Maurice Noble - Early Life and Work

Early Life and Work

Maurice James Noble was born in Spooner Township, Minnesota. He spent much of his childhood in New Mexico and Southern California. In the early 1930s he attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, and while there the Institute displayed his works in its first one-man show of watercolors. Having to leave Chouinard for financial reasons, he ended up doing design work for a department store.

A Disney scout recruited him about 1934, and he decided to accept the job since it paid $10 per month more than the department store did. Noble was put to work on backgrounds for the Silly Symphonies cartoon series. At that time the Disney backgrounds were required to be done in transparent watercolor wash, which was technically difficult because correcting a mistake was usually impossible, requiring a full new attempt.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature length film Noble worked on. This was followed by background work on other Disney features, notably the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia. Noble also did story development for the Dance of the Hours in that film. For Dumbo, he did color coordination and character design, including work on the pink elephant sequence.

Noble joined the Disney animators' strike in 1941; it lasted five weeks and became bitter. When he returned after the strike was settled, his office was moved to an ex-broomcloset and he was left without assignments. Soon he was laid off and his career at Disney was at an end.

The outbreak of World War II lead Noble to enlist in the Army Signal Corps. He was eventually assigned to a small unit headed by Ted Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss). The unit was based at the Fox studios and under Col. Frank Capra. It worked on posters and booklets, and on a cartoon series called Private Snafu. The unit did the writing, storyboards, and background designs; the cartoon production was contracted out. Warner Bros. won the contract for Private Snafu, and the WB animation director Chuck Jones worked on the series. Following the war Noble did freelance work in the industry and then took a position doing art for a filmstrip production company in St. Louis.