Types I have known, by John Sparey: Gordon and Fred

Two apprentice inbetweeners from Disney's Class of 1956 are featured in today's entry from the John Sparey portfolio ...

Gordon Bellamy (left) was only eighteen when he started at Disney in 1956. He resigned after a year-and-a-half, and since then has had a long and varied career on both coasts as well as in his native Texas. In the 1980s he did layouts for Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera, and more recently he was an assistant animator on Warner Bros.'s The Iron Giant.

He was living in a loft in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, so close to the Twin Towers that they were visible from his skylight (right). His account of that day, and of the effect on the New York animation community, ran in the March 2002 and April 2002 issues of The Peg-Board.

Fred Kirchmayer (above right) started at Disney three months before Gordon, and was yet another artist let go in the 1958 purge at the end of Sleeping Beauty. A letter in our files from 1959 indicates he had gone to work in another industry, and we have no further record of him.