Animator Jack Bradbury is my 257th choice to be given the Disney Legend honor.
Bradbury began working for Disney at age 20 and was responsible for key scenes in movies like Ferdinand the Bull, Bambi, Fantasia, and Pinocchio. At the age of twenty, he joined the Disney Studio and worked as an
inbetweener from 1934-1938 on such cartoons as "The Band Concert,"
"Through The Mirror" and even "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." He
worked as Bob Wickersham's assistant. (Wickersham's nickname was "Wick"
and he later did comic book work under the name "Bob Wick".) Ken
Hultgren, Don Lusk and Bradbury were the clean up men for the funny
animal stuff being animated by Eric Larson, Milt Kahl, and Jim Algar.
Those three animators did much of the animal animation in "Snow White."
After working briefly for Friz Freleng at Warner Brothers, he began working for Western Publishing in 1947, illustrating Little Golden Books, other children’s books, and comic books for the Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics imprints along with the Disney Studio Program. Reportedly Walt Disney told Western that they didn’t need his approval for any of Bradbury’s work. Eye problems forced him to cut back on his output after 1970, though he still continued to work on a few projects for Disney.
According to the book Walt's People - Volume 3: Talking Disney with the Artists who Knew Him by Didier Ghez, which presents a full reprint of an interview with Jack himself made by Klaus Strzyz in 1978, he never considered himself a "very good duck man", preferring to draw stories with Mickey and Goofy. When Mr. Strzyz asked him about the quality of 1940s, 1950s and 1960s Disney comic stories in comparison with the 1970s ones, he answered that the then later ones were far better in terms of quality, the only exception being Bark's old ones. Including he affirmed that he felt embarrassed when he eventually saw some of his own early works.
Although he didn't have a very good opinion about his own work with Donald and his family, Bradbury drew important and popular stories with them, like "Family Tree". And some of those ones presented noteworthy one-off characters as well, such as Blarney O'Duck (a cunning and obstinate sea captain), Cousin Daniel Duck (an old sheriff with rheumatism), Dick Duck (a self-important and terribly frank private detective), Myron O'Duck (a scoundrel who almost married Grandma Duck), and Aunt Myrtle (an absurdly strong but nice aunt of Daisy).
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