The Women Who Animated the Movies — Interview with Mindy Johnson

Honoring International Women’s Day, Celebrating with Mindy Johnson…

The Not Old Better Show, Paul Vogelzang

Feb 28, 2019·3 min read

Image for post — The Not Old Better Show, 2019. Image courtesy Smithsonian.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, and as part of our Smithsonian Associates, Art of Living, interview series, our guest today is Mindy Johnson. Mindy Johnson will be appearing at the Smithsonian Associates program titled, The Women Who Animated the Movies: Uncovering a Colorful History. Author, Mindy Johnson, below left, is a leading expert on women’s roles in animation and film history, examines these groundbreaking and game-changing women.

Author, Mindy Johnson’s most recent book, Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation, left, which will be available for sale and signing following her presentation, Thursday, March 7, 2019 at the Ripley Center in Washington DC.

Mindy Johnson, a leading expert on women’s roles in animation and film history, examines these groundbreaking and game-changing women. She discusses the progression of women and their roles in the industry, including the earliest women animators like Helena Smith Dayton, a suffragist who went on to become the first known female animator and a pioneer in stop-motion and clay animation techniques around the time of World War I.

Johnson also focuses on the women of Disney animation, exploring historical contributions and advancements women have made to the animated art form and the artistry of our film heritage.

From the very beginnings of celluloid to the digital revolution, women have shaped the animated form.

One such trailblazer was Mary Weiser, left, a Disney studio painter, of the 1930s who took it upon herself to study chemistry and then established the first and only lab in the world to create paint exclusively for cel-based animation. Weiser and her all-female chemists in the Disney Paint Labs transformed the palette of the studio’s early three-strip Technicolor animation: from 80 colors in the 1932 Silly Symphonies short Flowers and Trees to more than 1,500 shades for The Old Mill five years later, as well as the first surviving hand-painted animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.