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.

Neighbors - chapter I

Santa Barbara

Like many seaside communities, Santa Barbara has been home to quite a number of artists. A handful of them would move to Los Angeles and ply their profession in the field of animation. Others from the industry would eventually retire in this picturesque community.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, two men who would later have significant careers in the field, were neighbors here on the same street!

These two were Erni Nordli and Paul Julian. They were separated in age by just two years and likely attended the same schools, though history doesn't record if they actually knew each other while they were neighbors.

By 1930, seventeen year old Ernest Nordli and his family had recently relocated here from Salt Lake City, his birth place. His parents, Hans and Hattie moved the family into a modest home at 901 Valerio Street just southwest of the town's business district.


Ernest had five siblings; one older brother, Philip; two younger brothers, William and Douglas and two younger sisters, Ruth and Genevieve. The family of eight squeezed into this three bedroom home where they all shared one bathroom.

A career in the arts was not an unlikely pursuit for Ernest. His father was a lino-typist at a nearby publishing house and his mother taught music at their home. Within the next few years, Ernest would be among the artists working at the Disney Studio on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Later he would be an art director on Dumbo and Fantasia then moved into layout at both Warner Bros. and Disney's.

A few houses up the street, beyond a dog-leg in the road, was the Julian family who had moved west from South Bend, Indiana a decade earlier.

Paul Julian was born Paul Hull Husted on June 25, 1914 in Illinois. His brother Harry was born two years later in Indiana. By 1920 their mother, Esther, had married a second time to a gentleman by the name of Frank Julian.

While it is not clear what became of their father, (He may have been killed while serving in WWI) it is known that within the next few years the boys would take the name of their stepfather.

The Julian family would grow to six with the arrival of two more boys, Frank Jr. and Daniel, born after they arrived in Santa Barbara. Their three bedroom home, similar to many in the area, can be found at 814 W. Valerio Street.

Between Frank, a barber and Esther, an art school instructor, the family was well-off enough to have a live-in servant, Margaret Johnson, who was from Scotland.

Paul Julian would go on to become a prolific watercolorist and a well respected background artist at several studios including Warner Bros. and UPA, where his paintings were the essence of the Oscar-nominated short, The Tell-Tale Heart.

(click on the addresses listed above for a map to the homes)

Note: This is the first of what will certainly be many posts on this subject. Over the past fifteen years I have done a tremendous amount of research on where the luminaries of the industry lived and worked. Along the way I discovered that quite a few lived near one another and in some cases were even roommates. Some of the names you'd expect (Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, for example,) while others are quite surprising! If you liked this post, there is a lot to look forward to in the coming months!

Ghosts of the Charles Mintz Studio

A BIT MORE OF THE WHERE...

On a nondescript street just a short walk from the busy intersection of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd. stands a building that's been there for more than eighty years. In those years it's been painted and painted over again. Its large arched windows, once complete with a decorative wrought iron fence have been sealed over.

(click on the images below for larger versions)

This building, not at all different from many others scattered across this city, sits in a state of quiet decay. Weeds, chewing gum, spray paint and goodness-knows-what-else are evident on the walls and sidewalk. One might wonder what things this building has witnessed in its eight decades....

Upon closer inspection it becomes clear....

In 1930 the staff of the nearby Charles Mintz Studio gathered there for a few group photographs.

Here are composer Joe DeNat, Manny Gould, Harry Love, Charles Mintz, George Winkler, Al Rose, Ben Harrison and Jack Carr.

In this photo are DeNat, Art Davis, Charles Mintz, Sid Marcus and Dick Huemer. The building is located at 5454 Virginia Avenue just around the corner from the Mintz Studio at 1154 N. Western Avenue.

Much of the 1920s era stucco work on the building is intact as shown in the photos below. It's a miracle these details exist, considering the amount of renovation (and layers of paint) this place has been subject to!

(click for larger image)

I experienced a mildly chilling moment when it confirmed without question that this is the exact location where these legends of the industry stood to be photographed over 75 years ago.

A few steps away at 5437 Virginia is the apartment building where George Winkler, Manny Gould, Joe DeNat and production manager James Bronis were living at the time. It is apparent that this building too has seen better days.


I'd like to thank Harry McCracken at Scrappyland.com for having posted the original photos of the Mintz Staff. If you haven't visited Scrappyland yet, I suggest you take a look -- it's a terrific retrospective on an often forgotten cartoon series and the people that created it! The middle group photo is from Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic.