Thelma Witmer(1901-1996)

Thelma Witmer was born in Nebraska in 1901. Her father was a shoe salesman. In 1920 the family, which included her mother and a younger brother, moved to Northern California. Afterward Witmer spent four years in college. Ten years later she and her parents were living in Hollywood while Witmer found employment as a commercial artist. During this period she worked on an illustrated Christmas book and in 1944 she was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a background artist. Her first credit for Disney was the animated short Donald's Off Day (1944) and subsequently she worked on over twenty animated shorts featuring beloved Disney characters such as Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy and Chip 'n' Dale before being asked to contribute backgrounds to the feature-length production of Cinderella (1950). Witmer's work was often surprisingly bold and modern and the inventive artist also worked with the animation team behind Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953).

Witmer stayed with Disney studios for another twelve years continuing to create stylized backgrounds for popular Disney films including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and The Jungle Book (1967). She left Disney after completing Jungle Book and for a brief period teamed up with Hanna-Barbera Productions where she provided animated backgrounds for a number of animated television shows such as The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (1968-1970), The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969) and The Harlem Globe Trotters (1970). After 1970 Witmer stopped working but she continued to live in Los Angeles until her death in 1996 at age 95. She never married and lived alone with her parents (they passed away in 1955 and 1961, respectively) in West Hollywood