Rae McSpadden was an ink and paint artist in the early days of the Disney Studios. She worked on films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Victory Through Air Power. Rae made her way to Los Angeles and had been lucky to get in with the
last trainees of January 1936. After five unpaid months and weekly,
nerve-racking “elimination days,” when accuracy and speed were
meticulously reviewed, she was hired. “They were very demanding,” inker
Yuba Pillet O’Brien remembers. “Out of our class [‘35] of 60, they only
hired 3 and 1 was let go.” All for the starting salary of $16 per week.
But what some candidates lacked in experience or art education, they
made up for in moxie. June (‘38) was living with her mother and
struggling to pay the rent. “I didn’t know the first thing about inking,
so I went out and bought art paper, India ink, and a pen,” she said. “I
found out where the studio was, and I just walked in one day and said,
‘I want a job—do you have any work?’
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