Bill Tytla - Later Years

Later Years

His next sources of employment were animated series. He is credited as director for episodes of four different series:

• Popeye (September 10, 1956 –1963).
• Deputy Dawg (September 5, 1959 – 1972).
• Matty's Funday Funnies (featuring Beany and Cecil by Bob Clampett, October 11, 1959 – 1962).
• The New Casper Cartoon Show (1963 – 1969).

He also took time to create one last short for Terrytoons, First Flight Up (1962). His last work on a feature film with full personality animation was The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964). A comedy mixing live action and animation, directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Don Knotts as a fish. However during this time Tytla became ill and a lot of the actual animation was completed by animation director Robert McKimson, Hawley Pratt and Gerry Chiniquy. All three of them are better known for their Looney Tunes work.

Following this Tytla suffered many small strokes which left him blind in his left eye. On August 13, 1967, the opening night of the Montreal Expo's World Exhibition of Animation Cinema, featured a screening of Dumbo as part of an Hommage Aux Pionniers. Tytla was invited, but worried if anyone would remember him. When the film finished, they announced the presence of "The Great Animator." When the spotlight finally found him, the audience erupted in "a huge outpouring of love. It may have been one of the great moments of his life," recalled John Culhane.

Tytla did try to return to Disney. In a letter dated August 27, 1968, Disney productions vice president W.H. Anderson rejected his offer to do "trial animation", saying, "We really have only enough animation for our present staff." And as late as October 11, 1968, less than three months before Tytla's death, Disney director Wolfgang Reitherman responded to story material Tytla submitted explaining "...I'm sorry to say that your story ideas don't fit into our present program.. We have not forgotten that you are anxious to animate here at the studio, but...So far, we can just barely keep our present crew of animators busy...rest assured you have many friends here at the studio who are pulling for you."

Vladimir Tytla died on his farm on December 30, 1968, aged 64.