Lillian Friedman Astor

Lillian Friedman Astor (born April 12, 1912 – July 9, 1989) was an American animator who was one of the first female animators in the country. She worked for Fleischer Brothers' studio, inking and eventually animating various Betty Boop cartoons, as well as one Popeye, some Color Classics, and several Hunky and Spunky cartoons, although she received screen credit on only six of the forty-two cartoons she animated in her lifetime. The Fleischer Studios' policy was to never credit more than two animators in a cartoon, and Friedman was usually one of the animators left out from the credits.

Personal life Born in New York City, Friedman started drawing at the age of 12 and later attended Washington Irving High School, where she studied commercial art and fashion design. After graduating, she worked as a fashion designer.

Animation career Friedman began as an inker, colorist, and inbetweener, along with a classmate named Lillian Oremland, in July 1930 in a small animation studio financed by Montrose Newman working for a pilot that was a fantasy set to Spring Song. They then became inbetweeners at Frank Goldman's Audio Cinema, in a space shared with Terrytoons. She recalls animating a Listerine commercial with germ characters designed by Dr. Seuss, which Astor expressed frustration about his inability to animate. Through Goldman's friendship with Fleischer, they were both hired as inbetweeners at Fleischer Studios in July 1931. Shamus Culhane, liked her work so much that he hired her as an animation assistant in February 1932, but in April of that same year Culhane's idea of having an assistant was abandoned and she went back to inbetweening, but Culhane continued to encourage her on her dreams of being an animator. In 1933, head of Timing Department Nellie Sanborn gave her the chance to redo a scene from a Betty Boop film and showed it to the Fleischer brothers without telling them it was done by a girl inbetweener; in July 1933, she was signed to a three-year contract as an animator, where she got paid $30 a week. After briefly being in Seymour Kneitel's unit, where the animators were all mean to Astor and made sarcastic remarks, she went to Myron Waldman's unit, which was the opposite and had very nice young animators who accepted her as one of them. She was also responsible for animating several scenes in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor in 1936, specifically Popeye giving the "twisker" punch and the two-headed giant, "Boola." Hunky and Spunky and Educated fish were two cartoon classics that she helped animate that were nominated for Oscars. She failed to find a job after the studio moved to Miami, Florida (a move successfully designed to bust the union). When her husband finally got a job in February 1939, she put aside her animation career to raise a family.