Shamus Culhane
Shamus Culhane | |
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Born | James H. Culhane November 12, 1908 Ub Iwerks Studio (1932-1934) (1966-1967)Van Beuren (1934-1935) Walt Disney Animation Studios (1935-1939) Warner Bros. Cartoons (1942-1943) Walter Lantz Productions (1943-1945) Shamus Culhane Productions (1948-66) Famous Studios |
Spouses |
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Children | 2 |
Awards | Winsor McCay Award, 1986 |
James H. "Shamus" Culhane (November 12, 1908 – February 2, 1996) was an American animator, film director, and film producer. He is best known for his work in the Golden age of American animation.
Career
Shamus Culhane worked for a number of American animation studios, including
While at the Disney studio, he discovered while working on
He also worked as an animator on
A year following his departure from Fleischer, Culhane worked briefly in the units of Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin at Warner Bros. Cartoons, before moving on to being a director for Walter Lantz. At Lantz, he collaborated on The Greatest Man in Siam with the layout artist (and former Disney and Chuck Jones alumnus) Art Heinemann. In that animation, "the king of Siam bolts past doorways that are distinctly phallic in shape and peers at another that mimics a vagina."[5] Later the same year he helmed Woody Woodpecker's classic The Barber of Seville. The cartoon debuted a new streamlined design for the woodpecker, and is also known for featuring one of the first uses of fast cutting, after taking the idea from Sergei Eisenstein. At Lantz, he sporadically introduced Russian avant-garde influenced experimental art into the cartoons.[5]; one example is briefly visible during an explosion in the Woody Woodpecker short The Loose Nut.
Culhane departed Lantz in October 1945 following a pay dispute. Following a succession of aborted projects, he returned to New York in 1948 to found Shamus Culhane Productions (Culhane had gone by his birthname of James up until this point, before going by its Irish variant Shamus), one of the first companies to create animated television commercials, among them an iconic Muriel Cigars commercial featuring a
Post-animation career
Culhane wrote two highly regarded books on animation: the how-to/textbook Animation from Script to Screen, and his autobiography Talking Animals and Other People. Since Culhane worked for a number of major Hollywood animation studios, his autobiography gives a balanced general overview of the history of the Golden age of American animation.
At his death on February 2, 1996, Culhane was survived by his fourth wife, the former Juana Hegarty, and by two sons from his third marriage,[6] to Maxine Marx (the daughter of Chico Marx): Brian Culhane of Seattle and Kevin Marx Culhane of Portland, Oregon.[1]
References
- ^ a b Van Gelder, Lawrence (April 2, 1996). "Shamus Culhane, a Pioneer in Film Animation, Dies at 87". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2008.
- ^ Who's Who in Animated Cartoons: An International Guide to Film & Television's Award-Winning and Legendary Animators, by Jeff Lenburg, p. 95-97
- ^ Perk, Hans (February 23, 2007). "A note on Pinocchio..." Retrieved December 28, 2020.
- ^ Perk, Hans (March 4, 2007). "A Quick Culhane/Tate note..." Retrieved December 28, 2020.
- ^ a b Cieply, Michael (April 10, 2011). "That Noisy Woodpecker Had an Animated Secret". New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
- ^ Maxine Marx, Growing Up With Chico, p. 168: "... Shamus, who was twice divorced" when he married Maxine.
External links
- Shamus Culhane at IMDb