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Book Review: The Queens of Animation
Aug. 22nd, 2020 08:23 pmIn a way, I wish I’d read Nathalia Holt’s The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History earlier in the Disney rewatch project, because the book taught me so much not only about the female animators at Disney (40% of the staff in the 1940s!), but about Disney history in general, and it’s really added depth to my appreciation and understanding of the films.
On the other hand, maybe if the films weren’t so fresh in my mind from the recent rewatch, I wouldn’t have been able to get nearly so much out of the book: there wouldn’t have been that frisson of recognition when Holt talked about the limited color palette in Dumbo (the studio was rushing to get the film out in order to solve the company’s financial woes), or the purposefully sketchy look of the animation in 101 Dalmatians: the studio had just started using Xerox machines, which didn’t smooth out the lines the way that human Ink & Paint girls had, so the art designer decided to lean into the outlines. (Walt hated it, which is why later Xerox films don’t look like that.)
The book really digs into the economic and technological realities of creation in a way that pop culture discussions about art often ignore or downplay. Animated film is an exceptionally expensive medium (Roy Disney was always pushing Walt to shut down the animation studio and focus on more profitable live action) with unusual technical requirements, so these pressures are especially powerful in that field, but in general I think discussions about art would be fuller and more illuminating if they not only acknowledged but explored those aspects of artistic creation in the way that this book does.
The book is definitely stronger about the early history of Disney feature animation. It loses impetus after Walt’s death in 1966, partly because the studio lost most of its female animators then: he had championed their work, as well as the animation studio in general, and once he was gone Roy had his way in shunting animation to the side. The legacy of the earlier female animators was so thoroughly wiped out that many of the women hired in the 70s thought they were the first women hired by Disney animation. Less than a decade after Mary Blair finished her last work for the studio!
But I think the early history is also stronger because Holt has more freedom when she’s writing about the dead. We do get a few good tidbits from still-living female animators (there’s a part where one animator gets herself a business card that reads “Token female animator at Pixar”) - but many of these women are still working in the industry and for obvious reasons don’t want to burn bridges. The full story never seems to get told until the most important players are dead.
On the other hand, maybe if the films weren’t so fresh in my mind from the recent rewatch, I wouldn’t have been able to get nearly so much out of the book: there wouldn’t have been that frisson of recognition when Holt talked about the limited color palette in Dumbo (the studio was rushing to get the film out in order to solve the company’s financial woes), or the purposefully sketchy look of the animation in 101 Dalmatians: the studio had just started using Xerox machines, which didn’t smooth out the lines the way that human Ink & Paint girls had, so the art designer decided to lean into the outlines. (Walt hated it, which is why later Xerox films don’t look like that.)
The book really digs into the economic and technological realities of creation in a way that pop culture discussions about art often ignore or downplay. Animated film is an exceptionally expensive medium (Roy Disney was always pushing Walt to shut down the animation studio and focus on more profitable live action) with unusual technical requirements, so these pressures are especially powerful in that field, but in general I think discussions about art would be fuller and more illuminating if they not only acknowledged but explored those aspects of artistic creation in the way that this book does.
The book is definitely stronger about the early history of Disney feature animation. It loses impetus after Walt’s death in 1966, partly because the studio lost most of its female animators then: he had championed their work, as well as the animation studio in general, and once he was gone Roy had his way in shunting animation to the side. The legacy of the earlier female animators was so thoroughly wiped out that many of the women hired in the 70s thought they were the first women hired by Disney animation. Less than a decade after Mary Blair finished her last work for the studio!
But I think the early history is also stronger because Holt has more freedom when she’s writing about the dead. We do get a few good tidbits from still-living female animators (there’s a part where one animator gets herself a business card that reads “Token female animator at Pixar”) - but many of these women are still working in the industry and for obvious reasons don’t want to burn bridges. The full story never seems to get told until the most important players are dead.
