Eric Larson

Born to Peter and Nora Larson. In 1915 his family moved to Salt Lake City, where he became interested in journalism and also secretly took drawing lessons. In 1925, he entered the University of Utah, later moving to Los Angeles to look for a job in journalism and writing, unfortunately unsuccessfully. He then decided to rekindle his ambition to become an artist, and was offered a job at Walt Disney Productions in 1933, as an `in-betweener'. Later the same year, he married Gertrude Jannes (although sadly, the couple remained childless). Animator Hamilton Luske recognized Larson's talent and promoted him to assistant animator; Luske, who had joined the studio two years previously, later became his mentor. Further promotion followed, with Eric as animator on Walt Disney's first feature length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937); along with future veteran animators Milt Kahl and James Algar, he animated the forest animals that followed Snow White throughout. In 1940, he was promoted to animation director for Pinocchio (1940), and in that film he created the kitten, Figaro, who became one of his favorite characters. In Fantasia (1940), he created the centaurs and the horses in the "Pastoral Symphony" segment of the musical feature.  By 1942, he had become a supervising animator for Bambi (1942) along with fellow workers Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Milt Kahl, with whom he had worked on Snow White. In Bambi, he created Friend Owl, and subsequently worked on birds f…