The Animation Guild Golden Award Interviews #25 -- Jeanne Selby Thorpe and Betty Smith

Today, Cartoon Research and TAG Blog publish a pair of interviews with veteran ink-and-paint employees.



Jeanne Selby Thorpe (interview above) worked at most of L.A.'s major animation studios over four decades. Breaking into animation at Charles Mintz in the mid 1930s, she ended her career forty-three years later at Hanna-Barbera as a scene planner and animation checker. ...




Betty Smith started at Disney the same year Jeanne Thorpe commenced work at Mintz. Five years later, she was on the picket line during the '41 Disney strike and (surprise!) she was no longer working at the House of Mouse when the job action concluded. Like Jeanne, she spent a long stretch of her working life at Hanna-Barbera, exiting the business in 1981.

The two women died four years apart, Ms. Smith in 1998 and Ms. Thorpe in 2002.