John Canemaker

“Mr. Astaire is the nearest approach we are ever likely to have to a human Mickey Mouse,” wrote Graham Greene reviewing Fred Astaire in Follow the Fleet in 1936. “He might have been drawn by Mr. Walt Disney, with his quick physical wit, his incredible agility,” Graham continued. “He belongs to a fantasy world almost [...]

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Over the years, I have collected many books by and about caricaturists. Besides several tomes dedicated to Al Hirschfeld, some of my favorites include Is That Me? by New Yorker magazine caricaturist William Auerbach-Levy (Watson-Guptill, 1947); [Al] Frueh on the Theatre: Theatrical Caricatures 1906-1962, a catalog of a 1972 New York Public Library exhibit; The [...]

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One year ago this month, the Walt Disney Family Museum, dedicated to the life and achievements of Walt Disney (1901-1966), opened in San Francisco to positive reviews. Praise continues to be lavished upon the stunningly-designed, $110 million high-tech museum, which has become a top San Francisco tourist attraction. The Disney family established the museum to [...]

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This month marks the birth dates of two nonagenarian wonders who happen to be among the very few remaining participants in the Golden Age of Hollywood Animation of the 1930s: dancer Marge Champion, who turns 91 today, and animator Willis Pyle, who turns 96 tomorrow. I have been privileged to be a friend to both [...]

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Since 1907, the MacDowell Colony has nurtured the creativity of more than 6,000 established and emerging artists. Leonard Bernstein, Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather, Meredith Monk, Alice Walker, Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Ned Rorem, and artists less well-known have found inspiration and artistic sustenance working in the 32 studios set on 75 acres of peaceful woodland [...]

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As an animator and former actor, I love watching a performer in one. That's right: in one. Derived from the days of vaudeville, the expression “in one” is theatre lingo: “in” means “down” as in “downstage.” So any actor in plays or, more often, musicals who performs downstage alone is “working in one.” The purest [...]

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I laughed out loud at certain pages of The Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story and grinned with delight at the rest. This new, juicy, 354-page, beautifully-designed book from author, historian, and cartoon geek extraordinaire Craig Yoe shines a long-overdue spotlight on a great, nearly forgotten master of cartoon mayhem and merriment: the inimitable Milt Gross [...]

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The Adoration of the Magi (detail), by Giotto, ca. 1305 The northern Italian city of Padua offers an elegant, leisurely setting of history and art, without the madding crowd of tourists in its more famous neighbor Venice, located twenty-two miles away. There's a university established in 1222 that houses the observatory where Galileo tracked the [...]

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[Ed note: This is the second entry in Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker’s exclusive monthly column for printmag.com entitled “John Canemaker’s Animated Eye.” His forthcoming book, Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft, will be published by Disney Editions in August. You can read his review of The Animator's Survival [...]

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[Ed. note: Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker will be writing a monthly column about animation for Print. This is his first entry.] I met master cartoonist Jeff Smith last November when he attended my lecture on Winsor McCay at the Wexner Art Center in Columbus, Ohio, where he lives and works. After the talk, Jeff [...]

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