Retta Scott (23 February
1916 - 26 August 1990) was an American
artist. She is notable as the first woman to receive screen
credit as an animator at the
Walt Disney Animation
Studios.
Early life
Scott was
born in Omak,
Washington
. She
graduated from
Roosevelt High
School in 1934.
She received an academic scholarship from the
Chouinard Art Institute, so
she moved to Los Angeles, California
. She spent much of her free time sketching
wildlife at the nearby Griffith Park
zoo. Her ambition was to mold a career in
Fine art.
Career as movie animator
As she readied to complete her Institute training, the Institute's
director encouraged Scott to apply at Disney Studios. She was hired
in 1938 and assigned to the Story Department, where the ambitious
Bambi project was being developed. Her
stunning sketches caught the eye of Disney himself, so when the
film went into production she was assigned to animate scenes of
hunting dogs chasing Bambi's mother. This was a significant coup
for the young woman, since at the 1930s-era Disney studio, women
were considered only for routine tasks: "Ink and paint art was a
laborious part of the animation process, and was solely the domain
of women . ." She worked under the film's supervising director,
David D. Hand, and was tutored by Disney animator
Eric Larson.
After
Bambi, Scott contributed to Disney features
Fantasia,
Dumbo, and
Disney's version of
The Wind in
the Willows, which was shelved due to
World War II and released in 1949 as part of
the film
The
Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. In addition, Albert
Becattini's website of animator credits lists her as an animator on
the 1942
Donald Duck cartoon releases
Donald's Snow Fight and
Donald Gets Drafted, along with an
unnamed
Goofy short (1945). Retta appears
on-screen in the Disney live-action studio tour film
The Reluctant Dragon,
alongside other Disney animators such as
Wolfgang Reitherman in the portion of
the film where
Robert Benchley tours
the Disney Studio's life-drawing classroom (where the model that
day happens to be an elephant). Retta presents Benchley with a
caricature of himself as an elephant. She was laid-off from Disney
during a periodic studio downsizing in late 1941, (partially as a
result of the infamous
Disney
animators' strike in the summer of 1941) but was rehired by the
Disney Studio in 1942 to work in the Story Department. Retta Scott
left Disney in 1946 and moved to the
East Coast, where she
continued to freelance, illustrating Disney publications such as
the
Big Golden Book edition of Disney's Cinderella. She
remained active as an illustrator for many years and returned to
film animation with
The
Plague Dogs, directed by
Martin
Rosen, released in 1982. Around that same time in the early
1980s she also worked for the animation studio founded by
Bud Luckey, The Luckey-Zamora Moving Picture Co.
in the San Francisco Bay area. That studio later became a part of
Colossal Pictures, and Luckey later became part of
Pixar.
Some writers have occasionally confused Retta Scott with another
Disney artist with the first name Retta,
Retta Davidson , who worked at Disney from
1939 through 1966.
Scott merited a chapter in
The Little Big Book of Disney
("Retta Scott: Beauties and Beasts", pp. 303-319) by Monique
Peterson, and also a chapter in
Walt's People - Volume
VIII ("Retta Scott") by Didier Ghez.
Retta
Scott died at her home in Foster City, California
on 26 August 1990.
References
- http://legends.disney.go.com/legends/detail?key=Retta%20Scott
Disney Legends - Retta Scott, accessed 14 October 2009
- Disney Legends
- "No one matched her ability in drawing animals from all
angles." Marc Davis, The Making of Bambi, at
http://imdb.com/name/nm0779694/bio
-
http://mouseplanet.com/81661/The_Mystery_of_the_Female_Disney_Animator
accessed 14 October 2009
- http://disneybooks.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html from a
brief history of another Disney female pioneer, Evelyn Henry Coats
(1910-2009). The website also contains a Disney Personnel
Department form letter used to explain to female applicants that
animation as such was reserved for men. Accessed 14 October
2009
- http://www.dhprod.com
- http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1110
- http://moviezen.com/celebrity/retta-scott accessed 14 October
2009
-
http://www.immaginariofiorentino.com/albertopage/amimatorsa-z/animatorss.htm
- http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1112
- some websites list Retta Scott Worcester as the
illustrator of Cinderella; this may be the same
person. See e.g.
http://jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=129991 accessed 14
October 2009
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