Pinocchio

When Ben Sharpsteen joined The Walt Disney Studios in 1929, he quickly became Walt´s right-hand man in animated and live-action film production. As Walt once wrote, “Concerning Ben Sharpsteen and his contributions to the development of the Disney organization, I want to say he played a very important part.”

Born in Tacoma, Washington, on November 4, 1895, Ben was raised in Alameda, California. He studied agriculture at the University of California at Davis and in 1917, joined the U.S. Marines serving in World War I.

A gifted artist, after the war he won a job with the Hearst International Film Service, working on such early animated series as “Happy Hooligan.” He went on to work as an animator at the Paramount Studio, Jefferson Films and the Max Fleischer Studio in New York.

A mutual friend recommended Ben to Walt Disney, who sent a letter inviting him to visit the Studio in Los Angeles. The day Ben arrived, Walt showed his prospective employee Mickey Mouse cartoons. “My first reaction,” Ben later recalled, “was that they were excellent – compared to animation I knew…”

Walt valued Ben for his New York studio experience and hired him at $125 a week, a salary higher than his own ($50) and his top animator´s, Ub Iwerks, who was making $90.

For the next six years, Ben animated on 97 Mickey Mouse cartoons, including “Mickey´s Follies,” “The Chain Gang” and “Mickey´s Revue,” as well as some Silly Symphonies. In 1933, at Walt´s request, he established an in-house animation training program and acted as a talent scout, recruiting such stellar artists as Bill Tytla.

The next year, Ben directed the first of 21 animated shorts, “Two Gun Mickey,” and as the Studio moved into feature-length animation, he served as a sequence director on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” He went on to serve as supervising co-director on “Pinocchio” and production supervisor on “Fantasia,” “Cinderella” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

In 1947, Ben produced his first live-action film, “Seal Island,” which was the first of the True-Life Adventure series and for which he accepted an Oscar on behalf of the Studio. He went on to produce 12 of the 13 True-Life Adventures, eight of which earned Academy Awards.

During the 1950s, he also produced the “People and Places” series, three of which earned Oscars – “The Alaskan Eskimo,” “Men Against the Arctic” and “The Ama Girls.” In 1954, Ben began producing the “Disneyland” television series and appeared on its first episode. After 33 years with the company, he retired in 1962.

Ben Sharpsteen died on December 20, 1980, in Calistoga, California, where he founded the Sharpsteen Museum, which is dedicated to the area´s pioneers. —Disney Legends

Animator Norm Ferguson, affectionately called “Fergy” by his friends at The Walt Disney Studios, was never inhibited by anatomy and drawing rules. An instinctive artist, he drew what felt right, often surprising his peers with the unlikely results.

As animator Fred Moore once said, “Fergy doesn’t know that you can’t raise the eyebrows above the head circle, so he goes ahead and does it and it gives a great effect.”

Fellow Disney Legend Marc Davis summed up Fergy’s contributions when he said, “Norm Ferguson was a sharp performer and a showman.”

Fergy’s sense of showmanship stemmed from the old vaudeville comedians, who he loved to watch perform during his formative years in New York City. Their influence on him surfaced in the famous flypaper sequence, which Fergy animated in the 1934 Disney short “Playful Pluto.” The memorable 65-second sequence, which begins with Pluto sitting on a sheet of flypaper and leads to a string of hilarious gags as he attempts to free himself from the sticky predicament, marked the first time an animated character appeared to be thinking onscreen.

Born September 2, 1902, to a Scottish father and Irish mother, Fergy attended Brooklyn’s Heffley Institute, a stenography and typing school, followed by the Pratt Institute, where he studied commercial art. In 1920, after working various stenographic jobs, he decided to pursue a career in the up-and-coming animation medium and quickly won a job at Paul Terry’s Fables Pictures Inc.

Nine years later, he left Fables to join The Walt Disney Studios, where he served as animator on more than 75 shorts, including “The Chain Gang,” “Mickey’s Orphans,” and the Academy Award®-winning “Three Little Pigs.” Fergy was fast with his pencil, cranking out up to 40 feet worth of animation a day, when the average was 10 to 15 feet, according to Disney historian Bob Thomas.

In 1935, he was tapped by Walt Disney to serve as supervising animator on the Studio’s most prestigious film, notably his first full-length animated feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In that film, Fergy supervised animation of the first of the great Disney villains – the evil witch in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” followed by the unsavory J. Worthington Foulfellow in “Pinocchio.”

Fergy then went on to serve as sequence director on such classics as “Fantasia” and “Dumbo;” production supervisor on “Saludos Amigos;” production supervisor and director on “The Three Caballeros;” and directing animator on “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “Peter Pan.” In 1941, Fergy made a cameo appearance in Disney’s “The Reluctant Dragon,” starring Robert Benchley.

On November 2, 1957, Norm Ferguson died in Los Angeles. —Disney Legends

Walt Disney first came to rely upon Wilfred Jackson’s genius and sense of perfection, the year Mickey Mouse was born, 1928. At that time, Walt had conceived the notion of marrying music and animation during what was the age of silent movies. Then a new kid in the Studio’s animation department, Wilfred devised a method of synchronizing animation with music, by using a metronome to mark time that could then be converted to a music track. The innovation, which was featured in Mickey Mouse’s debut film “Steamboat Willie,” revolutionized the entertainment medium and competing studios spent more than a year trying to figure out Disney’s production “secret.”

Walt quickly promoted “Jaxon,” as he was called, from animator to director. And as Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston wrote in their book, “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life,” — "Jaxon was easily the most creative of the directors, but he was also the most “picky” and took a lot of kidding about his thoroughness."

Born in Chicago, January 24, 1906, Jaxon attended Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, beginning in 1925. Three years later, just before Charlie Mintz had stolen Disney’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character, he began hanging around The Walt Disney Studios. It was a poor time to ask for a job, but he volunteered to wash cels and assist animators until one day, he found himself holding a paycheck. He later said, “I’m the only guy [at Disney] who was never hired.”

He quickly moved up the ranks to animator, contributing to the “Silly Symphony” shorts. After “Steamboat Willie,” Jaxon went on to direct 35 shorts, three of which won Academy Awards®: “The Tortoise and The Hare,” “The Country Cousin,” and “The Old Mill.” Probably the greatest example of his skill in developing action to music, however, was “The Band Concert” starring Mickey Mouse.

Jaxon also applied his talent to 11 animated features including, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Dumbo,” “Saludos Amigos,” “Melody Time,” “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Peter Pan,” and “Lady and the Tramp.” He directed such memorable sequences as “The Night on Bald Mountain” in “Fantasia,” and all cartoon and combination live-action footage in “Song of the South.” During the war years, he also produced and directed government films for the U.S. Navy.

In 1954, as Walt entered the new television medium, he asked Jaxon to produce and direct animated shows on the “Disneyland” series. During the next four years, he directed 13 shows, including “The Story of the Animated Drawing.” After nearly 35 years with The Walt Disney Studios, Jaxon retired in 1961.

Wilfred Jackson died August 7, 1988 in Newport Beach, California. —Disney Legends