William Charles Littlejohn was an American animator and union organizer.
30 Facts About Bill Littlejohn
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Bill Littlejohn worked on animated shorts and features in the 1930s through to the 1990s.
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Bill Littlejohn was inducted into the Cartoon Hall of Fame and received the Winsor McCay Award and garnered lifetime achievement awards from the Annie Awards and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
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Bill Littlejohn led the effort to gain recognition for the union at the major Hollywood animation studios.
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When Walt Disney refused to negotiate with the union and fired 16 pro-union artists, Bill Littlejohn led the union in the 1941 Disney animators strike.
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Bill Littlejohn was an active advocate for the art of animation, becoming a co-founder of ASIFA-Hollywood in 1957 and of the International Tournee of Animation in the mid-1960s.
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Bill Littlejohn served on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors representing short films and animation from 1988 to 2001.
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Bill Littlejohn's father was an engineer for Pitney Bowes who worked an early combination of the adding machine and typewriter.
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When Van Beuren closed its doors in 1935, Bill Littlejohn moved to Los Angeles, completed a degree in aeronautical engineering, and worked for a time at Lockheed.
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In 1937, Bill Littlejohn returned to animation, working for Harman and Ising and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio.
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Bill Littlejohn was one of the few people who worked on the two unrelated Tom and Jerry series at both Van Beuren and MGM.
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In 1938, Bill Littlejohn worked on Milt Gross' Jitterbug Follies and was responsible for animating the two dancing penguins.
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Bill Littlejohn worked in 1938 on The Captain and the Kids, an MGM animated series based on The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip.
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Bill Littlejohn left animation work during World War II to work as a test pilot and flight instructor.
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Bill Littlejohn continued to do freelance animation for MGM and Walter Lantz.
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Sorrell and Bill Littlejohn began organizing animation workers, and MGM, Walter Lantz and George Pal quickly recognized the union.
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Bill Littlejohn's activism did much to build the standard of living studio animators have today.
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Bill Littlejohn felt it was deviating too much from his style.
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Bill Littlejohn wanted the whole film to be talking heads, doing his dialogue.
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In 1962, Bill Littlejohn was the principal animator on the Hubleys' Oscar-winning short The Hole, where two New York construction workers use improvised dialogue to debate the possibility of nuclear war.
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Bill Littlejohn worked with the Hubleys in 1977 on A Doonesbury Special, which won a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar.
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Bill Littlejohn did initial test animation of Zonker Harris putting flowers in the muzzles of National Guardsmen's rifles.
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Garry Trudeau was amazed at Bill Littlejohn's work, having never seen his characters moving before.
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Bill Littlejohn worked with the Hubleys on The Hat, Of Stars and Men, Zuckerkandl, Voyage to Next, People, People, People, Everybody Rides the Carousel, Sky Dance, Enter Life and Amazonia.
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Bill Littlejohn worked with John and Faith Hubley for more than 30 years.
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From 1988 to 2001, Bill Littlejohn was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors representing short films and animation.
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Bill Littlejohn was on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Student Film Institute.
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Bill Littlejohn was married for 61 years to Fini Rudiger Bill Littlejohn, an actress and artist from Vienna, Austria that did art design for American Airlines and Disney.
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Bill Littlejohn was survived by two children, Steve and Toni, and three grandchildren.
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In May 1999, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and UCLA Animation Workshop hosted "An Evening With Animator Bill Littlejohn" and presented him with a lifetime achievement award.