Mary Blair, the woman artist who inspired Disney’s “Nine Old Men” 1

Dance · Film · Visual arts
At last night’s panel discussion of Walt Disney’s animated classic, “Peter Pan” (1953) (the new blu-ray version is now playing at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre), we learned about the film’s core group of animators. Walt Disney jokingly referred to this crew not as “Pan-imators,” but rather as his “Nine Old Men.” The expression puns on ...

Music and dance contribute to early Disney animation

Dance · Film
In this clip from a talk at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last summer, the amazing Marge Champion, 91, chats with the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, Norton Owen, about her participation in Walt Disney’s Snow White (1937). The occasion was the publishing of Mindy Aloff’s super book, “Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation.” Mindy, ...