Women’s History Month is about celebrating the women who broke the glass ceiling in their respective industries. For women in the 1930s breaking that ceiling was very difficult and seen as impossible. Retta Scott is credited to be the first female animator at the Walt Disney Company and in my opinion an amazing artist.
Her Cinderella story begins in 1938, when she joined the Story Department working on the animated film Bambi. Her story sketches and character development brought the story to life. This ability caught the attention of director Dave Hand and Walt Disney himself. They were so impressed, that when the film went into production she was assigned to animate scenes featuring hunting dogs chasing Faline (Bambi’s love interest). This was such a significant step in the advancement of women in the animation industry as up until this point, the woman’s role in animation was solely in Ink and Paint art for no screen credit.
These hunting dogs would become the first characters to have been animated by a female animator. In 1942, when Bambi was featured she was the first female animator to have a screen credit. Retta Scott’s work on this scene was so impressive that the supervising animator the legendary Frank Thomas took note of her work and “astounding ability to draw powerful animals.” Her work on this film truly made her mark on the animation industry, so much so, that her male colleagues were said to have been so impressed with the characters to have been terrifying and so convincing that they thought these drawings came from a burly Man. They were amazed that the images came from a “small, delicate, wonderfully cheerful young woman.”
Retta Scott also worked on Fantasia (1940) animating the Pastoral Role segment. She also worked on Dumbo (1941) and the later canceled product of Wind in the Willows. In neither of these films was she credited. She also animated the weasels in the “Wind in the Willows” segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. In 1941, she had a cameo appearance in The Reluctant Dragon drawing an elephant with the face of Robert Benchley.
Scott was laid-off from the studio in 1941 only to return to the story department a year later to when the studio was producing WWII military training videos. Scott retired from the studio in 1946 to move to Washington, D.C with her husband.
Though she was no longer with the Company, she continued to work as a freelance artist for Disney. In 1950, she illustrated the Big Golden Book of Cinderella and Cinderella Puppet Show. She returned to the animation business in 1982 where she was hired as an animator for the Lucky-Zamoa Moving Picture Company.
Sadly, Retta Scott passed away on August 26, 1990. Her work has been seen by so many through the years and will continue to live on in the hearts of us all. In 2000, she was awarded the Disney Legends Award for her contributions to animation. Women like Retta Scott have paved the way for so many of us to continue shattering the glass ceiling.
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