Events in 1901 in animation.

Films released

• Date uncertain - Dolly’s Toys. British trick film, directed by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper. It may have used stop-motion animation, or a variant of the stop-action technique previously used by Walter R. Booth. ^[1][2]

Births

January

• January 12 - Aurora Mardiganian, Armenian-American writer and actress, survivor of the Armenian genocide, (her life was the basis of in the animated documentary film Aurora's Sunrise) (d. 1994) ^{[3] [4][5][6]}

March

• March 24 - Ub Iwerks, American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician (designed Mickey Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, and Horace Horsecollar, creator of Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper, founder of Iwerks Studio, chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram Studio, worked on the Alice Comedies, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Silly Symphony, ComiColor Cartoons, Looney Tunes, and Color Rhapsody series, special visual effects artist for Song of the South) (d. 1971)^[7].^{[8][9][10][11]}
• March 27 - Carl Barks, American cartoonist, author, painter, storyman and story director for the Donald Duck film series from 1937 to 1944 (d. 2000) ^{[12] [13] [14][15]}

April

• April 18- Alexandre Alexeieff, Russian filmmaker, animation director, and illustrator (invented the technique of pinscreen animation, directed Die Nacht auf dem Kahlen Berge and The Nose) (d. 1982)^{[16] [17]}
• April 28- Yuri Merkulov, Soviet film director, animation director, conservator-restorer, inventor, and film theorist, (created animated sequences for the live-action films Mechanics of the Brain, A Kiss from Mary Pickford, and I Was a Satellite of the Sun, directed propaganda animated shorts) (d. 1979)^[18][19]

June

• June 12 - Clyde Geronimi, American animation director (Bray Productions, Walter Lantz Productions, Walt Disney Productions, co-directed Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians). (d. 1989) ^[20]
• June 18 - Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of the last sovereign of the Russian Empire, and a victim of the Murder of the Romanov family, (her life was the basis for the animated film Anastasia and for its main character Anya) (d. 1918),^{[21] [22][23][24][25] [26]}

July

• July 5 - Len Lye, New Zealand artist, filmmaker, and animation director, (directed The Peanut Vendor, A Colour Box, Rainbow Dance, and Free Radicals) (d. 1980)^{[27][28][29][30]}

August

• August 7 - Sid Sutherland, American animator, screenwriter, and sound editor (Walter Lantz Productions, Warner Bros. Cartoons) (d. 1968)^{[31] [32][33]}
• August 12 - Bob Kuwahara, Japanese-born American animator (Thru the Mirror, Who Killed Cock Robin?, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, wrote and directed the Hashimoto-san film series, director of Deputy Dawg) (d. 1964)^{[34] [35]}

October

• October 18 - Annette Hanshaw, American Jazz Age singer, (her music recordings were used posthumously in the animated film Sita Sings the Blues) (d. 1985)^{[36][37][38][39]}
• October 20 - Frank Churchill, American film composer and songwriter (wrote the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" for The Three Little Pigs, scored the music of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, and Bambi) (d. 1942)^[40]

November

• November 21 - Franzisca Baruch, German–Israeli graphic designer, and character designer, (designed characters and titles for the animated film Goethe is Alive!) (d. 1989)^[41][42][43]

December

• December 5 - Walt Disney, American animator, film producer, and entrepreneur (developed and voiced the character of Mickey Mouse, pioneered the use of synchronized sound, full-color three-strip Technicolor, and feature-length films in American animation) (d. 1966) ^[44][45]

References

Sources

• Andrae, Tom (2006). Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-858-4.
• Crafton, Donald (2015), "The Trickfilm Tradition", Before Mickey:The Animated Film 1898-1928, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0226231020
• Stewart, Jez (2021), "Signing In and Signing Up", The Story of British Animation, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 9781911239727

External links

• Animated works of the year, listed in the IMDb