Shamus Culhane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Shamus Culhane | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Culhane November 12, 1908 Ware, Massachusetts  United States |
| Died | February 2, 1996 (aged 87) New York City, New York United States |
| Other name(s) | James H. Culhane Jimmie Culhane Jimmy Culhane |
| Years active | 1930-1996 |
James "Shamus" Culhane (November 12, 1908—February 2, 1996) was an American animator, film director, and film producer.
Culhane worked for a number of American animation studios, including Fleischer Studios, the Ub Iwerks studio, Walt Disney Productions, and the Walter Lantz studio. While at the Disney studio, he was a lead animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animating arguably the most well-known sequence in the film: the animation of the dwarves marching home singing "Heigh-Ho". The scene took Culhane and his assistants six months to complete.
Later in his career, Culhane was a director for Lantz, where he helmed Woody Woodpecker's 1944 classic, The Barber of Seville. In the late-1940s, he founded Shamus Culhane Productions, one of the first companies to create animated television commercials.
Shamus Culhane Productions folded in the 1960s, at which point Culhane became the head of the successor to Fleischer Studios, Paramount Cartoon Studios. He left the studio in 1967, and went into semi-retirement.
Culhane wrote two highly-regarded books on animation: the how-to/textbook Animation from Script to Screen, and his autobiography Talking Animals and Other People. Since Culhane worked for a number of major Hollywood animation studios, his autobiography gives a balanced general overview of the history of the Golden Age of American Animation.
Married twice, Culhane's first wife was Maxine Marx, Chico Marx's daughter.
[edit] References
- Culhane, Shamus (1986): Talking Animals and Other People. St. Martin's Press.
