The Bob Youngquist Sendoff -- Part the Third

Remember my last Bob Youngquist posts, Parts I and II? No? Shame on you. They were only back in May, just a few months ago. (We don't like posts too close together, you know...)

Today, we have the third and final Youngquist bye bye post:

To refresh: Mr. Youngquist (above left) was a Disney animator and assistant for over three decades. He retired on December 15, 1970, and almost anybody who was anybody in the animation department attended his farewell lunch up in the Disney "Penthouse Club."

This photograph (the last in this stretched-out series) shows (left to right): Dave Michener, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ward Kimball, Dave Suding, Stan Green, Cliff Nordberg, person unknown, Jack Buckley, person unknown.)

Dave Michener was at this time Milt Kahl's assistant. (Milt told me that Dave was "the best assistant I ever had..."). Dave had been at the studio since the middle fifties, later moving in to the story department and then becoming a director.

Milt Kahl was considered (along with Marc Davis) the best draftsman of the "nine Old Men." He was a directing animator on almost all of the Disney features up until the time of his departure from the studio in the summer of 1976. He maintained that he didn't retire, but "quit."

Frank Thomas was known from the 1930s on as a master actor with an animation pencil. He animated on most of the Disney features from Snow White to Fox and the Hound.

Ward Kimball was a legendary animation dynamo who at this time (1970) had his own unit doing featurettes. He'd recently picked up an Academy Award for It's Tough to Be a Bird. He would leave the studio a few years later after a fight with upper management.

Dave Suding was a long-time Disney animator and assistant who retired to Laguna Beach in the late 1990s.

Stan Green worked as an assistant to Milt Kahl and as an animator. He passed away in Oregon at age 76.

Cliff Nordberg was a talented animator, dependable as the sunrise, who worked at the studio from the 1940s until his death.

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Jack Buckley was an effects animator with a parallel career as a fine artis painter skilled in oil painting.

A word about the Penthouse Club: When I knew it, there was wood-panelling on the walls and old furniture and it had the atmosphere of a out-at-the-sleeves restaurant located in Bishop, California (that's a town at the foot of the Sierras in the high desert, if you don't know.)

It sat atop the animation building. In the 1970s, it didn't look as if it had been changed since 1940. I have no idea what the space is used for now.