.susanorlean remembers Burny Mattinson, an animator at Disney for nearly 70 years who was, perhaps, one of the last of an almost extinct genotype—the happy company man, the lifer.
, furiously repealing a special tax status, you’d have a lead animator draw the extremes of the action: DeSantis screwing up his face in an angry pout, perhaps, and then declaring, “There’s a new sheriff in town!” Then you’d bring in what’s known in the business as an in-betweener—that is, the animator who draws all the incremental frames of the action.
Mattinson had wanted to be an animator ever since his mother had taken him to see “Pinocchio” at a theatre, in San Francisco, when he was six years old. He soon developed a knack for art. “He would draw endlessly,” his son, Brett Mattinson, told me recently. “If he drew a bee, he would draw every single hair on that bee.” Burny’s father was a professional musician, and the family had moved to Los Angeles; auspiciously, they lived within striking distance of Disney Studios.
At lunch, Mattinson would practice in-betweening. Soon, he graduated from delivering mail to working on Peg’s tail, and then helped animate such classics as “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” and “The Sword in the Stone.” He had joined the company at a golden moment; he was mentored by what were known as Disney’s Nine Old Men, the foundational animators at the company, hired in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. For more than a decade, Mattinson worked for one of them, Eric Larson.
In an interview some years ago, Mattinson said that he really enjoyed working on wicked characters, such as the evil fairy Maleficent, but in real life he skewed cheery and upbeat. He had a big laugh; a wide, round face; and small eyes that actually seemed to twinkle. He said that, of all his characters, he identified most closely with Winnie the Pooh. Mattinison was, perhaps, one of the last of an almost extinct genotype—the happy company man, the lifer. He never had an employer besides Disney.
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