Bernard Wolf - Disney Animator RIP

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

Cartoon BRew is reporting the news of another from the history of Disney animation and the original park has left us.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/archives/2006_09.html#002286

Berny or Bernie Wolf started his animation career in New York City in 1924, inking on the silent Krazy Kat cartoons that Ben Harrison and Manny Gould released through Paramount....

By 1938, Berny, Al Eugster and Shamus Culhane had broken into the Disney Studio. One of Berny’s first cartoons there was DONALD’S NEPHEWS (1938). According to Shamus’ book, Walt made it hard for “old-timers” and ex-New Yorkers at his studio, chiding them for their “bad drawing habits” and training on “cheap productions”. Berny overcame this prejudice and animated Jiminy Cricket in PINOCCHIO (1940). Some of his scenes are Jiminy meeting the Blue Fairy in Sq. 1.5, Sc. 46, where he says “No tricks, now!”, Sq. 1.7, Sc. 59.7 where Jiminy dances with a music box doll and slyly says: “How about sittin’ out the next one babe, huh?” and Sq. 4.9, Sc. 17, where he emerges from a bird seed container in a cage and shyly speaks to the Blue Fairy (“This IS a pleasant surprise!), tips his hat and gets a shower of bird seed pouring from the hat. Berny was one of the key animators on Jiminy, doing many such personality scenes, no doubt working closely with Ward Kimball. On FANTASIA, Berny worked on the Pastoral Symphony sequence, animating Fauns, Unicorns and the Centaurs and Centaurettes that Fred Moore designed. He animated a beautiful scene in part where the Centaurettes are dancing around Ward Kimball’s Bacchus, and a tender scene of a Centaur shielding a Centaurette from the raindrops at the beginning of the storm sequence. Berny also animated the famous scene at the end of the “romance of the Centaurs” sequence, in which the cupids close the curtains on the proceedings, leaving one cupid to peek through at the centaurs. His hovering buttocks form a heart. This scene infuriated critics such as James Agee, it was animated by Berny Wolf. By 1941, Berny seems to have fallen in estimation at Disney, he got one sequence in DUMBO, of the clowns bragging about their “coitain calls” in Sq. 14.1, all in silhouette. This is really an outstanding job of animation, though, as all the poses have to read solidly just in black, showing that Berny had good caricature and staging skills.

Also reported by Mark Evanier from www.newsfromme.com

Bern worked closely with Walt Disney designing attractions for Disneyland, most notably some of the first walkaround character costumes.