Shamus Culhane

Personal Info

Known For Director

Gender Male

Birthday 1908-11-12

Deathday 1996-02-02 (87 years old)

Place of Birth Wareham, Massachusetts, USA

Also Known As Seamus Culhane, James Culhane, Jimmy Culhane, Jimmie Culhane, James H. Culhane

Shamus Culhane

Biography

Culhane worked for a number of American animation studios, including Fleischer Studios, the Ub Iwerks studio, Walt Disney Productions, and theWalter Lantz studio. He began his animation career in 1925 working for J.R. Bray studios, and is known for promoting the animation talents of his inker/assistant at the Fleischer Studios in the early 1930s, Lillian Friedman Astor, making her the first female studio animator. While at the Disney studio, he discovered while working on Hawaiian Holiday's crab sequence an animation method that involved stewing for multiple days, before drawing the entire thing in rough sketches all at once, straight ahead, without invoking the left side of the brain. He was a lead animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animating arguably the most well-known sequence in the film, the animation of the dwarves marching home singing "Heigh-Ho". The scene took Culhane and his assistants six months to complete. During this time he developed his 'High-speed' technique of using only the right side of the brain and animating with quick dashed-off sketches. In 1944, he collaborated on The Greatest Man in Siam with the layout artist Art Heinemann. In that animation, "the king of Siam bolts past doorways that are distinctly phallic in shape and peers at another that mimics a vagina."[3] Later in his career, Culhane worked briefly in Chuck Jones's unit at Warner Bros, before moving on to being a director for Lantz, where he helmed Woody Woodpecker's 1944 classic, The Barber of Seville, the cartoon famous for one of the first uses of fast cutting, after taking the idea from Sergei Eisenstein. At Lantz, he introduced Russian avant-garde influenced experimental art into the cartoons. In the late-1940s, he founded Shamus Culhane Productions (Culhane had gone by his birthname of James up until this point, before going by its Irish variant Shamus), one of the first companies to create animated television commercials. It also produced the animation for at least one of the Bell Telephone Science Series films. Shamus Culhane Productions folded in the 1960s, at which point Culhane became the head of the successor to Fleischer Studios, Paramount Cartoon Studios. He left the studio in 1967, and went into semi-retirement. Culhane wrote two highly regarded books on animation: the how-to/textbook Animation from Script to Screen, and his autobiography Talking Animals and Other People. Since Culhane worked for a number of major Hollywood animation studios, his autobiography gives a balanced general overview of the history of the Golden Age of American Animation. At his death on February 2, 1996, Culhane was survived by second wife, the former Juana Hegarty, and by two sons from his first marriage to Maxine Marx (the daughter of Chico Marx) which ended in divorce: Brian Culhane of Seattle and Kevin Marx Culhane of Portland, Ore. -From Wikiepedia

Known For

Director

1977
King of the Beasts

as Director

1976
Noah's Animals

as Director

1967
The Space Squid

as Director

1967
1967
Robin Hoodwinked

as Director

1967
The Plumber

as Director

1967
Think or Sink

as Director

1967
The Opera Caper

as Director

1967
The Squaw Path

as Director

1967
The Trip

as Director

1966
A Wedding Knight

as Director

1966
I Want My Mummy

as Director

1966
Geronimo and Son

as Director

1966
A Balmy Knight

as Director

1966
1966
The Defiant Giant

as Director

1966
Throne for a Loss

as Director

1957
1956
1946
Who's Cookin Who?

as Director

1946
1946
Mousie Come Home

as Director

1946
1945
Woody Dines Out

as Director

1945
The Dippy Diplomat

as Director

1945
The Loose Nut

as Director

1945
Chew-Chew Baby

as Director

1944
Ski for Two

as Director

1944
The Beach Nut

as Director

1944
1944
Jungle Jive

as Director

1944
Fish Fry

as Director

1943
Meatless Tuesday

as Director

1943
Take Heed Mr. Tojo

as Director

1935
The Merry Kittens

as Director

1935
Little Black Sambo

as Co-Director

1935
Old Mother Hubbard

as Co-Director

1934
Jack Frost

as Co-Director

1934
The Headless Horseman

as Co-Director

1934
The King's Tailor

as Co-Director

1933
Jack and the Beanstalk

as Co-Director

1931
1931

Visual Effects

1957
1943
Puss n' Booty

as Animation

1941
Two for the Zoo

as Animation

1940
Popeye Meets William Tell

as Animation Director

1939
Gulliver's Travels

as Animation

1939
Society Dog Show

as Animation

1939
The Pointer

as Animation

1939
Beach Picnic

as Animation

1939
The Autograph Hound

as Animation

1939
The Hockey Champ

as Animation

1939
Donald's Cousin Gus

as Animation

1938
Polar Trappers

as Animation

1937
Hawaiian Holiday

as Animation

1937
1936
Donald and Pluto

as Animation

1936
Orphan's Picnic

as Animation

1936
Mickey's Circus

as Animation

1935
Balloon Land

as Animation

1933
1931
Minding the Baby

as Animation

1931
Minding the Baby

as Animation Director

1925
Just Spooks

as Animation

Producer

1967
Brother Bat

as Executive Producer

1967
Keep the Cool, Baby

as Executive Producer

1967
The Stubborn Cowboy

as Executive Producer

1967
A Bridge Grows in Brooklyn

as Executive Producer

1967
The Plumber

as Executive Producer

1967
The Trip

as Executive Producer

1967
Forget-Me-Nuts

as Executive Producer

1967
Alter Egotist

as Executive Producer

1967
The Squaw Path

as Executive Producer

1967
High But Not Dry

as Executive Producer

1966
A Wedding Knight

as Producer

1966
A Balmy Knight

as Executive Producer

1958

Writer

1977
1976
Noah's Animals

as Writer

1967
1967
1967