Shamus Culhane | |
|---|---|
| Born | James H. Culhane (1908-11-12)November 12, 1908 Ware, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | February 2, 1996(1996-02-02) (aged 87) New York City, United States |
| Other names | James Culhane Jimmie Culhane Jimmy Culhane |
| Years active | 1925–1996 |
| Employer(s) | Bray Productions (1925–1928) Winkler Pictures (1928–1929) Fleischer Studios (1929–1932, 1939–1942) Ub Iwerks Studio (1932–1934) The Van Beuren Corporation (1934–1935) Walt Disney Productions (1935–1939) Leon Schlesinger Productions (1942–1943) Walter Lantz Productions (1943–1945) Shamus Culhane Productions (1945–66) Paramount Cartoon Studios (1966–1967) |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Winsor McCay Award, 1986 |
James H. "Shamus"Culhane (November 12, 1908 – February 2, 1996) was an Americananimator, film director, and film producer. He is best known for his work in theGolden age of American animation.
Shamus Culhane worked for a number of American animation studios, includingFleischer Studios, theUb Iwerks studio,Walt Disney Productions, andWalter Lantz Productions. He began his animation career in 1925 working forBray Productions on theDinky Doodle series, produced under the supervision ofWalter Lantz. After Bray he served as an inker on Ben Harrison’s andManny Gould’sKrazy Kat cartoons before moving toFleischer Studios in 1929 after producerCharles Mintz did not retain him upon transferring the studio to Hollywood.[1] Culhane is known for promoting the animation talents of his inker/assistant at Fleischer in the early 1930s,Lillian Friedman Astor, making her the first female studio animator.[2] After serving as director on severalTalkartoons and earlyBetty Boop shorts, Culhane moved to Hollywood to animate at theIwerks Studio, operated by influential former Disney alumnusUb Iwerks, under which he directed, alongside his longtime colleague and friendAl Eugster, severalComiColor Cartoons. On departing Iwerks's studio, Culhane briefly returned to New York to direct at the reorganizedVan Beuren Corporation, then supervised byBurt Gillett, before opting to apply to Disney in 1935.
While at the Disney studio, he discovered while working onHawaiian Holiday's crab sequence an animation method that involved stewing[clarification needed] for multiple days, before drawing the entire thing in rough sketches all at once, straight ahead.[citation needed] He was a lead animator onSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animating arguably the most well-known sequence in the film, the animation of thedwarves marching home singing "Heigh-Ho". The scene took Culhane and his assistants six months to complete. During this time he developed his "High-speed" technique of animating with quick dashed-off sketches.
He also worked as an animator onPinocchio, where he worked on Honest John and Gideon. However, he was left uncredited on the film. During the production of the film he left Disney to work at Fleischer Studios.[3][4] While there, he worked as an animator on several crowd scenes inGulliver's Travels and as the uncredited co-director onMr. Bug Goes to Town. Following the completion ofGulliver, Culhane was assigned his own unit, which he attempted to instil with the artistic principles and ethos he had acquired at Disney, yielding shorts such asPopeye Meets William Tell, notable for their unusually fluid and expressive character animation relative to much of Fleischer's previous work.
A year following his departure from Fleischer, Culhane worked briefly in the units ofChuck Jones andFrank Tashlin atLeon Schlesinger Productions, before moving on to being a director for Walter Lantz. At Lantz, he collaborated onThe Greatest Man in Siam with the layout artist (and former Disney and Chuck Jones alumnus) Art Heinemann. In that animation, "the king of Siam bolts past doorways that are distinctly phallic in shape and peers at another that mimics a vagina."[5] Later the same year he helmedWoody Woodpecker's classicThe Barber of Seville. The cartoon debuted a new streamlined design for the woodpecker, and is also known for featuring one of the first uses offast cutting, after taking the idea fromSergei Eisenstein. At Lantz, he sporadically introducedRussian avant-garde influenced experimental art into the cartoons.;[5] one example is briefly visible during an explosion in the Woody Woodpecker shortThe Loose Nut.
Culhane departed Lantz in October 1945 following a pay dispute. Following a succession of aborted projects, he returned to New York in 1948 to found Shamus Culhane Productions (Culhane had gone by his birthname ofJames up until this point, before going by its Irish variantShamus), one of the first companies to create animated television commercials, among them an iconic Muriel Cigars commercial featuring aMae West caricature stylized as a cigar. It also produced the animation for at least one of theBell Telephone Science Series films. 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, ceding its creative supervision to a youngRalph Bakshi, and went into semi-retirement.
Culhane wrote two highly regarded books on animation: the how-to/textbookAnimation from Script to Screen, and his autobiographyTalking 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 theGolden age of American animation.
At his death on February 2, 1996, Culhane was survived by his fourth wife, the former Juana Hegarty, and by two sons from his third marriage,[6] to Maxine Marx (the daughter ofChico Marx): Brian Culhane of Seattle and Kevin Marx Culhane of Portland, Oregon.[1]
