Career
Natwick's artistic career started with cover designs for sheet music, initially for a friend who worked at a music publishing company. Natwick found that he was good at this type of work and contacted other publishers in Chicago, eventually illustrating the covers for many song sheets, usually in no more than two colours. Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studio's most popular character, Betty Boop, under the direction of Max Fleischer. Although legal ownership of the Betty Boop character remained with the studio (as Natwick was an employee), Grim created the original design of Betty Boop at the request of studio head Max Fleischer, who requested a girlfriend for his successful creation "Bimbo". Natwick worked for a number of American animation studios, including the Ub Iwerks studio, Walt Disney Productions, the Walter Lantz studio, UPA, and the Richard Williams studio. At Disney, Natwick was a lead animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and was instrumental in bringing the titular heroine to life.
While working for the Fleischer studios in 1939, Natwick was in charge of drawing the Prince and the Princess for Gulliver's Travels. He also helped to animate Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, Mr. Magoo, Popeye, Felix the Cat and many other 40s and 50s cartoon greats. Three of Grim's former assistants included Walter Lantz (Hearst), Chuck Jones (Iwerks) and Marc Davis (Disney).
There is evidence Natwick did some commercial work later in his long life. He appears to have contributed to the early images of Sonny & Gramps, according to then-contemporaries who collaborated with Natwick during his 100-year career. Sonny is the "cuckoo" animated mascot of General Mills' Cocoa Puffs.
Natwick died in Los Angeles, California of both pneumonia and a heart attack, just after having a 100th birthday party with friends such as Shamus Culhane.
In 2010, the Wisconsin Historical Society erected a memorial plague to Grim Natwick in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. South Wood County Historical Museum in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin is home to an extensive Grim Natwick exhibit.
Since 2010, the Grim Natwick Film Festival has been held annually over three days in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin featuring animators from across the state and beyond in panels and screenings of work.
Read more about this topic: Grim Natwick
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)