Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Art Stevens, RIP

Over at Disney's this p.m., and I found out from Burny Mattinson that longtime Disney Animation veteran Art Stevens has passed away...

Art came to Disney's in 1940, and worked at the Mouse House his entire career. A longtime assistant for John Lounsberry, Art was elevated to feature director on The Rescuers when Lounsberry died. He ended up the lead director on The Fox and the Hound and finished his career with The Black Cauldron.

I worked with Art on F and H, and thought he did a commendable job in pulling the film together. (During its making, half the animation crew departed, and there was some fierce infighting among the directors.) That the feature turned out as well as it did is much to Art's credit.

Born in 1915, Art was 92 when he died. It was good knowing you Arthur. I will always have fond memories of the time we worked together.

5 comments:

Kevin Kyburz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kevin Kyburz said...

I'm very sad... Art Stevens was absolutly great. Takamoto, Ellenshaw, Lloyd Alexander, so many legends passed away this year. I'm a German Disney-Blogger and Co-owner of Germany's biggest Disney Fan site "Duckipedia". I want to write a article about Art, could you maybe give me more Information (Date of Birth, for example). My adress: kevin@duckipedia.de

R.I.P Art and thank you for the magic. :(

Steve Hulett said...

Animation World Network has a longer piece on Art Stevens, which we've linked to in "'Toon Linkage" up above...

Kevin Kyburz said...

Thank you very mutch, yesterday I wrote article about him in German (http://www.duckipedia.de/index.php/Arthur_Stevens)

Anonymous said...

Nice photo and remembrance of Art Stevens over on Ruben Procopio's blog :

RIP Art

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