Monday, November 22, 2004
Yes Virginia, There is a Disney
Today on Cartoon Brew http://www.cartoonbrew.com Amid Amidi questioned the awarding of the Winsor McCay award to Virginia Davis. It is his right. I`m not going to start a blog war. But I will defend the decision that I helped make to give this award to this person.
Amid says that she was just in the right place at the right time. That is not true. She was in Kansas City. Walt had to get her parents to move to Hollywood. Margaret Winkler insisted that Walt get the same little girl that she had seen in the reels that Walt showed.
No Virginia, no distribution deal. So is she important? She is the little girl that launched Disney Brothers Studio. I find that very important. She is the last living link to the very beginnings of the Disney legacy. Everybody else is gone. Just how important is Disney to the early days of animation?
Yes, other little girls played Alice later. So what? They couldn`t hold a candle to her. She was in Cartoon Land, she grabbed the bull by the tail, she rode on the back of the elephant, she had real talent, she saw it in her head and made it real for the audience. Margie Gay, please, by that time Julius the Cat was the star and the little girl played second fiddle to a Felix rip off.
I agree that Art Stevens should be on the list. He is on the list. So are a lot of others. This is how it works. We have a giant list with lots of people. All of them are worthy of the award. We try to get to the people on the list. We fight for the people we believe in.
And we are working against the clock. Time definitely plays a part in the decision. Last year we were, sadly, too late with John Hench. There are not very many of the first generation of animation left.
I voted for Virginia Davis because she did make a lasting contributions to animation, a studio named Disney. I don`t think that you could find anybody that knows anything about Walt Disney who would say that Walt would not have made a success, but a success in what field? Walt came out to Hollywood not to make cartoons but to be an actor.
Virginia Davis got him his first break. She got his foot in the door. And that break was in the field of animation, thank God! She set his feet on that path. I think that is important. Did she knowingly do this? No. You can argue that another person could have done the same thing. But they didn`t. Virginia Davis was the easy decision. Some of the others were harder to decide. -- Larry Loc
One quick note from me, if I can stick my head in here for a minute... The Winsor McCay Award is no longer exclusively a "Lifetime Achievement" award. Several years ago, the definition of the award was expanded to also include "Significant Contributions to the Art of Animation" and "Career Achievement". -- Stephen Worth
¶ 10:12 PM
Amid says that she was just in the right place at the right time. That is not true. She was in Kansas City. Walt had to get her parents to move to Hollywood. Margaret Winkler insisted that Walt get the same little girl that she had seen in the reels that Walt showed.
No Virginia, no distribution deal. So is she important? She is the little girl that launched Disney Brothers Studio. I find that very important. She is the last living link to the very beginnings of the Disney legacy. Everybody else is gone. Just how important is Disney to the early days of animation?
Yes, other little girls played Alice later. So what? They couldn`t hold a candle to her. She was in Cartoon Land, she grabbed the bull by the tail, she rode on the back of the elephant, she had real talent, she saw it in her head and made it real for the audience. Margie Gay, please, by that time Julius the Cat was the star and the little girl played second fiddle to a Felix rip off.
I agree that Art Stevens should be on the list. He is on the list. So are a lot of others. This is how it works. We have a giant list with lots of people. All of them are worthy of the award. We try to get to the people on the list. We fight for the people we believe in.
And we are working against the clock. Time definitely plays a part in the decision. Last year we were, sadly, too late with John Hench. There are not very many of the first generation of animation left.
I voted for Virginia Davis because she did make a lasting contributions to animation, a studio named Disney. I don`t think that you could find anybody that knows anything about Walt Disney who would say that Walt would not have made a success, but a success in what field? Walt came out to Hollywood not to make cartoons but to be an actor.
Virginia Davis got him his first break. She got his foot in the door. And that break was in the field of animation, thank God! She set his feet on that path. I think that is important. Did she knowingly do this? No. You can argue that another person could have done the same thing. But they didn`t. Virginia Davis was the easy decision. Some of the others were harder to decide. -- Larry Loc
One quick note from me, if I can stick my head in here for a minute... The Winsor McCay Award is no longer exclusively a "Lifetime Achievement" award. Several years ago, the definition of the award was expanded to also include "Significant Contributions to the Art of Animation" and "Career Achievement". -- Stephen Worth
¶ 10:12 PM
