Disney Legend Don Lusk has passed away today at age 105 – reported by his dear friend Navah Paskowitz-Asner (Ed Asner’s daughter-in-law) on her Facebook page this morning. Lusk was hired by The Walt Disney Company in 1933 and he became an animator in 1938 on Ferdinand The Bull. His animation graced key scenes in Bambi, Song of the South, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He is best known for his work on the Fish Dance in “The Nutcracker Suite” in Fantasia, Cleo the goldfish in Pinocchio, the title character in Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Peter Pan.

Lusk left Disney in 1960, but continued to work as an animator during the 1960s and 1970s, on UPA’s Gay Purr-ee (1962), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), and freelanced much for Bill Melendez and Walter Lantz studios. He spent 23 years at Hanna-Barbera, directing everything from Scooby Doo to Yo Yogi!, working well into the 1993.

In the early 1990s, Lusk retired after a career that spanned 60 years. He received a Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement at the Annie Awards ceremony in 2015 (see below). He was a friend to many in the industry and a legend in the field. He will me sorely missed.

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Jerry Beck

Writer, cartoon producer and author of more than 15 books on animation history. A former studio exec with Nickelodeon and Disney; currently on the faculty at both CalArts in Valencia and Woodbury University in Burbank, California.

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