Disney’s Magic Makers: Frank Thomas
Welcome to part three in our look at Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men.” Our previous posts have featured Les Clark and Ollie Johnston. This week, we look at Frank Thomas.
Contents:
Biography
Work at the Studios
Spare Time & Retirement
Frank Thomas, born September 5, 1912, was raised in Fresno, California. At the age of nine, he asked his father (President of Fresno State University) how he could make money by drawing pictures. Many years later, as a sophomore at Fresno State, Frank decided to merge his art interest into the motion picture business. Frank went on to study at the Chouinard Art Institute (after finishing his education at Stanford) where he eventually met another Stanford graduate who told him about job openings in the Disney Studios art department. On September 24, 1934, Frank Thomas joined The Walt Disney Studios as employee no. 224 and was assigned to work on “Mickey’s Elephant.”
Scenes animated by Thomas include the dwarfs crying in front of a “sleeping” Snow White; the spaghetti-eating sequence in Lady and the Tramp; Mickey Mouse and the king in The Brave Little Tailor; German dialogue scenes in a WWII Propaganda film Educate for Death; Mickey and the bear in The Pointer; Pinocchio singing at the marionette theatre; Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather in Sleeping Beauty; Merlin and Arthur as squirrels and the wizard’s duel scene in The Sword in the Stone; King Louie in the Jungle Book; Winnie the Pooh and Piglet; the dancing penguins in Mary Poppins; Bambi and Thumper learning how to ice skate; as well as several villains including the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Lady Tremaine. Thomas believed that characters needed personality in order to be loved by the audience. If the character has no personality, then the audiences aren’t able to relate to that character.
In his spare time, Frank played piano for Disneyland’s Firehouse Five Plus Two, which included fellow Disney animator Ward Kimball.
Thomas retired on January 31, 1978, (after 45 years at the Studios) and went on to co-author four books (Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, Too Funny For Words, Walt Disney’s Bambi: The Story and the Film, and The Disney Villain) with friend and fellow ex-animator Ollie Johnston.
Thomas and Johnston have been caricatured by Pixar artist Brad Bird in The Iron Giant (as a Train Engineer) and in The Incredibles (as a passer-by).
Thomas was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1989, and died on September 8, 2004.
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