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This FINAL draft dated 4/20/48.
Animation by Ollie Johnston with Bob Youngquist and Al Stetter. We have seen some beautiful poses of Ollie's D.A. in The Illusion of Life from scenes on these pages. Al Stetter we have met working on Put-Put Trouble and drawing thorns in Sleeping Beauty. In 1946, we found him in 1D-10, Frank Thomas' future office. An anonymous commenter noted on the day after it happened that "Al Stetter passed away on January 27th, 2008...at the age of 100."
[Albert Alvin Stetter was born 5/21/1907. His SSN was issued in his birth state of Pennsylvania, and Burbank was his last residence.
Alberto's page does not list Stetter's feature credits: "Animator: DISNEY c39/55-57 (Donald Duck 40 [Put-Put Troubles], Pluto’s Day 56, The Truth About Mother Goose 57, How to Relax 57)." IMDB shows he also animated on two episodes of "Matty's Funnies with Beany and Cecil." It seems he also painted, e.g. this seascape up on eBay.]
Hans, page 20 doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteThanks Steven - dunno what happened, but I fixed it... Would have thought someone would have found this earlier. Oh, well.
ReplyDeleteI learn something new every time I come here. Al Stetter is a name of an animator who had never registered in my consciousness. Did he have many screen credits at Disney or elsewhere ? If I've seen his name on the screen before it just passed right by me.
ReplyDeleteI take it he was mostly an effects animator ? Lived to be 100 (!) and I certainly hope he was in good health up to that time and enjoyed his retirement. I always wondered what many of the Golden Age veterans thought about "our" movies (in my case I'm talking about my time at Disney from 1986 - 2004) , whether they stayed interested enough in animation to get out to the theaters to see the latest films or at least get them on DVD for home viewing. Did an Al Stetter or someone like him ever watch a movie like Pocahontas and think to himself: "Yeah, that's some damn good water animation those kids did, nice smoke , too" (but not as good as our stuff in the old days!") and if they did I hope the movies reminded them of their own great accomplishments as one of the many anonymous artists who contributed to the Dream Factory.
I recall at various times that I've heard Glen or Andreas talk about how when they would ask someone like Frank or Ollie or Marc or Ward about the 80's and 90's features they'd usually react along the lines of: "Well, yeah, that was pretty good ... BUT ..." and go on to give some rather pointed critique of the current movies. So I'm pretty sure I know what they thought about "our" movies (and I'm sure they were right , too) but I also wonder about the lesser knowns, what did they think, did they keep up with it all or did that part of their lives just kind of fade into the background during their retirement years ? (For myself I can't imagine once this animation bug has gotten into the blood that one could ever just walk away from it completely and not be at least slighty interested in what's going on.)
Sorry for the rambling post.
But this should show you how stimulating your blog is , gets the thoughts going , just to have discovered a formerly obscure (to me) name of an animator I didn't know about before.
Hi David - I have received lots of those answers from Frank and Ollie myself, and have also wondered how much involved the lesser known animators have been. As we know, for some it was "just another job" like Ed Love who would go back to his shoe-selling job in a heartbeat if it paid more (according to Tim Walker who worked with him). But there must have been those who felt this was their Life's Work, and who were devastated when they were laid off after Sleeping Beauty (as, it could seem, Al Stetter was). I know I would have been. (Was this what drove BG artist Dick Anthony to suicide in January 1960?)
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