Hello, and welcome to this week’s Disney Trivia post! I’m joined by my friends Heidi from Heidi’s Head and Jodi from Magical Mouse Schoolhouse, and this month I’m focusing on some great trivia related to the collection of animators known as Walt’s Nine Old Men. Today we are talking about Les Clark, the first of Walt’s Nine Old Men.
Did you know…that Les Clark was hired by Walt Disney just days after he graduated from high school? Les started work on February 23, 1927, in what Walt warned “might be a temporary job”. Well, that “temporary job” lasted until Les retired from Walt Disney Productions on September 30, 1975 — the longest continuously employed member of Walt Disney Productions!
The image above shows some of the characters that Les Clark worked on during his career at Disney — and Les Clark was also the only of Walt’s Nine Old Men that did any work in the early days of Mickey Mouse!
To sum it all up about the makeup and determination of Les Clark, I’m leaving you with a quote from two other members of Walt’s Nine Old Men — Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston:
“Les quietly went ahead perfecting what he did best, constantly at art class working hard to improve and learn. There was much admiration for this quiet, thoughtful man, who came in with no art background yet through sheer determination and desire not only kept up, but helped advance the art with his refinements of many fundamentals.” -Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Thank you for stopping by today, now, please check out the rest of the entries for this week!
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