John Sparey, 1927-2010

John Sparey (right) by John Sparey, comparing self-caricatures with Ed Solomon.

We've just learned of the death of JOHN SPAREY. John passed away on December 15 at the age of eighty-three.

From 1952 until 1994 he worked as an animator for Television Arts Productions, Disney, TV Spots, Bemiller, Detiege, Nicholson, Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros., Fred Calvert, Marvel, Bakshi and Rich Animation.

John told us some years ago about his early days in animation, when he worked on a little television series in the bay area called Crusader Rabbit. This was in 1950, when the tube was in its infancy, and nobody had heard of television animation. (At that time, the only cartoons on the air were "Farmer Alfalfa" and "Felix the Cat" silents.)

John spent much of the fifties working at Walt Disney Productions in the feature animation unit. (We link to his caricatures from the period below.) He spent the next thirty-five years working at almost every cartoon studio in the Los Angeles area, wrapping up his career at Film Roman, and then rode off into a long and happy retirement. (John was a fixture at TAG's holiday parties, where we would always catch up.) So we were startled one day to find out that he had been carted off to the hospital. As John related:

... I wasn't downed by a stroke. Catscans indicate that I have had some small strokes, what would be about a 2.0 on a Richter's scale of strokes - nothing I could feel... It was a walking difficulty that had been developing over a period of years, accelerating until one night I could not push myself up out of my recliner, but I could slide down onto the floor. And lie there. I had channel 4 to listen to as long as I was aware of my surroundings. Then I woke up in the hospital ...

Mr. Sparey stayed alert and engaged until near the end. He spent his final years at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills.

Click here for a list of the John Sparey artwork posted on this blog.

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The Disney bullpen, 1954, by John Sparey

Courtesy of the artist, John Sparey, the above view of the Disney bullpen ... ... hangs in the hallway of our Guild headquarters building. John writes:

The time period is fairly specific. We returned from the end of [the] Lady and the Tramp layoff [and] were settling in to work on the new Disneyland TV show. It would have been mid-1954. The setting is the first-floot bullpen in B wing of the Animation Building. All the furnishings are accurate. It's morning coffee break. The lineup from the left is Clyde Horak, Gary Mooney, Dick Hoffman, John Sparey, Bill Mahood, Bob Carr in the corner, Jack Fergus on the desk, and Wes Herschenson (brother of one-time U.S. Senate candidate Bruce) in the foreground. Jack and Chuck were the "old timers" -- they had started before the rest of us. Clyde was the "new kid" coming in some time after us. All the rest [of us] started in two training classes a few weeks apart in early 1953. Gary was the only occupant of the bullpen at this point in time. He had once been a child extra and could now be thought of as a "pre-hippie." Jack wore moccasins and hus crewcut just barely cleared the tops of doorways. But I never saw him duck or cringe. I later came up with a title for this picture: "You think THAT'S funny ... wait until you hear this one!"

-- John Sparey Go here for an index of our posts of John Sparey art. Click here to read entire post

John Sparey and the six other dwarves

(click on the image for a larger version.) From left to right: Bill Mahood, Osvaldo Franca, John Sparey, Gary Mooney, Bob Carr, Dick Hoffman and Wes Herschensohn as the dwarves; rear, Lyn Kroeger as Snow White. Artist: John Sparey.

This is another of John's caricatures from the mid fifties (here's another). He was in "A" wing on the first floor then, starting on Sleeping Beauty. These are all people John started with at Disney on Lady and the Tramp in 1954. John was working under animator Eric Cleworth in Woolie Reitherman's unit. Eric went to production topkick Andy Engman's office and pushed to get John promoted to assistant animator. (John still sounded pleased about it when I talked to him on the phone a couple of hours ago.) Go here for an index of our posts of John Sparey art. Click here to read entire post

Sparey's Goofy Gallery: The Goof in the movies

A little-known Hollywood fact, according to artist and animator John Sparey, is that Goofy was loaned out to other Hollywood studios, with some interesting results ...

Above: Goofy times three, Marx Bros. style.

Below: Smile when you say that, pardner ... A Goofy take on this movie.

Another in our series of John Sparey's artwork.

Gary, Burt and Groucho notwithstanding, Goofy is © Walt Disney Pictures.

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A portrait of five women

Here's John Sparey's portrait, from 1954 or 1955, of five women who worked at Disney, four of whom who would have been among the first to break the gender barrier to get artistic jobs at the House of Mouse. Until not long before this, women artists were only considered for ink-and-paint or other non-artistic jobs.

• Nancy Stapp (front left), the daughter of industry vet Terrell Stapp, attended Chouinard and Occidental before starting at Disney as an inbetweener in 1954. She seems to have been let go in the "Black Friday" mass layoff at the end of Sleeping Beauty, after which she enrolled at USC and left the industry.
• Ruth Kissane (left rear), "one of the top women animators of the modern age" (Jeff Lenburg), went on from Disney to design the layouts for most of the classic Bill Melendez Peanuts specials and features. She directed Captain Kangaroo spots for John Sutherland and animated for John Hubley on Everybody Rides The Carousel and The Doonesbury Special. After her death in 1990, she received ASIFA-Hollywood's Winsor McCay Award.
• Janie McIntosh (center) was the secretary to animation administrator Andy Engman.
• Lyn Kroeger (right rear), who appeared as Snow White in this John Sparey pastel, left Disney in 1955. Our files show a long list of studios for which she inbetweened or assisted: Quartet, Melendez, Murakami/Wolf, Haboush, Levitow-Hansen, Duck Soup and Hanna-Barbera, until 1984, when she left the industry.
• We previously profiled Eva Schneider (right front), who appeared in this picture from our John Sparey collection. In case you missed Floyd Norman's comment on that post, after she left animation in 1981 she moved to New Orleans where she lives to this day. She refused to evacuate after Katrina, and Floyd says there was a picture of her and her dog in Vanity Fair a few months ago.

Here's more of the art of John Sparey.

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Types I have known, by John Sparey: Don and Dave

This morning, a comparative Google search yielded the following results:

• "John Sparey" animation: 609 hits.
• "Don Bluth" animation: ...

238,000 hits. One of which was my previous posting about this always-controversial filmmaker.

The above caricature of Bluth (left) appeared in The Animated Films of Don Bluth by John Cawley. (As I've said before, Don was the man under whom I trained as a new Disney employee in late '76 and early '77. He was an up and coming tyro then, being groomed as Woolie Reitherman's replacement. This drawing shows Don in his earlier Disney incarnation -- when he was a youngster working on "Sleeping Beauty" -- and much further down the Mouse House's pecking order than he was in the 1970s..)

I also previously posted about Dave Suding (right), in connection with another John Sparey cartoon. Dave spent most of his career at Disney -- from the 'fifties until his retirement after "Hercules" in '97. Dave and his wife now make their home in Laguna Beach.

More of John Sparey's artwork.

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Sparey's Goofy Gallery: Modgufliani

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, John Sparey imagines the Goof in the style of Modigliani ... Go here for an index of our posts of John Sparey's art. We'll be featuring lots of John's art here over the next few weeks. And who IS John Sparey? One of the long-time pillars of the animation industry, that's who. John started at Disney in the early fifties. (For decades, it was almost an axiom that everyone started at Disney.) John worked at a wide variety of studios over a career of 40-plus years as an in-betweener, assistant, animator, sequence director and director. John retired from Film Roman in the mid-nineties.

We've said it before and we'll say it again -- Goofy is © Walt Disney Pictures

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Allen Wade, by John Sparey

Our survey of John Sparey's portraits and caricatures concludes with this view of the late Allen Wade.

Allen started at Disney as an inbetweener in 1951 and three years later left for UPA. He went on to work as an assistant animator for Warners, Format, Detiege, Hanna-Barbera, Ed Love, Filmation and Marvel. He retired in 1987 and passed away in 1990.

We've been focusing on John's caricatures these past few months because we love Mr. Sparey's work, and because he celebrates industry employees who aren't well-known, even to animation aficionados. But well-known or not, all of these artists -- the Sudings, Herschensons, Zwickers, Crumps and Tamargos -- played a part in getting the likes of Lady and the Tramp, Huckleberry Hound and Gerald McBoing-Boing onto various-size screens and into the heads of generations of 'toon watchers. We're pleased and honored that John Sparey allowed us the privilege of sharing them with you.

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Sparey's Goofy Gallery: El Gufco

John Sparey envisions Goofy as he might have been painted by Dominikos Theotokópoulos, also known as ...

... El Greco.

Another in our series of John Sparey's work.

We like to think that Goofy belongs to all of us. But he's still © Walt Disney Pictures.

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Sparey's Goofy Gallery: Gufisaki

Today's entry from John Sparey's Goofy History of Art carries its title in its signature ... ... and all you have to do is turn it 90° counterclockwise: Go here for an index of our posts of John Sparey art.

Far be it from us to deny that Goofy is © Walt Disney Pictures

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Types I have known, by John Sparey: Bill K. and Jim M.

Two more from John Sparey's collection of Disney artists from the mid-1950s ...

Bill Keil (left), who had started at Disney in 1940, was about to make the jump to animator when this drawing was done in 1956. He earned credits on "The Truth About Mother Goose", "Goliath II" and the 101 Dalmatians feature.

At the time, I called him the Middle-Aged Kid. Later, with his gray beard, I had to change that to the Tall Gnome."

-- John Sparey on Bill Keil

By the time Dalmatians was released, Keil had moved on to Hanna-Barbera where he was one of the original Yogi Bear and Flintstones animators. By 1975 he was the department supervisor; he retired in 1979 and passed away in 2003.

British-born breakdown artist Jim Minahane (right) is using a film can as a drink tray in the drawing. Minahane came to Disney in 1955 after several years at various UK studios. He was laid off after 101 Dalmatians and appears to have left the business.

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Types I have known, by John Sparey: Wes and Gary

Two of John Sparey's favorite caricature subjects, previously seen here, here and here in our portfolio of John Sparey's artwork ... ... Wes Herschensohn and Gary Mooney. Click here to read entire post

John Sparey WRITES

Animator/director John Sparey, whose caricatures of Disney artists we ran over a period of months, wrote us a couple of days back. (John now resides contentedly at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills.) We excerpt from his letter:

...Monday...I got some quick lessons on how to say "Howdy Blog!" I got into www.animationguild.org, typed in my name and got a list of entries, including two drawings: "Allen Wade," and "Types I have known - Bea and Liz." Somehow, these led me to further lists -- more than I could inventory in one afternoon, especially when so low on the learning curve...

Back again on Tuesday, I worked my way back through "Bullpen 1954." This had been posted on May 16...You had pieced it together from previously existing color copies, but the results look quite seamless. I was quite pleased with the responses to this picture, such as: "It doesn't looked dated," "It could almost be people that the viewer knew," "It could draw the viewer in,"... A part of the descriptive paragraph for "bullpen" is missing. I would have placed Wes Herschenson up on a shelf, and Chuck Williams in the forground, not Wes in the foreground. But Floyd Norman ahd no problem identifying Chuck...

And you can assure Steve Gordon that I wasn't downed by a stroke. Catscans indicate that I have had some small strokes, what would be about a 2.0 on a Richter's scale of strokes - nothing I could feel... It was a walking difficulty that had been developing over a period of years, accelerating until one night I could not push myself up out of my recliner, but I could slide down onto the floor. And lie there. I had channel 4 to listen to as long as I was aware of my surroundings. Then I woke up in the hospital....

John also relates that the drawing we had labeled "Al Wade" is actually another Disney artist -- Gary Mooney. He writes:

Al Wade was softer and shorter than Gary. And he didn't have a giraffe neck. I am surprised that Floyd Norman didn't comment on how off character my "Al Wade" was...

Our apologies to John for the mislabelling the Wade-is-really-Mooney caricature (we obviously didn't locate the right name in John's detailed notes). We wish John -- and everyone out at the Country Home -- the merriest of holiday seasons.

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Sparey's Goofy Gallery: Gleef

This one will take a few moments of your time ...

Can you find Goofy in John Sparey's tribute to Paul Klee?

There's more Sparey on our blog.

Whatever you see is © Walt Disney Pictures. (And don't you ever forget it.)

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John Sparey's "Types I have known": Leroy and John

A portrait of two more Disney veterans from our John Sparey collection ...

Leroy Cross (left), later a full animator on The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound, and ...

John Sibley (right), one of the great Goofy animators, known by some as "the tenth old man". Leroy was his assistant at the time. (Note the chair in which Mr. Sibley sits. This was one of the custom pieces of furniture designed for the old Burbank animation building at its creation in 1939.)

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Types I have known, by John Sparey: Jack and Amby

Most of the figures in John Sparey's portfolio are his contemporaries, but here are two veterans who found themselves at Disney in the mid-1950s ...

Although Jack Carr (left) had been in the cartoon business since 1924 and had been an animator since the '30s, he found himself working as an assistant at Disney in 1956. He was also a character actor/extra with seventy live-action credits listed on IMDb, mostly uncredited, starting with She Done Him Wrong starring Mae West ... and that's not counting his work as the voice of Buddy in the Schlesinger cartoons from 1933 to 1935.

Previously he had worked for Mintz, FBO, Pat Sullivan, Fleischer, Lantz, Schlesinger and MGM. After Disney he worked for Larry Harmon on "Bozo The Clown" before ending up at Hanna-Barbera, where he animated and assisted up until his death in 1967.

We've already written about animator Amby Paliwoda, but when we posted John S.'s other "Amby art" last month, we left out John's explanation of the "hi-fi" cover:

Amby had built his bass viol using Disney desk shelves and wooden spoons. For inspiration, he would leap up from his desk, strum a few ka-thumpa-thumpas and go back to work.

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Sparey's Goofy Gallery: The father of our Goofy country

John Sparey was inspired by Gilbert's Stuart's unfinished "Athenaeum postrait" of George Washington ...

Check out more of John Sparey's work on the TAG Blog.

Considering this was the portrait used for the one-dollar bill, it should be no surprise that Goofy is © Walt Disney Pictures.

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On the MPTF long-term care facility closure

Left: Our own JOHN SPAREY, whose caricatures and artwork have adorned this very blog, attended the meeting. John is a resident of the Frances Goldwyn Lodge at the MPTF campus in Woodland Hills (which is not affected by the announced closures.)

Thursday night, September 10, Guild members met to hear both sides of the argument regarding the announced closing of the Motion Picture and Television Fund's hospital and long term care facility (skilled nursing) in Woodland Hills.

There were two presentations made, one from Ken Scherer and Mark Fleischer of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which operate the Wasserman Campus and seven MPTF clinics which are an integral part of TAG members' Motion Picture Industry Health Plan.

Since January, there's been a dispute between the Fund and family and friends of MPTF long term care residents ("Saving the Lives of Our Own") who will soon be relocated from the Woodland Hills campus to other long-term care facilities in the area.

Friends and family don't believe the closure of long-term care is warranted or necessary. The MPTF board maintains that long term care is a huge drain on MPTF cash reserves because it runs large annual deficits, and has to be closed so that the Fund won't run out of money.

Mr. Scherer and Mr. Fleischer told meeting attendees the following:

* The long-term care facility has lost $10 million per year, which next year will rise to $12 million ($1 million per month).

* The on-site hospital has been under-utilized for some years; the ICU, with 7 beds, had an average occupancy of one patient and was running a deficit of $1 million per year.

* Long-term care patients are not being abandoned but have been asked to move to one of 22 long-term care facilities that the Fund has vetted.

* Long-term care patients have not died because of trauma caused by changes at the facility of the prospect of a move. Residents have died at the same rate in 2009 as in 2007 or 2008, before any announcement of closure was made.

* More than 200 assisted care and independent residents will continue to live at the Wasserman campus in Woodland Hills, and their situations will not change.

* No MPTF funds were lost to Bernie Madoff, since no money was invested with him. However, the Fund's investment portfolio suffered losses in late 2008 and early 2009 when the markets dropped 50%.

At the end of the presentation, Scherer and Fleischer took a half-hour of questions, after which representatives from "Saving the Lives of Our Own" (Nancy Biederman, Daniel Quinn, John Sparey, and Richard Stellar), made a presentation:

* For every occupied bed in Long Term Care, the MPTF receives $130,065 annually.

* Top management at MPTF (four people) received $2,002,465.00 in salaries, benefits and expenses in 2007.

* Transfer trauma: Within the first sixty days of the announcement of closure, 12 residents died at the MPTF facility; five more died within days or weeks of transfer.

*CEO David Tillman has said that "No amount of donations or fund-raising would change the MPTF's decision to close the long-term care facility."

* Some residents were moved to other levels of care at the home and are now frightened about admitting that they have an injury or illness, for fear that they will be moved off the property.

* Long term care and rehab admissions no longer exist on campus.

Above: President Koch listens as Mark Fleischer (MPTF Board Member, as well as grandson of Max and son of Richard Fleischer) and Ken Scherer of the Motion Picture and Television Fund defend the decision to close the facilities.

The two sides agree on various points: That the initial announcement of closing was badly handled. That the campus hospital is losing money. That there is an ongoing deficit. ("Saving Our Own" maintains this is from mismanagement.)

Some of the things disagreed on: that there are "luxury condos" going to be built where the hospital and long term care facility now stand, that residents have died because of stress and trauma (Mark Fleischer stated that his mother was a Long Term Care resident at the time he voted as a board member to close the unit. "It was a painful decision and we tried to avoid it, but the whole campus and Fund are at risk if we don't stop the millions in deficits.")

Above: Richard Stellar and Nancy Biederman of Saving The Lives Of Our Own, a group dedicated to preventing the closure of the MPTF facilities.

My take away from all that I heard Thursday night was that initial communication about the closure was fumbled, that the "Save Our Own" group is sincerely motivated and stressed out about what's happening to their loved ones, but that the Woodland Hills retirement campus and the Motion Picture and Television Fund have big financial problems stemming from the MPTF's portfolio investments heading south and the drop in fund-raising (because many people's investment portfolios have also gone south.)

Nobody appears to dispute that there are money problems (i.e., flows of red ink) although "Saving Our Own" believes the problems our surmountable without closing Long Term Care.

Whichever side you believe to be right, we urge you to follow the links, investigate what's going on, and make up your own mind.

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Types I have known, by John Sparey: Glenn S.

John Sparey says that "capturing Glenn Schmitz's stride was a challenge."

Glenn Schmitz apprenticed at Disney on Alice In Wonderland in 1950 before spending two years in the Army. He returned to Buena Vista St. to work on Ben and Me, Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty before resigning in 1957. He seems to have made a living as a freelance commercial artist until he returned to work doing breakdowns under Bob McCrea on the Little Ranger series and with John Lounsbery on Jungle Book and Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day.

After several years pencilling the Scamp comic strip and the Big Bad Wolf comic books, his following years were spent as a layout, storyboard and character artist for Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, Sanrio and Hanna-Barbera. He returned to Disney and later to Baer Animation, before retiring in 1993.

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John Sparey's "Types I have known": Bea and Liz

Two women artists highlight today's entry from John Sparey's portfolio ...

Assistant animator Berta "Bea" Tamargo (left) started at Disney in 1946. In 1958, in John's words, she "spoiled her euphonious name" by getting married and becoming Bea Jones. That same year she was let go in the infamous "Black Friday" mass layoff at the end of Sleeping Beauty, and she appears to have left the business.

Inbetweener and breakdown artist Elizabeth Case Zwicker (right) was the daughter of Nelson Case, a famous radio announcer of the 1940s and 1950s. She wrote about her Disney experience:

In 1956 I had just divorced and had to go to work. I was living in Glendora, California. One Sunday I opened the Los Angeles Times, to the help wanted. It was divided back then into men and women. I was reading men's jobs and women's jobs. Nobody ever said I couldn't; I never had any boundaries. I did a lot of things that other people didn't because I didn't know better.

I found an ad that said "Fine artist wanted" for Disney studios. I called and made an appointment to show my portfolio. I didn't even know what a portfolio was and had to go buy one. I put in a lot of stuff from art school and also some "cute" drawings. I added what I consider now as very amateur work, as well as some copies of work that was in the college museum.

I took it to Burbank and in the interview they asked me, "Do you have another source of income? We don't pay very much." It was $32 or $35 a week, and I assured them that I had child support. Everybody was very honest. They telegraphed me over the weekend that I was hired.

I found out later that it was an experiment. They were looking for fine artists and they still do. They want people who can draw; not people who cartoon. You have to know how to interpret human movement. If you are drawing a teapot, that nose has to twitch. The ears have to go back and forth like flaps.

I did birds in Sleeping Beauty. I studied how birds fly in the research library. I developed a bird consciousness. Then I did the jester with striped sleeves; the stripes are very difficult. The day the movie was finished, we were all laid off. I was the last one laid off (my last name at that time started with a "Z"). They offered me work in layout. I was crushed. I couldn't imagine life without animation. I didn't want any other work there, even for more money.

Although she never returned to the animation biz, Zwicker led a fascinating life post-Disney (as we found at this website). A poet and painter, she was involved with the San Francisco beat movement; she wrote that Lawrence Ferlinghetti threw her out of his City Lights bookstore because "he wasn't going to have any blankety-blank women or women's poetry, drivel." She became known as the "Mother of the Beat Generation".

Zwicker went on to illustrate children's books, and painted a mural in the children's reading room of the Old Bridge, N.J. public library that was moved when the library relocated in 1995. She passed away in April 2006 at the age of seventy-six.

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