Lloyd Richardson contributed his editing skills to an array of Disney animated and live-action motion pictures. These included, most notably, the Studio’s nature and animal films including the 1954 Academy-Award® winning True-Life Adventure The Vanishing Prairie.
Former vice chairman of The Walt Disney Company Roy E. Disney once described his former boss: “Lloyd exemplified the editor as a creative force. He was an original thinker who didn’t just make one cut match another cut, but always considered the whole story.”
Born in Portland, Oregon, on April 21, 1915, Lloyd attended Los Angeles City College in Southern California. During the Depression, he quit school to work a variety of odd jobs at such companies as Eastman Kodak and Adohr Dairy.
In 1937, he landed a position as a traffic boy running errands at The Walt Disney Studios. Before long, however, Lloyd moved to the Editorial department. There, he began to learn his craft on such films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio.
For the next four decades, Lloyd worked as an editor-at-large on a variety of projects. He worked in foreign editing, matching languages such as Italian and Portuguese to animation. During World War II, he helped edit training films produced by the Studio for the United States Armed Forces.
After the war, Lloyd went on to edit the animated features Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as the combination live-action/animated features Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. Around the same time, Walt Disney began developing the Studio’s True-Life Adventures series, of which Lloyd edited the Academy Award-winning Bear Country in 1953, as well as The Vanishing Prairie.
As television began to proliferate during the 1950s, Walt asked Lloyd to direct and edit segments for the Disneyland television series. As fellow editor and Disney Legend Stormy Palmer recalled, “Lloyd gave his all to the Disneyland series. His work was impeccable.”
Lloyd went on to contribute to more than 50 television projects in all, including Disney’s first color broadcast, An Adventure in Color: Mathmagic Land, in 1961. That same year, he won the American Cinema Editors Award for his contributions to the telefilm Chico, The Misunderstood Coyote.
In 1969, Lloyd helped create the animated featurette It’s Tough To Be a Bird, with director and fellow Legend Ward Kimball, which won an Oscar® for Best Short Subject.
After more than 40 years with The Walt Disney Studios, Lloyd retired in 1980. He passed away on February 19, 2002.