Date of Birth
31 October 1912,
Palo Alto, California, USA
Date of Death
14 April 2008, Sequim, Washington, USA (natural causes)
Birth Name
Oliver Martin Johnston Jr.
Spouse
Trivia
Was part of the inner circle of Disney animators, known as the "nine old men".
Employed at Walt Disney Productions from January 21, 1935 to his retirement on January 31, 1978.
Ollie and Marie Johnston's two sons are Rick (born in 1949) and Ken (born in 1951).
Ollie Johnston's wife, Marie, was also a Disney employee in the Ink and Paint Department. They were married for 63 years. Marie died in May 2005.
As of September 2004, following the death of close friend, Frank Thomas, he is the last surviving member of Disney's "Nine Old Men".
Caricatured as "Rufus the Cat" in The Rescuers (1977).
He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005.
He was a train enthusiast. He built a miniature railroad in his backyard. He also restored and operated a full-size antique locomotive.
He worked his way through Stanford University by painting and selling landscapes.
After retiring in 1978, he spoke at schools and film festivals in the US and Europe. He also wrote books about Disney's classic films and the animation process.
He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi", because it showed that animation could bring strong emotional responses from the audience, just as well as a live-action drama.
He and fellow Disney "Old Man" Frank Thomas met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s. They were hired by Disney for $17 a week when he was expanding his studio for feature-length films. Both worked on the first full-length film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937).
Personal Quotes
(explaining why he decided to go into animation instead of magazine illustration) I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the [magazine] stories. But I found that here [animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings.
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