Thursday, June 30, 2005
Joe Grant Remembered:
Tuesday Night I attended the celebration of the life of the great Disney artist Joe Grant at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Host Leonard Maltin introduced a number of animation notables including Pete Docktor, Charles Solomon, Eric & Sue Goldberg, Burny Mattinson, Dean DuBlois and Mike Gabriel. I was struck by how many people had such a strong attachment to Joe.
Some young people reading this may wonder, what is all the fuss is over folks like Joe? They were old and died and so what was special? The reason is we in animation learned much at the knees of the older masters, and I say that humbly as an Adjunct Professor of Animation myself. Sure, they gave us our first career breaks, but they also gave us our inspiration. Shamus Culhane taught me not only timing and how to fill out exposure sheets, he taught me about art and museums. That to be a cartoonist you didn't have to be rich to enjoy good taste. Joe Grant was a poet and calligrapher who loved to talk about the latest article he read in the New Yorker as much as what he did long ago on Dumbo.
Guys like Joe are the end of an era, the last of the Golden Age Generation who did the most famous cartoons ever. They all joined the business in the early 1930's, did their finest work in the 1940s-1950's, and now the average age of the remainder are in their 90s. Today besides Joe Barbera there are only two remaining animators from the original Tom & Jerry MGM Unit, One remaining Nine Old Man from Disney. It is the natural way of things for this generation of to slowly leave the stage, but we who came after want them to know we are proud and grateful to have known them. As the writer Michel de Montaigne once said: We can see far when we can stand on the shoulders of Giants.
Tom Sito ¶ 6:51 AM
Tuesday Night I attended the celebration of the life of the great Disney artist Joe Grant at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Host Leonard Maltin introduced a number of animation notables including Pete Docktor, Charles Solomon, Eric & Sue Goldberg, Burny Mattinson, Dean DuBlois and Mike Gabriel. I was struck by how many people had such a strong attachment to Joe.
Some young people reading this may wonder, what is all the fuss is over folks like Joe? They were old and died and so what was special? The reason is we in animation learned much at the knees of the older masters, and I say that humbly as an Adjunct Professor of Animation myself. Sure, they gave us our first career breaks, but they also gave us our inspiration. Shamus Culhane taught me not only timing and how to fill out exposure sheets, he taught me about art and museums. That to be a cartoonist you didn't have to be rich to enjoy good taste. Joe Grant was a poet and calligrapher who loved to talk about the latest article he read in the New Yorker as much as what he did long ago on Dumbo.
Guys like Joe are the end of an era, the last of the Golden Age Generation who did the most famous cartoons ever. They all joined the business in the early 1930's, did their finest work in the 1940s-1950's, and now the average age of the remainder are in their 90s. Today besides Joe Barbera there are only two remaining animators from the original Tom & Jerry MGM Unit, One remaining Nine Old Man from Disney. It is the natural way of things for this generation of to slowly leave the stage, but we who came after want them to know we are proud and grateful to have known them. As the writer Michel de Montaigne once said: We can see far when we can stand on the shoulders of Giants.
Tom Sito ¶ 6:51 AM
