Don Graham hosts Dave Hand (1)

David Dodd Hand (01/23/1900 - 10/11/1986) was the director of Snow White and Bambi, and had an illustrious carreer in animation, going back to even before Fleisher's Out of the Inkwell series. From January 1930, he animated on some 40 Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies shorts before directing more of those, including my favorite film, Building a Building, and the likes of Thru the Mirror, Alpine Climbers, The Country Cousin and Little Hiawatha. After leaving Disney in 1944, he left for J. Arthur Rank's British Moor Hall studio in Cookham where he did the Animaland series. When it closed, he was in Denmark at the RING, FRANK and RØNDE studio in Vedbæk for some time before returning to the States. (RING being Børge Ring, my old mentor, FRANK was animator Bjørn Frank Jensen, and Arne RØNDE Kristensen the producer, A. Film's own Karsten Kiilerich's late father-in-law). Michael Barrier published a very interesting interview with Hand. See also my post here...

Here is the transcript from the Action Analysis Class of Thursday, February 27th, 1936, lead by Don Graham on the "Director's relationship to the picture and to the animator", with Dave Hand as the guest speaker. In this document we see how one of Disney's most important directors worked with his animators - how much freedom he gave them - how he handed out scenes. Now... If this meeting had been yesterday, I'd be amazed at the importance and topicality. But this was just over 70 (SEVENTY) years ago!!! I wonder why we haven't seen this before, as directors through the ages could have benefitted from reading it. The Hand-Out has always been a crucial - though much overlooked - part of direction for as far as I remember...The other half follows tomorrow, and it's important, too!