Eric Larson

Born to Peter and Nora Larson In 1915 his family moved to Salt Lake City where he became interested in journalism and also secretly took drawing lessons In 1925 he entered the University of Utah later moving to Los Angeles to look for a job in journalism and writing unfortunately unsuccessfully He then decided to rekindle his ambition to become an artist and was offered a job at Walt Disney Productions in 1933 as an inbetweener Later the same year he married Gertrude Jannes although sadly the couple remained childless Animator Hamilton Luske recognized Larsons talent and promoted him to assistant animator Luske who had joined the studio two years previously later became his mentor Further promotion followed with Eric as animator on Walt Disneys first feature length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 along with future veteran animators Milt Kahl and James Algar he animated the forest animals that followed Snow White throughout In 1940 he was promoted to animation director for Pinocchio 1940 and in that film he created the kitten Figaro who became one of his favorite characters In Fantasia 1940 he created the centaurs and the horses in the Pastoral Symphony segment of the musical feature  By 1942 he had become a supervising animator for Bambi 1942 along with fellow workers Ollie Johnston Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl with whom he had worked on Snow White In Bambi he created Friend Owl and subsequently worked on birds for the next two assignments creating the mad Aracuan Bird in The Three Caballeros 1944 and Sasha the Bird in Make Mine Music 1946 Larson also worked on Fun and Fancy Free Song of the South Melody Time and So Dear to My Heart 1949 He later became part of the Animation Board and Walt Disney appointed him as one of his Nine Old Men who consisted of Les Clark Woolie Reitherman Eric Larson Ward Kimball Milt Kahl Frank Thomas Ollie Johnston John Lounsbery and Marc Davis all considered to be Walts most trusted associates  From IMDB