He’s retired now and living in Chillicothe, Missouri. But in his day, Grim Natwick helped create some of the greatest stars in movie history. Betty Boop, Snow White, Mickey Mouse, Krazy Kat, Clarabell Cow, Woody Woodpecker, Mr. Magoo–the list goes on and on.
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As Natwick recalls it, he wasn’t particularly interested in cartoon animation to begin with. Born and bred in a small Wisconsin town, he was trained as a serious artist–he studied at the School of the Art Institute–and was already established as an illustrator of sheet music while still in college. In the years before World War I, Chicago was an important music-publishing center, and Natwick earned a decent living creating the cover pictures for popular songs–including, he says, the first six published songs by blues master W.C. Handy.
When he headed to New York after a stint in the Army during the last months of the war, it was with the intent of pursuing his craft as a song illustrator. But a fellow student from the School of the Art Institute, Gregory La Cava, persuaded him to try his hand at film animation.
Natwick left Fleischer in the mid-1930s and wound up working for Walt Disney. He did several Mickey Mouse cartoons and, he says, he noticed that “each time I worked on one of these small pictures I got the girl character.” He figured that Disney was grooming him to handle the female lead in the forthcoming feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and he was right; he also drew the prince, giving the landmark film its all-important romantic center to anchor the more exaggerated supporting characters.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
