Fred Moore

 

 

I’ve long been fascinated with Fred Moore, one of the animators at the Disney Studio who predated the Nine Old Men.  He’s credited for introducing a looser, freer style to Disney animation which aided in further elevating it beyond the other cartoons coming out at the time.  He seemed, by all accounts I’ve heard from those who knew him, to be an absolute natural as an artist.  He had tremendous control and a preternatural sense of proportion while never “laboring” over his drawings. 

 

Perhaps one of Moore’s greatest contributions to Disney lore was the redesign of Mickey in the late 1930s.  Look at the Mickey of “Steamboat Willie” and “Gallopin’ Gaucho”, then compare them to the Mickey of “The Brave Little Tailor”.  Mickey needed to evolve.  The style of 1928, had it remained in effect for Mickey Mouse, would have rendered him an anachronism eventually.

 

Nevertheless, redesigning what had become an iconic figure in pop culture could have gone drastically awry in the wrong hands.  Having already designed the Three Little Pigs, Moore was trusted by Walt to make a critical transformation for the studio’s most important character.  Adding greater volume (particularly in the body and feet) led to the fundamental model of Mickey that we know today.  What would Mickey’s legacy had been if Walt had not made the effort to redesign Mickey?  Would he remain the defining symbol of the company?  Would the company have lost its identity in some sense without its first major success leading the way?

 

While there is considerable importance to Fred Moore’s contribution to Disney, it also saddens me that his end came so prematurely.  Neal Gabler, in his biography of Walt Disney, contends that Moore had fallen from favor by the late 1940s, that his style was behind the times.  While he may not have still been the shining star of the studio, I find it difficult to believe that he truly could have lost so much of what made him distinctive and effective as a Disney artist.  Perhaps the most convincing indication of this to me is the fact that Ollie Johnston displayed an old pencil of Fred Moore’s in the documentary Frank and Ollie, speaking reverently of his former colleague, noting that the lead which remained in place was worth saving were he (Johnston) to have something special he wanted to draw.  There was magic in that pencil for Ollie.  And if Ollie regarded it with such reverence, is there anything else that needs to be said?

 

Fred Moore died in 1952 as the result of a car accident.  He lingered briefly at St. Joseph’s Hospital (where Walt would pass away fourteen years later) before expiring.  Even if he’d never made another drawing for Disney (and he was working on Peter Pan at the time of his passing), consider all of the information, memories and insights he could have provided in the years following as Disney animators were sought out for their expertise.  At the very least, I think it’s worthwhile to classify Fred Moore as of equal importance to the Nine Old Men – even if he didn’t have the same lengthy body of work.