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John Lounsbery had his own special way of looking at things, according to fellow animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. In their book, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, they wrote that no matter how bad a situation might be, John could always make “some funny observation to lighten the situation.”

And while shy by nature, John created animated characters that were anything but. Thomas and Johnston wrote, “Hardly subtle, John’s char- acters were always fun to watch.”

In fact, John once said that one of his all-time favorite characters was the bold and unabashed Ben Ali, the dancing alligator, who starred in the “Dance of the Hours” sequence of Fantasia.

Other memorable characters he animated include the “less-than” Honest John from Pinocchio, faithful Timothy the mouse in Dumbo, and the ever- so-jolly Tony the cook from Lady and the Tramp.

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Julius [Svendsen] was hired by Disney in the Training Department on February 19, 1940, and became an inbetweener on August 26, 1940. According to Julie, at that time he “He was given assignments on two feature-length cartoons, Fantasia and Dumbo, and he was soon promoted to ‘assistant animator.’ ”

On January 27, 1942, Julius left the Studio to join the Army Signal Corps, concentrating most of his tour in the northernmost wilderness of Alberta, Canada above the Arctic Circle. He was back at Disney, in the Animation Department, on November 5, 1945.

After he returned from the service, Julius was soon promoted to animator and worked on the animated features Cinderella, Peter Pan, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians; Mary Poppins, The Aristocats, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks; as well as on the shorts Melody, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, Grand Canyonscope, Eyes in Outer Space, The Saga of Windwagon Smith, A Symposium of Popular Songs, and Scrooge McDuck and Money.

But Julius Svendsen’s career was not confined to animation. From 1946 until his untimely death in 1971, he also worked for Disney as a storyman, as an illustrator and as a comic-book artist.

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