Fred Moore (animator)

Fred Moore
Fred Moore
Born	Robert Fred Moore; September 7, 1911; Los Angeles, California
Died	November 23, 1952 (aged 41); Burbank, California
Occupation	Artist and Animator
Employer	Walt Disney Animation Studios (1930–1946, 1948-1952); Walter Lantz Productions (1946-1948)

Robert Fred Moore (September 7, 1911 – November 23, 1952), was an American artist and character animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Often called "Freddie," he was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Despite limited formal art training, he rose to prominence at Disney very quickly in the early thirties due to his great natural talent and the tremendous appeal of his drawings, which are still greatly admired by animators and animation fans.

Life and career

Early life and career beginnings

Moore was born in Los Angeles and is best known for being the resident specialist in the animation of Mickey Mouse. He is most notable for redesigning the character in 1938 for his landmark role in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in Fantasia, a look which remains Mickey's official look to this day. His animation of the earlier Mickey design was especially memorable in the 1938 short Brave Little Tailor, the last significant appearance of the "pie-eyed" Mickey.

Moore's other significant work at the studio included The Three Little Pigs, on which he was the principal animator; animation supervision of the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; most of Lampwick in Pinocchio (all of the poolroom scene and until halfway through his transformation to a donkey); and Timothy the mouse in Dumbo. Lampwick, who had red hair and buck teeth, has been largely believed to be a self-caricaturization of Fred Moore, as he was responsible for much of the character's designs and scenes. Moore animated some scenes of the mice from Cinderella, some scenes of the oysters as well as some of the later scenes of the White Rabbit in Alice In Wonderland, and did the mermaids in the Mermaid Lagoon for Peter Pan.

Moore was well-known around the studio for his drawings of innocently sexy, often nude, women, referred to as "Freddie Moore Girls." Some of his girl designs found their way into Disney films: for example, the centaurettes in Fantasia and the teenage girls in the "All the Cats Join In" segment of Make Mine Music. (In "All The Cats Join In", Moore personally animated the sequence at the beginning, when the girl answers the telephone and then quickly showers and dresses, through to her scene putting on lipstick in front of her mirror). Moore's enduring influence can also be seen in the design of Casey's daughters in the 1954 short "Casey Bats Again". His good girl art remains iconic and influential. A model sheet for Ariel in the 1989 Disney film The Little Mermaid made specific distinctions between the design of that character and a "Freddie Moore Girl."

Moore's drawings and design style have come to epitomize the formative years of the studio in between Ub Iwerks' departure in 1930 and the ascension of the "Nine Old Men", after which studio design was dominated by animator Milt Kahl, along with storyboard artist Bill Peet, and later production designer Ken Anderson. During the 1930s, Moore, Art Babbitt, Norm Ferguson, Bill Tytla, and Ham Luske were the dominant Disney animators whose pioneering work culminated in 1937 with the breakthrough of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Moore was a close friend of fellow animators Ward Kimball and Walt Kelly, though he apparently had a quieter and more reserved nature than either of them. Many surviving gag drawings by Kelly from the period of Pinocchio show Kimball as the corrupt Lampwick, with boyish Moore as Pinocchio. Moore and Kimball were also caricatured as song and dance men in the 1941 Mickey Mouse short The Nifty Nineties. Moore makes a brief (and quiet) live-action appearance in the 1941 feature The Reluctant Dragon, along with Kimball and animator Norm Ferguson during one of the studio tour sequences. Kimball has discussed surreptitiously performing some of Moore's Disney work when Moore was too inebriated to finish it.[1]

He talked little about his family. His daughters were Sue Moore and Melinda Moore. Later on, his daughter Sue had married and had another daughter named Kelly Hall, who now resides in Tacoma, Washington, with her two children. Melinda married and had two children; her son Christian resides in the Bay Area and her daughter Timothia resides in Los Angeles.

Brief departure and return to Disney

Fred Moore was briefly fired from Disney Studios in 1946 due to his alcoholism, and instead worked for Walter Lantz, where he redesigned the character Woody Woodpecker during a two-year stint that ended with his return to Disney in 1948.

Accident and death

Moore was already at work animating the mermaids and the lost boys for Peter Pan when both he and his second wife, Virginia, were injured in a traffic accident early on the evening of Saturday, November 22, 1952, when their car was struck head-on while she made a U-turn on a rural highway through Big Tujunga Canyon near the Angeles National Forest. The Moores were reportedly returning from a day spent watching a football game with fellow Disney artist Jack Kinney. Moore died the following day at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, located across the street from the Disney Studios, from a cerebral hemorrhage resulting from a concussion. Moore is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in a plot overlooking the Disney Studios.

Fred Moore was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend by the studio in 1995, and posthumously received the animation industry's Winsor McCay Award in 1983.

Filmography

Year	Title	Credits
1937	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	Supervising Animator
1940	Pinocchio	Animation Director
1940	Fantasia	Animation Supervisor - Segments "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "The Pastoral Symphony"
1941	The Reluctant Dragon	Animator
1941	Dumbo	Animation Director
1943	Saludos Amigos (Short)	Animator
1945	The Three Caballeros	Animator
1946	Make Mine Music	Animator
1947	Fun and Fancy Free	Directing Animator
1948	The Mad Hatter (Short)	Animator
1948	Pixie Picnic (Short)	Animator
1949	The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad	Character Animator
1950	Cinderella	Character Animator
1950	The Brave Engineer (Short)	Animator
1951	Plutopia (Short)	Animator
	Alice in Wonderland	Character Animator
	R'coon Dawg (Short)	Animator
	Fathers Are People (Short)	Animator
1952	Pluto's Party (Short)	Animator
1952	Pluto's Christmas Tree (Short)	Animator
1953	Peter Pan	Character Animator
	The Simple Things (Short)	Animator
	Football Now and Then (Short)	Animator
1954	Casey Bats Again (Short)	Animator
1957 - 1979	Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (TV Series)	Animator - 6 Episodes
1980	Mickey Mouse Disco (Short)	Animator
1987	The Puppetoon Movie	Puppetoon Creative Artist: United States
1995	Frank and Ollie (Documentary)	Caricaturist
2000	Fantasia 2000	Animation Supervisor - Segment "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

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References

"Ward Kimball's Final Farewell, Hogan's Alley #11". Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2016-03-04.

External links

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[1] "Ward Kimball's Final Farewell, Hogan's Alley #11". Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2016-03-04.