Lloyd Richardson contributed his editing skills to an array of Disney animated and live-action motion pictures, most notably the Studio’s nature and animal films including the Academy-Award winning True-Life Adventure “The Vanishing Prairie,” in 1954.
Vice chairman of The Walt Disney Company Roy E. Disney once described his former boss “Lloyd exemplified the editor as a creative force. He was an original thinker who didn’t just make one cut match another cut, but always considered the whole story.”
Born in Portland, Oregon, on April 21, 1915, Lloyd attended Los Angeles City College in Southern California. During the Depression, he quit school to work a variety of odd jobs at such companies as Eastman Kodak and Adohr Dairy.
In 1937, he landed a position as a traffic boy running errands at The Walt Disney Studios. Before long, however, Lloyd moved to the Editorial department, where he began to learn his craft on such films as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and… read more
Lloyd Richardson contributed his editing skills to an array of Disney animated and live-action motion pictures, most notably the Studio’s nature and animal films including the Academy-Award winning True-Life Adventure “The Vanishing Prairie,” in 1954.
Vice chairman of The Walt Disney Company Roy E. Disney once described his former boss “Lloyd exemplified the editor as a creative force. He was an original thinker who didn’t just make one cut match another cut, but always considered the whole story.”
Born in Portland, Oregon, on April 21, 1915, Lloyd attended Los Angeles City College in Southern California. During the Depression, he quit school to work a variety of odd jobs at such companies as Eastman Kodak and Adohr Dairy.
In 1937, he landed a position as a traffic boy running errands at The Walt Disney Studios. Before long, however, Lloyd moved to the Editorial department, where he began to learn his craft on such films as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinocchio.”
For the next four decades, Lloyd worked as an editor-at-large on a variety of projects. Among them, he worked in foreign editing matching languages such as Italian and Portuguese to animation. Then, during World War II, he helped edit training films produced by the Studio for the U.S. Armed Forces.
After the war, Lloyd went on to edit the animated “Saludos Amigos,” “The Three Caballeros,” “Make Mine Music” and “Alice in Wonderland,” as well as the combination live-action/animated features “Song of the South” and “So Dear To My Heart.”
Around the same time, Walt Disney began developing the Studio’s True-Life Adventure series, of which Lloyd edited the Academy Award-winning “Bear Country,” in 1953, followed by “The Vanishing Prairie.”
As television began to proliferate during the 1950s, Walt asked Lloyd to direct and edit segments for the Studio’s premiere “Disneyland” television series. As fellow editor and Disney Legend Stormy Palmer recalled, “Lloyd gave his all to the ‘Disneyland’ series. His work was impeccable.”
Lloyd went on to contribute to more than 50 television projects in all, including Disney’s first color broadcast, “An Adventure in Color: Mathmagic Land,” in 1961. That same year, he won the American Cinema Editors Award for his contributions to the telefilm “Chico, The Misunderstood Coyote.”
In 1969, Lloyd also helped create the animated featurette “It’s Tough To Be a Bird,” with director and fellow Legend Ward Kimball, which won an Oscar for Best Short Subject.
After more than 40 years with The Walt Disney Studios, Lloyd Richardson retired in 1980.
Lloyd Richardson passed away on February 19, 2002. —Disney Legends
