Ruthie Tompson Dies at 111; Breathed Animated Life Into Disney Films
Source: NY Times
One of a cadre of women who worked behind the scenes, she did indispensable but anonymous work on classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio.
By Margalit Fox
If Snow White looked suitably snowy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, if Pinocchios nose grew at just the right rate, if Dumbo was the correct shade of elephantine gray, all that was due in part to the largely unheralded work of Ruthie Tompson.
One of a cadre of women who in the 1930s and 40s worked at Disney in indispensable anonymity and one of its longest-lived members Ms. Tompson, who died on Sunday at 111, spent four decades at the studio. Over time, she worked on nearly every one of Disneys animated features, from Snow White Disneys first, released in 1937 to The Rescuers, released in 1977.
A Disney spokesman, Howard Green, said she died at the Motion Picture and Television Funds retirement community in Woodland Hills, Calif., where she had been a longtime resident.
Ms. Tompson joined Disney as an inker and painter. She later trained her eye on the thousands of drawings that make up an animated feature, checking them for continuity of color and line. Still later, as a member of the studios scene planning department, she devised exacting ways for its film cameras to bring those flat, static drawings to vivid animated life.
Ruthie Tompson at work in an undated photo. Over four decades she worked on nearly every one of Disneys animated features, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, to The Rescuers, released in 1977.Credit...Disney
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SWBTATTReg
(22,124 posts)lives on. May she rest in Peace.
Stuart G
(38,427 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)What a crapshoot life is, some folks die in their 30s, 40s, others live past 100.
This takes me back to this woman 117, I think she lived in France, who caught COVID and survived it, saw her as she left the Hospital on TV, not in a wheelchair, no cane, standing up talking with the Media.
Shes my new Role Model!
sarge43
(28,941 posts)hlthe2b
(102,276 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(15,611 posts)Its about the women who played a significant creative role in the artistry of the classic Disney films.
Most women were, like Ms. Thompson, relegated to the tedious menial jobs in the ink and paint department, tracing the pencil drawings made by the male animators onto cels and adding the paint to colour in the drawings as directed by the animator. There were a select few who rose to prominence to design characters or backgrounds, or even story development.
Ms. Thompson is mentioned briefly in the book.