Burt Gillett

Burton Fred Gillett where his early artistic contributions included multiple issues in the amateur artists page of Judge magazine, one of which won him a prize in a drawing contest. and New York City, working as a cashier for a lumber company.

Career

Early career Burt Gillett started his creative career contributing cartoons to The Connellsville News, in 1912. Gillett moved careers from newspaper cartooning to animation in 1918 when he was employed by the International Film Service, The studio had been formed in 1915 and first employed experienced animators Frank Moser and William Nolan. By July of the same year, the studio shut down, and Gillett relocated to The Mutt and Jeff Film Company, headed by Charles Bowers, with animation veteran Raoul Barré joining soon after, causing the studio to be renamed Barré-Bowers. Gillett had been hired among a group of notable co-workers like Jack King, Izzy Klein, Walter Lantz, Ben Sharpsteen and Vernon Stallings. He switched between these two jobs in brief periods, working at Hearst's reopened studio in 1919 and moving back to the old Barré-Bowers studio in 1921 after IFS shut its doors. Barré-Bowers studio was renamed Jefferson Film Corporation, supervised by Dick Friel, then Gillett briefly assumed directorial duties before the studio shuttered in 1922. The independent studio produced 26 cartoons, then shut down in mid-1926, leading Gillett to join Pat Sullivan's studio to work on Felix the Cat cartoons. At this point, Ub Iwerks was the only experienced animator on staff. Walt Disney visited New York City with the goal of hiring more experienced staff. The first notable animator hired this way was Ben Sharpsteen, a veteran of the Fleischer Studios. A visit by Disney to the studio of Pat Sullivan resulted in Disney hiring Gillett, the second New York animator to be hired. He started working for Disney in April, 1929.

The move of the two New Yorkers to the studio coincided with a significant change in the way the staff functioned. Up to 1929, Walt Disney had been the de facto director of most of the studio's films, but now he was pulling back and establishing new directors. Gillett soon moved into the "music room" (the director's office). The division of responsibilities between them was still, however, informal and somewhat unclear. Disney did not hesitate to intervene and criticize Gillett in front of fellow staff members.

By the Summer of 1929, Iwerks and Gillett were the primary directors of the studio. Iwerks was tasked with directing the Silly Symphonies shorts, and Gillett directed the Mickey Mouse shorts as early as Mickey's Choo Choo. The Gillett-directed Mickey shorts The Chain Gang and The Picnic, released the following year, marked the earliest appearances of Pluto. The involvement of Disney himself in production details declined during this period. When Iwerks left the studio in 1930, Gillett assumed directorial duties of Silly Symphonies cartoons, starting with Cannibal Capers. Gillett was remembered by animators for his exuberant acting and enthusiasm when planning out shorts with staffers. He eventually directed the Academy Award winners Flowers and Trees and The Three Little Pigs, the former the earliest Disney short to employ Technicolor and the latter one of the earliest attempts at more defined character animation,

Van Beuren Studio Due to the success of The Three Little Pigs, Gillett was recruited to run the Van Beuren Studios in 1934 to more effectively compete with Disney. At Van Beuren, Gillett hired a young Joseph Barbera for $25 a week for one of his earliest jobs in animation. He first started a series of live-action and animation hybrid shorts called Toddle Tales, which featured live children interacting with animated characters in wraparound segments for animated stories, of which three were released. Then, he directed the all-color series of Rainbow Parade animated shorts, mostly featuring one-off characters but sometimes including recurring characters like Molly Moo-Cow. Gillett shifted the studio production to producing only color cartoon shorts, an innovative step for early animation. The Rainbow Parade shorts imitated the Silly Symphonies, and immediately phased out the studio's prior established series and characters.

The failure of both attempts highlighted the weaknesses of his efforts to integrate the West Coast style of Disney with the East Coast style of Van Beuren. Most of these films diverted from the absurdist energy and imagination of earlier products of the studio, while also not fully reaching the Disney charm, graphic sophistication, and story structure they intended to compete with. In 1936, Gillett attempted to revive series focusing on the Toonerville Trolley and Felix the Cat. Despite the weaknesses of the whole series' direction, these films were more ambitiously produced, commercially successful, and acclaimed by audiences of the time.

Van Beuren Studios released its films through a distribution deal with RKO Pictures. In 1936, RKO signed an exclusive distribution deal with the Disney studio, consequently dumping Van Beuren. RKO pulled out of its deal with Van Beuren's animation division after the 1935-36 contract expired, and the studio closed after remaining cartoons were finished.

Later career After a month-long vacation in England, and for constantly running over budget. Two other cartoons were still in production under Gillett's supervision, the Silly Symphony Moth and the Flame and Mickey Mouse's Brave Little Tailor, but animator Dick Huemer replaced Gillett as director of the former while animator Bill Roberts took over directorial duties of the latter. sometimes using the pseudonym "Gil Burton". Walter Lantz considered Gillett to be a perfectionist who worked by trial-and-error and constantly ran over budget. and behind schedule, partially contributing to the studio's brief closure in 1940 (after distributor Universal cut the studio's weekly advance, facilitating financial unsustainable shortages).

Gillett left the animation business permanently in 1939, with the 1940 U.S. Census listing him as unemployed and unable to work since the previous year. Gillett stayed in Los Angeles, working at a McDonnell's Drive-In restaurant in 1942, as a machine operator a year later, and as a maintenance worker at a candy company in 1950. Gillett died in 1971 in Los Angeles, California. noting he quickly swung from violent rages to excessive enthusiasm at random. In an interview, Jack Kinney claimed he was a nervous, impulsive individual at Disney. Culhane also alleged he was eventually institutionalized for several years, but some of Culhane's statements has been questioned by historians.

Gillett had three marriages. His first was at age 19, with Louisa Carolyn Roberts, a 15-year-old former maid of their family. They had one son, Frederic "Ted" Gillett, who was later a noted aircraft designer and ham-radio engineer W6HX in Southern California. Burt and Louisa divorced after claims of a strained relationship and that Gillett cheated on her with an employee of his, Ethel Falkenberg. Gillett and Ethel married and later had a child, Ronnie, in 1937. They separated by 1950, and Theckla died in 1953. and large scenes or whole films were scrapped entirely. Gillett invited Disney artists who were much younger than many of New York animators, some of whom started in the silent era, to lecture them on Disney animation techniques, which they took as condescension and harbored resentment towards. It didn't help that he fired about fifty people in a six-month period of staff cuts, Staff morale took a blow. Jack Kinney made an offhand statement in an interview that Gillett would undress female ink-and-paint workers walking across the Disney studio lot.