On this day, Milt Kahl began his long and illustrious career with Disney. This Disney Legend and one of Walt Disney’s famed “nine old men” is considered by many to be one of the finest animators ever to work for Disney. Master animator Andreas Deja, who worked on The Princess and the Frog, was “drawn” to Disney and animation largely with inspiration from Kahl. The first Disney movie he saw was The Jungle Book, which utterly captivated him with its portrayal of Shere Khan the tiger. When Andreas got a job at Disney in 1980, he immediately went to the Walt Disney Archives to learn more about Milt and his work. He told D23, “There were really three guys responsible for developing the Disney style. It was first Ub Iwerks, Walt’s first great animator, setting the style for Mickey Mouse and the style of animation. Then a complete natural kid came in, Fred Moore, a little bit later, who just had a knack for drawing appealing things. He changed Ub’s style from something that’s “rubber hosey” to a really fully developed, dimensional character in the way it looked and the way it moved. That was Mickey. Starting with Pinocchio, Milt really came in and did an experimental thing on the character because they couldn’t get anywhere with the character. So he put his pencil, like he would tell them, where his mouth was, and did a test scene of Pinocchio the way he saw him and Walt just loved it, but everybody paid attention because those drawings were beautiful, and Walt saw the potential, not to just use Milt for the lead animator in that picture, but from then on, really having developed just about all of the Disney characters in their final look. He really was THE Disney style, and the authority of the Disney style and the way things had to be drawn from the early ’40s until the mid-’70s when he retired.”
