Disney's Nine Old Men

Today the Walt Disney Company is a huge media conglomerate with a whole range of interests, taking in music labels, cable and network TV, publishing, merchandising and a chain of theme parks in multiple countries. However it remains best known for its animated films.

Starting in 1927, but mostly between 1933 and the beginning of 1935, Disney hired nine young men to work as animation artists. They came from various backgrounds and several different states. They all had one thing in common though - they were masters at the art of turning a series of drawings into smoothly animated footage and giving it a unique appeal.

For most of those long careers they carried a name that Walt Disney had jokingly picked up from a book about the Supreme Court way back in 1937. He called them The Nine Old Men. This book his a short history of the animators who helped create Disney's legacy.