Blacklisted Disney animator David Hilberman dies

[Tom Morrow]

Blacklisted Disney animator David Hilberman dies




David Hilberman ? animator (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/17/BAGOPR1IQ41.DTL)
San Francisco Chronicle - CA

David Hilberman, a Disney animator who was blacklisted during the 1950s after helping to unionize colleagues in Southern California, died July 5 of natural causes at Stanford University Hospital. He was 95.

Mr. Hilberman landed that job through a national talent contest and worked on animated classics like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Bambi." When World War II theater closures prompted layoffs at Disney, he and other organizers pushed for the remaining employees to join the Screen Cartoonists' Guild, spurring a strike and animosity that lasted decades.

In the 1940s and 1950s, testimony by Walt Disney before the House Un-American Activities Committee and a commentary by the New York gossip columnist Walter Winchell alleged that Mr. Hilberman was a communist. The latter's influence forced the closure of Mr. Hilberman's second enterprise, Tempo Productions.
complete article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/17/BAGOPR1IQ41.DTL)



Related Article:

Walt and the House Un-American Activities Committee (http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/exhibits/articles/waltandhuac/)
The Walt Disney Family Museum



Sent from Ezra (http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/z/Ezra/)

[Executioner]

How sad... At least he continued in the field and kept doing what he knew how and taught people the same skills to work in film and animation.

[Executioner]

Unfortunately no. The 7 old men were: Les Clark, Ollie Johnston,Frank Thomas, Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, John Lounsbery, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl and Marc Davis. David Hilberman was the Art Director on Bambi. He also was a layout artist on the Smurfs cartoon series. IMDB does not list him as being a part of Snow White though. Neither on his IMDB page and the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs page.

[Ezra]

I'm not surprised that IMDB doesn't list all his projects. Most of the people who worked on movies in the early days worked for a weekly salary and got no screen credit for their work. That was the "studio system" at the time.

You may notice on DVDs of older movies an extra set of very looooong credits attached to the end of the movies, listing all the people who worked on the film and got no credit originally. The research that goes into who-did-what in those days is immense. It's alot of work to recreate those credits.