In Remembrance: Art Stevens

     Art Stevens, the Disney animator who co-directed The Rescuers (1977) and The Fox And The Hound (1981), has passed away on May 22, 2007 in Studio City, CA. He was 92.

     Born May 1, 1915 in Roy, Montana, Stevens applied for a job at Walt Disney Studios as an animator after hearing that the studio was planning on making an animated version of his favorite book, Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. Six months later, he was hired by the studio.

     Arriving at the studio, Stevens was assigned work as an in-betweener – an animator who fills in the action between a lead animator’s key poses – on Fantasia (1940) working on the “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” “Pastoral Symphony,” “Nutcracker Suite” and “A Night On Bald Mountain” sequences. He continued work as an in-betweener on several more films, including Bambi (1942), until he was promoted to a full fledged animator for 1953’s Peter Pan.

     Following Peter Pan, Stevens was paired with director Ward Kimball and the two created the short Toot, Whistle, Plunk And Boom which would go on to win an Academy Award. The two continued to work together, with Stevens generating story content and animation, producing three landmark documentaries for the Disneyland television series- Man In Space (1955), Man And The Moon (1955) and Mars And Beyond (1957). Stevens and Kimball also collaborated on the shot It’s Tough To Be A Bird (1969), which won another Oscar. Stevens continued to work as an animator on several Disney features including One Hundred And One Dalmatians (1961), Winnie The Pooh And The Blustery Day (1968) and Robin Hood (1973).

     Stevens’s animation experience was called upon to design the title sequences for a handful of Disney live action films including The Strongest Man In The World (1975) and Freaky Friday (1976).

     For 1977’s The Rescuers, Stevens was promoted to co-director, working with Wolfgang Reitherman and John Lounsbery. Stevens also co-directed The Fox And The Hound (1981), which would become the studio’s highest-grossing film up to that time.

     After working on the story material for The Black Cauldron, eventually released in 1985, Stevens retired from Disney in 1983.