November 4, 1895 – Director, Producer, and Disney Legend Ben Sharpsteen is Born
“Concerning Ben Sharpsteen and his contributions to the development of the Disney organization, I want to say he played a very important part.” – Walt Disney
On November 4, 1895, Ben Sharpsteen was born in Tacoma, Washington, and was raised in Alameda, California. Sharpsteen attended the University of California at Davis to study agriculture, and joined the Marines in 1917 to serve during WWI. After the war, Sharpsteen worked at various studios as an animator, including Paramount, Jefferson Films, and Max Fleischer Studios. After his work was recommended to Disney, Sharpsteen flew from New York to Los Angeles; he was hired and paid one of the highest salaries in the studio, higher even than Disney’s top animator, Ub Iwerks.
For his first six years at Disney, Sharpsteen contributed animation on 97 Mickey Mouse short films and several Silly Symphonies. In 1933, Sharpsteen also established an animation training program within the studio, and began to recruit talented artists. In 1934, he moved to directing on the short films, which led to his role as a sequence director on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He then became a supervising co-director on Pinocchio, and a production supervisor on Fantasia, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland. In the 1950s, Sharpsteen worked on several of the True-Life Adventure series, even presenting the series on television on the first episode of the Disney anthology series Disneyland. After working with the Disney Studios for 33 years, he retired in 1962, and passed away on December 20, 1980. He was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1998.
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