Mel Shaw
November 22, 2012 (aged 97)
- Animator
- design artist
- writer
- artist
Career[edit]
Shaw began his career in entertainment industry as a silent film title card creator at Pacific Title and Art, a company owned by film producer, Leon Schlesinger.[1] He next worked for Orson Welles in the early 1930s, where Shaw helped to create a storyboard The Little Prince, though the proposed Welles film was never created.[1] Shaw would later join the Harman-Ising Studio, working on the Early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, as well as MGM's Happy Harmonies series.
Shaw was personally recruited by Walt Disney to work on the 1942 animated classic, Bambi.[1][2] He left Disney Studios to enlist in the Army Signal Corps, where he served as a combat photographer during World War II.
Shaw returned to Disney's animation department in 1974 at the invitation of Walt Disney Studios.[1] He returned to work on Disney animated films and mentored a new generation of animators. His last film at Disney was The Lion King, released in 1994.[1]
Shaw partnered with former MGM Studios animator Bob Allen to establish a design firm.[1] Under Shaw and Allen, their company designed Howdy Doody for NBC during the late 1940s.[1][2]
He was among a couple of artists who worked at Disney both during its Golden Age within the late-1930s as well as during the studio's resurgence within the 1990s.[1]
Death[edit]
Shaw died from congestive heart failure on November 22, 2012, at the Woodland Care Center in Reseda, California, at the age of 97.[1] His first wife, Louise, died in 1984.[2] Shaw's second wife, Florence Lounsbery, who died in 2004, was the widow of Disney animator, John Lounsbery.[2] They had resided in Acampo, California, for more than twenty years.[2]