The story of the girls behind the boys at Disney.

February 5, 2010 11:08 AM

Coloring the Kingdom: the story of the all-female “finishing school” of hand-drawn animation that worked behind the scenes to create the first animated full-length Disney feature, Snow White. (via.)
posted by 1f2frfbf (8 comments total)

Fascinating! This is going to all my animator friends.
posted by The Whelk at 11:46 AM on February 5, 2010

I had read about this before, thanks for the link!
posted by emjaybee at 12:38 PM on February 5, 2010

I'm always fascinated to read about professional areas that were carved out for women in the first half of the 20th century. This is an engaging glimpse.
posted by piratebowling at 12:54 PM on February 5, 2010

Wasn't film editing a primarily female position until directors realized how much control over the final product the editor really had?
posted by Badgermann at 1:31 PM on February 5, 2010

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.

I understand the labor required to ink back then, but I never thought about the actual scale of the process. This was sch a great read.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 6:46 PM on February 5, 2010

Snow White is a fascinating text on mid-century ideals of femininity and a masterpiece of animation, truly a beautiful and complex, engaging work. I love that there are still little facts about its production that even further enrich its status. It's so strangely fitting that young women would be the ones to lend Snow White her signature color. Thank you!!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:48 PM on February 5, 2010

It may have been grueling, but I would have loved to do this. Coloring cels was a dream job of mine when I was younger.
posted by basthrohmnse at 9:47 AM on February 6, 2010

I know someone who went to art school for animation work. It's really interesting to me to read about how parts of it were completely untrained (all training on the job) work for women in the 30s and 40s, a time when women were assumed to be likely to leave the job for marriage and children.
posted by immlass at 10:42 AM on February 6, 2010