David Hand
Biography[edit]
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Hand began his animation career working on Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell cartoons throughout the 1920s. He joined the Disney studio in 1930 during a major drive by Disney to recruit from the best of animating talent.
Hand immediately made his mark as an animator. By 1932 he was regarded as one of the studio's top animators (despite some complaints that his work was "too mechanical")[1] and had become a close friend of Disney himself. Hand's organizational skills made Disney select him to be the studio's third director after Burt Gillett and Wilfred Jackson. He made his directorial debut for the company with the Mickey Mouse short Building a Building and went on to direct both Silly Symphony and Mickey Mouse shorts, including The Flying Mouse, Who Killed Cock Robin?, Three Orphan Kittens, and Thru the Mirror. By the late 1930s Hand's management skills had allowed him to ascend the hierarchy of the Studio to functioning as Disney's right-hand man. But as historian Michael Barrier notes "Hand's position was fundamentally untenable—he was second in command in an organization whose leader, younger than Hand himself, had no intention of ever stepping aside or sharing real power."[1]
Personal life[edit]
Death[edit]
Hand died from complications of a stroke in San Luis Obispo, California at age 86.[1] Hand's son, David Hale Hand, has formed David Hand Productions which owns the rights to the 19 Gaumont animated shorts—nine Animaland cartoons and ten Musical Paintbox cartoons—and hopes to produce new films starring some of the characters in the shorts, e.g. Ginger Nutt. In 1994, Hand was posthumously inducted into the Disney Legends program.