived in the Bronx until he migrated to Miami when the Fleischer Studio headed south.

Johnson seems to have spent his career on the east coast. He began as a newspaper cartoonist and made the jump to animation in late 1930 when he took a job with Max Fleischer. His work started with the "bouncing ball" short subjects, but eventually graduated to work on Betty Boop and later Popeye shorts. He animated on the features Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town and stuck around when Fleischer's was transformed into Famous Studios when Paramount took over production.

He remained animating for Famous until is death in September, 1960.

UPDATE! (Aug, 26, 2007)
Michael Sporn has posted some late-era Johnson artwork and a lengthy biography for him on his blog (err, Spolg) from a 1939 Fleischer Animated News. It can be reached by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the bottom of the post.

Century Birthday - Robert Bentley

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Robert J. Bentley was born on March 11, 1907 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He entered the New York animation scene in the late 1920s as an assistant, by the mid 1930s he was a full-fledged animator in Hollywood working in Frank Tashlin’s unit at Leon Schlesinger’s studio. Bentley moved to Miami in 1938 (along with several others from California) to work on the Fleischer feature Gulliver’s Travels. He returned by 1941 to work at Walter Lantz’ Studio.

In the mid 1940s he jumped to MGM where he worked under directors Tex Avery and Dick Lundy. By the early 1950s he was bouncing between Paul Smith’s unit at Lantz and MGM. He settled back at Lantz in mid 1954 and remained there until late 1959. The 1960s and 1970s saw him at Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, Ed Graham and DePatie-Freleng.

He passed away at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills on November 28, 2000 at the age of 93.

There is an interesting branch in Bentley’s family tree that may have had some influence in his career choice; his mother, Hannah, married early animator Les Elton (Leslie Elton Brownley) after his father’s death. This may have raised a few eyebrows because she was about the same age as Les’ own mother when they married in 1922. Moreover, Elton’s two sisters were also married to animators! His sister Dorothy was married to Vaughan Kaufman and his sister Charlotte to John McManus, later an animator at Disney.

Century Birthday - Tom McKimson

BORN 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

Thomas Jacob McKimson was the eldest of the three McKimson brothers and was followed into the animation business by brothers Robert and Charles, Jr. His family moved from Colorado to Los Angeles in the mid 1920s and he began his career at the Walt Disney Studio in 1928. While there, he worked as an assistant to animator Norm Ferguson, but departed in mid 1930 to animate at the fledgling studio of Romer Grey in Altadena. When Grey could no keep work coming in, Tom left to work with Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising at their studio. He remained until MGM took over production of their own cartoons.

McKimson worked as an animator and layout artist in Bob Clampett's unit at the Leon Schlesinger "Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies" Studio and is credited with the original design of Tweetie Pie. Tom's contributions there ended in 1947 when he left to take the position of art director for Western Publishing, the parent company of Golden Books. The coloring books and comic books he oversaw featured many of the cartoon characters he was familiar with from his years in animation. He retired after twenty-five successful years in 1972.

Tom was married for over fifty-five years to the former Ernestine Belle Lackey. They had three children Wendy, Vicky and Timothy.

His wife Ernestine died in October of 1993, and Tom passed away on Valentine's Day, 1998 in West Los Angeles.