Tom Palmer (animator)
Anthony "Tony" Pipolo, known professionally as Tom Palmer was an Italian-American animator who was active in the 1930s and worked at several animation studios. He was born with the surname of "Pipolo" but changed his name to Palmer. One of his brothers, Frank Pipolo, was a decorated New York City police officer.
Born in New York City,[1] Palmer's first animation credits occurred at the Winkler Studio in 1928 which made Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. Palmer moved over to Universal Pictures cartoon studio run by Walter Lantz which took over the Oswald series in 1929. By the early 1930s, he was working at Walt Disney Productions. He was lured by Leon Schlesinger to work as an animation director at his newly formed Leon Schlesinger Productions animation studio which made cartoons for Warner Bros. (Palmer's credited Warner Bros. cartoons were 1933's Buddy's Day Out and I've Got to Sing a Torch Song)[2] but Palmer was fired by Schlesinger after Warner Bros. rejected the cartoons that he had produced.[3] Friz Freleng was called in to rework Palmer's cartoons and ultimately replaced him as the studio's head director.
After leaving Warner Bros., Palmer then worked at the Van Beuren Studio until it folded in 1936. He briefly returned to Disney where he worked on the cartoon The Old Mill. His final credited work was as animator in the feature film Gulliver's Travels at Fleischer Studios.