The Life and Art of Dick Kelsey - PART I

One section of Dick Kelsey's 1936 mural on display at the El Paseo Restaurant in Santa Barbara, CA

His disappointment must have been apparent. Murals representing a window into his artistic past hung on the walls of the El Paseo Restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, discolored from nearly four decades of cigarette smoke and degenerative neglect. With his third wife Alma at his side, one can imagine how the artist might have struggled to reflect positively on the significance of his creations.[i] It was 1936 when he was originally commissioned to paint the murals for the Santa Barbara Rotary Club. Those murals bear out his love of “the Rancho Era (1821-1848)” of California, and thus were very personal.[ii] Although the years were clearly unkind, as evidenced by many layers of yellowing effluence coating the canvases, the Mexican California influences captured in brush strokes of a well-trained hand were still unmistakably vibrant. These murals not only represent the pinnacle of Dick Kelsey’s fine-art production before he reached the Walt Disney Studio in May of 1938, but serve as a metaphor to the underrated attention given to his life’s work.[iii]    

Among the finest scenes in classic Disney films of the 1940s, Dick Kelsey’s exact contributions often remain obscured, however prominent the place his art inhabits on- screen. Fulfilling the demanding role of art director as well as layout and storyboard artist summoned the storyteller within Kelsey, thus influencing his work as a writer and primarily as an illustrator of children’s books, theme-park designs, and greeting cards. To understand what led Kelsey to Disney and how the animation studio opened the doors to other artistic ventures, it is necessary to expose the roots and influences which served to inspire him.

The greatest contributions Kelsey made to numerous artistic mediums throughout his creative career would inevitably fall victim to time, but are resurrected here. His story is one shared by many animation artists of that era, and quite worth telling.

*****

            Richmond Irwin Kelsey was born on May 3, 1905, in San Diego, California. His birthplace’s geographic landscape would have a lasting effect on Kelsey’s art. Within the first ten years of his childhood, the seaside town of San Diego forever changed with the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914. The waterway introduced east to west, with San Diego becoming the first-stop American seaport on the Pacific coast available to those traveling from Atlantic waters.      

To commemorate the Panama Canal’s completion, the Panama-California Exposition was held
in local Balboa Park in 1915. Craftsmen who developed the massive Exposition buildings abandoned architectural embellishments common to that era, presenting to the San Diego community a mix of Italian, Mexican and Spanish revivalist architecture instead. Kathleen Brewster, Master Docent of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, shared, “The Expo is credited with introducing the Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture to the area.”[iv] The Exposition housed exhibits from many artistic disciplines, scientific innovations and products of industry to rare flora and fauna. San Diego’s cultural transformation provided a healthy experiential diet for a budding artist’s burgeoning imagination.

"California from bridge" photo taken by Frederick W. Kelsey (December 1914)

It is not clear where or when Richmond’s interest in art truly began.  However, it is certain that his father, Frederick Kelsey, and older brother, Paul Kelsey, had little to do with it. Alma Kelsey shared that Jessie Kelsey, Richmond’s mother, given her interests in acting, was likely Richmond’s biggest supporter, resulting in him becoming something of a ‘momma’s boy.’ Alma recounted, “Dick was always with her, where the other boy was with his father. [Frederick] wouldn’t give any money for paints,” so “[Richmond] went out and earned money for them.”[v] A photo in Alma Kelsey’s family collection pictured Richmond around age twelve, sitting on an old, round piano stool by an easel he had constructed himself. His artistic inclinations were recognized and supported at school by his teachers.

Although Frederick Kelsey did not approve of his son’s interest in art, and “wanted Dick to go into the” Kelsey-Jenney Commercial “College,” he certainly influenced young Richmond in more ways than one.[vi] Frederick Kelsey’s love of marine biology and photography, family trips along the Californian coast and Mexico, and education ingrained in Richmond’s conscience a desire for worldly practicality that would serve to inspire and further his future career.[vii] With or without his father’s blessings, Richmond knew the path he wanted to take in life.     

*****

In the San Diego High School Russ editorial staff section of the 1924 yearbook, Richmond Kelsey is pictured in a suit and tie, with a caption to the left reading, “Dick Kelsey, ‘Snap Mounter.’”[viii] Around the same time, Frank Morely Fletcher had come to California, becoming the first director of the newly founded Santa Barbara School of the Arts. Leaving his directorship of the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland behind in 1923, the fifty-seven-year-old artist and teacher brought with him an English tradition of woodblock printing that would go on to influence the artists he mentored. According to Santa Barbara alumni Joseph Knowles, “[Fletcher’s] decision meant a great loss for England and Scotland but a tremendous contribution to the cultural development of the Santa Barbara community.”[ix] Fletcher’s style of woodblock printing followed a bloodline that had originated centuries before in Japan, and was introduced to him in 1898 at the World’s Fair in London.

Frank Morely Fletcher

Colored woodblock printing, the medium which was Fletcher’s expertise, is a form of art born from a most complicated fabrication process. The artist begins with a preliminary sketch of what they want to print in this medium, usually consisting of an elaborately detailed landscape. Once the initial sketch is finished, they begin etching the subject into a flat piece of wood using a chisel and knife. Essentially, the artist is carving the wooden surface into somewhat of a large stamp of the preliminary sketch, which will be inked and pressed onto paper later. The areas of the etched image that will not be inked are carved out, raising the areas to be inked. The finished etching is called a plate. Once the plate is finished, the inking process begins. Specific areas of the plate are inked in different colors and pressed onto a large, heavy piece of paper one section at a time. Color variance can be wildly incongruous, resulting in many, many one-of-a-kind pressings. Each successive pressing must be executed with precision and applied to the same area exactly to ensure image continuity. If successfully applied, the artist is left with a colorful work of art. 

Corresponding with Fletcher’s 1923 Santa Barbara arrival, Kelsey received training at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles (whose alumni would include future Disney artists John Hench and Tyrus Wong) by means of a scholarship Kelsey secured while attending high school.[x] Roughly two years later, Kelsey would continue his artistic journey, enrolling at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts after his high school graduation in 1925 (Kelsey’s graduation at age 20 may have been the result of his service in the California National Guard between 1921-1924).[xi] Under the tutelage of Fletcher, Kelsey’s natural skill as an artist, yet again, earned him a scholarship.  

From its inception in 1920, the Santa Barbara School of the Arts was designed for the likes of Richmond Kelsey. In April of 1922, a charter for the Community Arts Association of Santa Barbara was obtained to “afford individuals the opportunity for self-expression, training and education in music, drama, and the allied arts, and to aid in the cultural improvement of the people and in the beautification of the City of Santa Barbara.”[xii] The Santa Barbara School would serve as a training branch for the Association’s mission, and Frank Morely Fletcher would become its champion. Richmond Kelsey’s training at Santa Barbara resulted in some of his most refined and beautiful woodblock prints from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s. 

One of Kelsey’s earliest woodprints, entitled “Pirates on the Shore,” dates from this period. The woodprint depicts three swashbucklers hunched over a smoking fire on white sand, treasure chest close by, a rowboat anchored to the beachhead. The intricate detail of the pirates’ defining features, and of the surrounding landscape, demonstrates Kelsey’s gift for wood etching. His staging of the pirates on the sandy shoal reveals a natural affinity for layout design, and the apparent movement amongst the men tending to the fire, not to mention the rippling water, is quite effective. A sense of mystery is injected into the piratical proceedings, too. The point of view from which Kelsey painted this daylight beach frolic imparts to the viewer an emotional rush akin to the feelings an outsider, secretly spying on three dangerous rogues protecting stolen loot, might experience. The richly colored ink variations are brilliantly executed, implying many separate pressings. Kelsey’s inclusion of a thin curving line of gray smoke trailing off from the fire into a blue sky above was an inspired choice. His awareness of spatial interplay is impressive between the sea, the beach, and distant green shores. 

"Pirates on the Shore" by Dick Kelsey - woodblock print (mid to late 1920's)

The style Kelsey developed from Fletcher’s teachings included not only his mentor’s English/Japanese influences, but also the colors of the Californian coast he enjoyed while growing up. “Whereas Fletcher drew much of his rural idyll imagery from Europe,” observes Clive Christy on his Art and the Aesthete blog, “Kelsey returned to the rusts and burnt colors of California.”[xiii] This certainly is apparent in “Pirates on the Shore,” and in many woodprints he would create while studying at the School of the Arts. 

  From 1926 to 1927, Kelsey began branching into the commercial art marketplace. According to his own records, he “was employed by the Southlands Corporation in San Diego, California as [a] staff artist. This work entailed the making of maps, renderings, and diagrams of sections of land as they would look after reconstruction and planning of proposed projects (birds-eye views, perspectives, etc.).”[xiv] Kelsey certainly benefited from his time at the Corporation, given his sharpened instincts for layout and spatial design, which were manifest in his pre-Disney output. 

As the 1920s rolled on, Richmond Kelsey never ceased to develop, reinvent, and refine his artistic sensibilities. Along the way, he refined his skills not only in woodblock printing but in linoleum printing as well, which follows the same production process, but is easier to cut. Oil and watercolor soon became part of his repertoire. His first art exhibitions began as early as 1927 and continued throughout the late 1920s and 1930s between Santa Barbara and San Diego, earning him acclaim and many awards given by the surrounding artistic community. 

*****

            During 1928, Kelsey began teaching art classes in southern California. Much like his artistic endeavors, Kelsey approached teaching with vigor and a restless energy, instructing numerous courses at many schools between September 1928 and June 1930. More specifically, Kelsey’s personal records reveal that the artist was an instructor of painting, drawing, design, color, and layout at the Dean School for Boys in Montecito, California. He instructed classes at the Crane Country School for Boys in the same location while also teaching a history and geography course at the Santa Barbara Girls School. The latter course centered on “making models, drawings, diagrams, maps, and charts in conjunction with regular history and geography,” giving Kelsey a chance to utilize the skills he gained at the Southlands Corporation in San Diego.[xv] In addition, he taught art at the Santa Barbara School for Boys in Summerland, California, following in Fletcher’s footsteps as a teacher of woodblock printing, along with design composition, painting, still life, and illustration at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts. His transition from pupil to instructor, luckily enough, came at the height of the Santa Barbara School of the Arts’ operational years, with enrollment “approaching 300 students.”[xvi] However, with Frank Morely Fletcher’s departure as director of the School in 1930, and the onset of the Great Depression, the institution’s status as an “important artistic colony” would soon dissipate.

Both written and oral documentation suggests Kelsey continued to teach courses at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts throughout the early 30s. While teaching may have fulfilled Kelsey’s desire to mentor, Kelsey would soon spend half a decade satisfying his increasing appetite for creative growth and discovery. For the next four years Kelsey would still instruct on the side, but delved primarily into artistic study and freelance work between San Diego and Santa Barbara.  

It was during this period, the fall of 1932 to be exact, that Ward Kimball began training under Kelsey. Within a few years, Kimball would become one of Walt Disney’s most prolific master animators. Kimball’s enrollment into the Santa Barbara School of the Arts marked the beginning of a mentorship that would continue over several important phases of Kelsey’s life.

When he wasn’t refining his craft through recommended coursework, Kimball was working as a janitor at the School to make ends meet.[xvii] The admiration he had for Kelsey as an artist and as an instructor increased tenfold while Kimball attended courses. Kimball must have felt fortunate to have experienced his mentor’s instructional style and artistic philosophy during such a creatively fertile period of Kelsey’s life. Kelsey’s approach stimulated Kimball’s artistic inquisitiveness, entreating him into “thinking about design – about how a picture should balance out.”[xviii]  

Decades later, Kimball recalled Kelsey “giv[ing] amazing assignments” and having a “no-nonsense, commercial attitude towards art.”[xix] Courses under Kelsey’s instruction were not confined to the classroom, and on many occasions he took his pupils on “painting trips to the Lompoc Valley or the Rockies in the summer.”[xx] Students were assigned many interesting art exercises, including painting pictures “in the fog” and experimenting with “dynamic symmetry (the use of geometric shapes and their symmetry to create images).”[xxi] Kimball noted that Kelsey was mechanically inclined, as Kelsey’s nuanced approach to watercolor painting was punctuated by a truly unique watercolor paper-stretching style. Extracurricular activities benefited from Kelsey’s touch when he assisted in designing sets and set backdrops for Santa Barbara School of the Arts’ plays. Summing up his experiences with Kelsey, Kimball claimed he never would have learned techniques, like those Kelsey espoused, elsewhere.

With Kelsey’s personal artistic journey in full swing between 1930 and 1934, his natural love for Mexican culture took shape with new creative influences, mainly famed muralist Diego Rivera. Rivera’s expertise lay in fresco murals, and “throughout the Twenties his fame grew with a number of large murals depicting scenes from Mexican history.”[xxii] The theme of Rivera’s art often focused upon social progressiveness, and Rivera was alternately revered and reviled for his radical political views. Alma Kelsey shared that her late husband, Richmond Kelsey, visited Mexico on many occasions while in the midst of his art studies. He even spent time in Rivera’s hometown of Guanajuato “possibly a week or more” at a time to soak in the culture.[xxiii] Richmond loved “to go out at night and watch the courting going on in the square. He love[d] the Mexican dancers, the ladies” according to Alma. “He painted the market-places. [There were] many people in his paintings, but you can’t see the people’s faces because they have big hats on, braids of garlic and onions. [xxiv]” It was the realism and historical accuracy of Rivera’s art that no doubt attracted Kelsey, as variations central to Kelsey’s subsequent artistic output bear that relevance out in full.

With the 1930s also came a gradual change in Kelsey’s preferred artistic mediums. Much of his work in the 1920s was woodblock prints, but his style gradually lent itself to oils and watercolor with the dawning of the next decade. 

A 1930s oil panting entitled, “Queen of the Missions,” reveals another side of Kelsey’s versatility, his knack for portraying movement in his art. The painting is of the Santa Barbara Mission, and to look at it is to feel Kelsey’s love of Southern Californian culture. The architecture of the Mission itself is indicative of the Spanish Colonial style, a style that was later revitalized and had an impactful part on Kelsey’s childhood surroundings in San Diego. Kelsey’s choice of warm, earthy colors and refracted light brings out the heat of the area, yet supple tree branches, bursting with lush growth, indicate a subdued coolness. The human figures populating the foreground blend into the environment perfectly, and are portrayed in a mid-bustle stasis. Amongst several figures painted in front of the Mission, the two most compelling are the male and female occupying the foreground near a large fountain. The figures’ garments, in particular the warm colors of the male, contribute to the era’s rustic feel in this beautiful painting. An admirer of Kelsey’s work once stated, “Mr. Kelsey is one who sees romance in all walks of life,” and these two figures, presumably lovers, at the fountain in this oil painting constitute a prime example.[xxv] 

"Queen of the Missions" by Dick Kelsey - oil (early 1930s)

An examination of Kelsey’s 1934 watercolor painting entitled “Summerland” may hint at some of the watercolor techniques to which Ward Kimball referred. The crooked window frames and doorways of the red ramshackle house on the Californian coastline exude an earthy charm and invite warmth. The artist’s choice of color, and the way in which it is executed within the framework of the sketch, compels the viewer to consider the unacknowledged lushness of nature. The muted background coloration of the houses and trees in the distance yielding to a soft, white sky truly accentuates the house. Dark red shading effectively illustrates the movement of light as it falls on the house, highlighting flower blossoms in the front yard. Kelsey’s considerate use of negative space, not so much in the sky above, but within the twisting branches of the trees, door and window frames, and in the feathered coloring of wandering chickens, is quite impressive. The verve and visual appeal of the piece is certainly indicative of the California watercolor movement. 

"Summerland" by Dick Kelsey - watercolor (1934)

By the end of 1934, Richmond Kelsey’s artistic endeavors accelerated, beginning with pieces created for both the 1935 California-Pacific International Exposition in San Diego and the Smithsonian Institute. According to Kelsey, his Exposition work consisted of designing and supervising the construction of six dioramas with eight craftsmen under his employment. He would receive a bronze medal for his ’35 Exposition work.[xxvi] 

Kelsey “designed and executed two murals as backgrounds for [the] museum habitat groups” for the Smithsonian.[xxvii] A 1935 Smithsonian financial report reveals that Kelsey’s murals centered upon the exploration of Coronado, or, more specifically, Coronado’s contact with the Apache Indians and the 16^th Century conquest of the American West. Life-sized figures wearing original costumes of the era stand aside Zuni pueblos in “landscapes typical of the country in which these tribes live[d].” “Mr. Kelsey has done a considerable amount of landscape modeling, filling in backgrounds for exhibits,” shared Eugene Kellogg, former Agricultural Commissioner of Santa Barbara County. “He has painted the backdrops, fabricated the foreground in the form of terrain so as to blend the terrain into the backdrops. He has excelled in this type of work.”[xxviii] This wouldn’t be the last occasion Kelsey would produce art associated with Native American history.     

Dick Kelsey (mid-1930's)

For the next three years, beginning in February of 1935, Richmond Kelsey was employed by the Peterson Studios of Santa Barbara as a designer and color supervisor of interior decorating. During the same time period, Kelsey also undertook exhibition painting under his own name, and found work in and around the Santa Barbara community.[xxix] In the latter part of 1936, he received a commission from the Santa Barbara Rotary Club to create mural pieces depicting “the Indian, Mexican, and early California days” of the Santa Barbara area.[xxx] The subject of the paintings could not have been closer to the artist’s heart. 

Kelsey’s flair for painting with warm colors associated with the American Southwest and his love of Mexican California are evident in the four murals he painted for the Club’s El Paseo location. His reverence for Rivera’s art is not only channeled, but recognizably transmitted in Kelsey’s stressing of the historical accuracy of his paintings. Kelsey seemed drawn to the early days of California, when Native Americans, Spanish, and Mexicans inhabited the Santa Barbara area around the early and mid-19^th Century. 

One of the large murals depicts “a carreta drawn by oxen and bearing the fruit, flowers, and members of the old Spanish families, accompanied by the Indians and Mexicans carrying baskets of oranges, pomegranates, and flowers.”[xxxi] Mules and horses carry other inhabitants and the fruits of their labor, as seen in the other mural pieces, and all the while the characters seemed to be locked in a state of conversation and action.  The clothing of the men and women assist the viewer by hinting the subjects’ cultural milieu, and reveal the painstaking amount of research Kelsey must have undertaken to reasonably synthesize Mexican, Spanish, and Native American clothing styles accurately. His color ranges veer from warmer values to earthy blends, while reflected light on the texture of the desert-like terrain and plant life radiates thermal aridity. The backgrounds themselves are void of detail, with the exception of a random cactus, and are tan in color, bringing warmer colors to the fore. Kelsey’s depiction of the period has an emotional pull which seems to evoke a time he might have been very comfortable living in.

In a way, Kelsey’s Rotary Club murals serve as the culmination of his upbringing, combining his cultural understanding, influences, training, intellect, and artistic seriousness simultaneously. “His eyes have seen and linked old roads, wild oak, red barns and old shacks,” shared a December 1937 Santa Barbara News Press article. “He has explored California from Oregon to Mexico and has been particularly happy in painting in and around Santa Barbara.”[xxxii] A man who fully realized art was, indeed, a core element of his existence, Kelsey was about to soar to new heights.

Click HERE to read PART II

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[i] From Kathleen Brewster’s private conversation with Alma Kelsey on July 13, 1990. Courtesy Kathleen Brewster.

[ii] Kathleen Brewster, e-mail message to author, February 24, 2013

[iii] Steven M. Vagnini, e-mail message to author, January 22, 2013.

[iv] Kathleen Brewster, e-mail message to author, May, 22 2011.

[v] Kelsey to Brewster, 1990.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Paul F. Mullins, e-mail message to author, May 16, 2011.

[viii] The Gray Castle:  June 1924 (San Diego), p. 12.

[ix] Joseph Knowles, “Santa Barbara’s Historic Link to Color Wood Block Printing,” Noticias:  Santa Barbara Historical Society Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Winter, 1970).

[x] From Richmond I. Kelsey’s 1987 memorial service handout

[xi] Pierce, J.  Statement of Service, January 12, 1943.  Letter.  Sacramento, CA:  State of California, The Adjutant General’s Office.  From National Personnel Records Center.  Typed.

[xii] Ruth Lilly Westphal and Janet B. Dominik eds., Plein Air Painters of California the North (Westphal Publishing, 1986).

[xiii] Art and the Aesthete; “Richmond Irwin Kelsey (1905-1988),” blog entry by Clive Christy, June 14, 2009 

[xiv] Kelsey, Richmond I.  Enclosure “F” (handwritten documentation accompanying Marine Corps application), September 1, 1942.  Application document.  La Canada, CA.  From National Personnel Records Center.  Handwritten.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Michael Redmon, “Can You Give Me Some Background on the Artist Frank Morely Fletcher?,” Santa Barbara Independent, March 13, 2008, http://www.independent.com/news/2008/mar/13/can-you-give-me-some-background-artist-frank-morle/.

[xvii] John Canemaker, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, (New York:  Disney Editions, 2001), 92.

[xviii] John Canemaker, Paper Dreams:  The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards, (New York:  Hyperion, 1999), 148.

[xix] Canemaker, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, 92; Ward Kimball to Patricia Cleek (Courtesy Kathleen Brewster, e-mail message to author, May, 27 2011).

[xx] Canemaker, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, 92.

[xxi] Brewster, May 27 e-mail (Kimball to Cleek).

[xxii] “Diego Rivera:  About the Artist,” August 26, 2006, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/diego-rivera/about-the-artist/64/.

[xxiii] Kelsey to Brewster, 1990.

[xxiv] Ibid.

[xxv] The Morning Press.  “Artists Have New York in View.”  March 17, 1933. 

[xxvi] Kelsey, Richmond I.  Enclosure “F” document.

[xxvii] Smithsonian Institute, "Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Financial Report of the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents." Last modified 1935. Accessed November 1, 2012. http://www.archive.org/stream/reportofsecretar1935smit/reportofsecretar1935smit_djvu.txt.

[xxviii] Kellogg, Eugene.  August 31, 1942.  Letter.  From National Personnel Records Center.  Typed.   

[xxix] Kelsey, Richmond I.  Enclosure “F” document.

[xxx] "One of Murals Unveiled at Rotary Club's Meeting.”  Morning edition.  October 18, 1936.

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] "Richmond Kelsey Brings the Picturesque to Attention." The Santa Barbara News-Press, December 14, 1937

Once Upon a Dream

Ron Dias with his sister, Yvonne,
circa 1941.

        Finding Honolulu, Hawaii to be riddled with tourists in the mid-40s, a boy's father decided to move his family northeast to Kailua.  The six-year-old's last memory of living in Honolulu was seeing a reissue of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Kuhio Theater.  “I saw it, and I was just overwhelmed by it,” he recalled as an old man.  “I just could not believe that drawings and paintings and all that could give you so much emotion…could be so warm, so real to you!”  It was in that theater where Ron Dias's dream of working for Walt Disney was born. 

        Ron's neighbor had a copy of The Walt Disney Parade - a 1940 collection of Disney-illustrated stories.  Ron would go to their house often to immerse himself in the book’s illustrations.  Conceptual art by Swedish-American artist, Gustaf Tenggren, for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was prominently featured.  “And I just loved it,” Ron said.  “I didn’t realize that I was being, way back then, influenced by a person who I didn’t even know…[their] name.”  Seeing that "Ronnie" loved the book more than his own child, the neighbor’s father gave it to him.  

        As a child, Bob Artz recognized in his Hawaiian cousin a true passion for Disney.  “Everything...that he did was Disney, Disney!” Artz said.  “He would watch so much of it and copy it so much that it was part of him.”  Ron painted on his bedroom walls and lampshades, and turned a train platform in his bedroom into his very own Disneyland.  “I always seemed to be having some new Disney thing that I’d be looking at and being enthused with, you know, and wanting to take another step forward just sketching or drawing,” Ron said himself.

        Ron's dedication to art accelerated during his years at Roosevelt High School.  He enrolled in evening and Saturday classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, took commercial-art correspondence courses through the Famous Artists School of Connecticut, designed sets for the Honolulu Community Theater, and sang in the school choir.  His social life greatly suffered.  The Oriental Court of the Honolulu Academy of Arts became his place of solitude.  There he would recharge and lightly sketch for pleasure on a concrete bench that reminded him very much of the one the Fairy Godmother sat upon in Cinderella.  His dream of Disney pushed him on.
   

        In the fall of 1955, his art teacher challenged her students to take part in a national stamp-design contest.  Contestants were tasked with creating a stamp design that focused on promoting friendship among children all over the world.  Ron submitted his design and began getting word of his placement by Christmastime.  

Ron Dias with his stamp design in 1955.

        At the same time, Ron began writing letters to the Walt Disney Studio about employment opportunities.  “Every letter was answered by a different person,” he recalled.  In mid-March of 1956, it was announced that Ron had won the stamp-design contest, but word on the stamp's national release was yet to be determined.  “The thrilled high school artist said he hopes to work for Walt Disney in California after his graduation this summer," a Honolulu news columnist wrote.  “As far back as I can think I’ve always wanted to work at the Walt Disney studios,” Ron told a reporter.    

        On June 18, 1956, Ron Dias crossed the Pacific with his dream.  He found work at the Studio Motel in Burbank in exchange for a room.  The motel was a two-minute walk from the Walt Disney Studio.  “It was a very shaky experience,” he said of his first lone walk there.  Somewhere on the premises, Gustaf Tenggren’s conceptual art for Snow White was kept.  Treading on what he considered sacred ground, he entered the Animation Building with his portfolio firmly tucked under his arm.  The response he received was less than enthusiastic.

        His art was deemed “too Disney” as it contained Ron’s drawings of various Disney characters.  “We want to see what you do,” he was told.  To make matters worse, the studio did not acknowledge his art credits from the Honolulu Academy of Arts nor his correspondence courses with the Famous Artists School.  A newspaper clipping in Ron’s personal collection stated that “he has passed a test” with Disney “and was told to stand by for an appointment.”  Ron waited through the summer of 1956 without hearing a word.  

        Returning to Hawaii was considered.  The quiet of the Honolulu Academy's Oriental Court called to him.  Ron had a decision to make.  An ocean no longer separated him from his dream.  Alone in a motel room, at nineteen-years-old, he began to slavishly work on a second portfolio into the fall of 1956.  His steadfast determination resulted in late nights sketching and painting.  Utterly consumed with summoning his art training and talent, Ron was caught off guard when the Los Angeles press showed up outside his motel room on a late September night.  The postmaster general had finally announced the national printing of Ron's stamp design.  Word spread fast.  The publicity department of the Walt Disney Studio phoned the following day.  Ron was asked to join their animation training program in preparation for work on their next animated feature, Sleeping Beauty. Leaving his second portfolio in the dust, Ron Dias began as an “Apprentice Inbetweener” at the Walt Disney Studio on Monday, October 8, 1956.  

I was a trainee with 20 other…kids.  Training to go on something they had never tried before…Whenever they trained kids, they went onto featurettes or shorts, like five to seven-minute cartoons.  Never!  Never onto a feature film.  You had to graduate.  You had to learn.  You had to be trained to go onto a feature film because that really [was] quality work.  But they were so behind on Sleeping Beauty…

        The trainee course was taught by Johnny Bond.  “I will never forget Johnny Bond!  Think of Popeye with a cigar instead of a pipe and you’ve got Johnny Bond.  Aww!  He was wonderful!  He was a sweetheart.”      

I started the classes.  We were very heavy duty in being taught all the tricks of the trade and Johnny Bond was very, very careful about this because he knew we were going to go onto a feature film…one of the most precise films ever done.  And, we were given examinations…of three major areas:  Pretty girls – I remember doing Snow Whites and Cinderellas – and then cartoony characters, like Mickey and Minnie and Goofy, and then animal characters like Thumper and Bambi.  They were trying to see what area – they were casting us – what areas in the feature we would [do]…and I did pretty girls best, with much ease, and so I got put on Marc Davis’s unit working with Briar Rose.

        Ron Dias was assigned to Marc Davis’s unit, but he had no interaction with the master animator during Sleeping Beauty’s production.  Ron was part of an orchestrated team that involved many artists.  Fellow animation artist, Floyd Norman, explained: 

Each unit was assigned a character or series of characters in the movie that would be their specialty.  Most teams would consist of a key clean-up artist (often a former animator), two additional assistant animators, two break-down artists, and finally two or three inbetweeners.  With this system in place, Disney’s master animators would move their scenes through this artistic pipeline.

        One of Marc Davis’s assistants was Iwao Takamoto, and it was he who Ron worked for on Sleeping Beauty.  Takamoto was tasked with making sure all in-between and breakdown drawings of Briar Rose were clean and feathered well with Marc Davis’s extreme drawings.  “This girl was his responsibility and he took it mighty seriously and he was going to have perfection in this girl no matter what,” Ron said.

        Ron describing Sleeping Beauty as “one of the most precise films ever done” is an apt and well-documented one.  Walt Disney felt strongly about using Sleeping Beauty as a tool to push the animated form further.  He wanted the film to look like nothing an audience had ever seen – a highly stylized moving tapestry.  American artist, Eyvind Earle, was tasked with establishing the style of the film, and in time, Ron placed him on a shelf beside Gustaf Tenggren.  

        Ron’s primary contributions as an in-between animator on Sleeping Beauty are hidden within the film’s large Sequence 8.  This sequence contains the scenes when Briar Rose wanders the woods with its denizens singing “I Wonder,” encounters Prince Phillip, and sings “Once Upon a Dream.”  Ron completed in-between work for Scene 35 of Sequence 8.  “My major scenes are the one [sic] when she’s dangling her feet in the water,” he said.  

Another section is where she’s got a hold of the cape and she’s swinging with the animals.  There’s a lot of stuff in there; close-up stuff…where the two birds are holding the cape on the right-side and the left-side, and we [Ron's unit] did everything below the collar.  The collar was done by the people who were doing the owl and the squirrel and...they [would]...hook that collar directly into that cape and it would look like…the whole drawing was done…by one person.

        Due to a flu outbreak in the Maleficent unit, Ron was asked to do in-between scenes featuring the evil fairy.  “They were all sick,” he recalled, “but we were lucky we didn’t get it and…the Maleficent stuff was beginning to pile up…so they asked us in the Briar Rose unit to double-up.”  

        Maleficent made grand entrances and exits in the film, morphing from and into an abstract shape out of thin air under a hovering green orb.  Ron did in-between work on those transformations, along with close-ups of Maleficent laughing as she stood upon her castle’s uppermost turret on Forbidden Mountain during the film’s thrilling conclusion. 

        Ron was also assigned work that involved "rotoscoping" scenes of the princess in her dress in Sleeping Beauty's finale.  Disney historian, Christopher Finch, wrote: “The problem with animating humans is that everyone instinctively knows how a man or woman moves, so that the least inaccuracy in the way they are drawn is immediately apparent.”  To ensure that the princess's movements were lifelike, the studio filmed a live actress for the animators to use as a reference.  That reference film was then processed in a way where animators could actually trace, or rotoscope, her movements.  Ron elaborated:

What they did…in perfect registration, was blow up each frame that was shot [of the live actress] onto very, very thin photographic paper and have it punched with the animation punch on the bottom and they would hand this whole thick scene to an animator and then he could just put it on his light board and just do what he wanted to do and trace the movement, not so much just tracing cold…it’s a tool…to help him get to the means of an end…

        Working at Disney was certainly a dream come true for Ron Dias, but it wasn't without its troubles.  He was expected to complete eight in-between drawings a day.  This doesn’t sound like much to the average person, but in reality, it was quite challenging given the complexity of Briar Rose’s design.  Ron had a difficult time meeting his eight-drawing quota and was called out on it. 

Andy Engman was the production manager of our group and he was this short, little lumpy guy who sat behind a very large, wood desk and a very high chair that…had to be propped up with something because he was so short and he’d look down at you…pointing at you and said, 'You’ve…been…bad!'

…My count wasn’t eight drawings and he said, 'We’re gonna [sic] have to let him go because…he’s not keeping up to eight drawings!'  And then here came…Iwao Takamoto to my defense…he said, 'Yeah, but…look at these drawings!  Look at how this guy handles his character.  He really understands her…and I would really be at a loss if he would go and maybe his drawing count may not be the highest, but whatever he does I can use and I don’t have to go back and change and rework.' 

Ron hard at work at the Walt Disney Studio, circa 1956.

        When Ron Dias wasn’t animating, his spare time was spent giving himself a personal tour of the Animation Building.  This also got him into trouble with Andy Engman, but Ron knew it was worth the continuous slaps on the hand. 

The unit system kept you from mingling…In fact, when you started to wander from your unit, they would get upset.  They got upset with me a number of times by the way.  I would get called on the carpet for wandering around…You see, I was already beginning to realize that animation...was not going to be for me because this just drove me bonkers.            

        "Inbetweening" drawings day in and day out became rather tedious for Ron.  His love for Disney was rooted in Gustaf Tenggren’s conceptual art and styling for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  It wasn’t the movement of characters that intrigued Ron; it was the stylized backgrounds that they moved across.  He was reminded of this upon seeing Tenggren’s original Snow White art displayed in a hallway of the Animation Building during one of his forbidden treks.  Ron's days of merely admiring Tenggren's work on the printed pages of The Walt Disney Parade were over.

        Cloistered away in his small in-between unit, Ron was not privy to Eyvind Earle’s on-going design work for Sleeping Beauty, but he found time during his breaks to search it out.  Ron vividly remembered the long hallway that led to Earle’s room, and on the walls was conceptual art for Sleeping Beauty.  “I would always look at the artwork and he [Earle] would see me...and he would let me actually come in and stand over his shoulder and watch him paint." 

        These secret treks to the background department added fuel to the fire that was already burning in Ron Dias’s heart.  He was determined to become a background painter, but due to a massive layoff, Ron was let go from the Disney Studio on April 5, 1957.  Before his departure, he did encounter Walt Disney in a hallway of the Animation Building.  Walking toward Ron, deep in thought, Disney looked up long enough to greet him with a “Good morning, Ronald.”  It wasn't a bad parting gift.

***

        Ron Dias did follow in the footsteps of Tenggren and Earle and became a background artist in his own right.  The decades following Sleeping Beauty took him to Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros., U.P.A., Don Bluth Productions, and Bagdasarian Productions.  He persisted in returning to Disney throughout the 1980s, creating conceptual art for The Black Cauldron and The Little Mermaid, but received credit for neither.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit? marked his return after 30 years, but he did not find the studio he knew in 1956.  Ron found Roger Rabbit to be created in a political vacuum fueled by egos, and he never watched the final film.

        Ron had every right to be disappointed, but his unwavering passion for the romantic styling of the Disney classics pushed him on.  His love for Disney was employed in numerous Little Golden Books, countless magazine covers, theme park designs, PC games, Blu-ray menus, and Disney commemorative art.  

        Beginning in the late 90s, and up until his passing in 2013, Ron became a self-appointed ambassador to the art of Disney classics.  As he witnessed the phasing out of hand-drawn animation in the early 2000s, his personal mission to honor traditional animation intensified.  He spoke at Disney conventions about the art of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and spent much of his time creating personal Disney art in his home studio, often in the style of his heroes, Gustaf Tenggren and Eyvind Earle.  His art was exhibited and sold in well attended one-man shows near his home in Monterey.  A website was designed to celebrate his work and all were welcomed to call his home telephone number to talk Disney.

        My finding a friend in Ron was a beautiful accident.  My writing on Californian artist, Richmond Kelsey, was responsible.  Research revealed that Kelsey was a mentor to Ron in the 1960s.  I wrote Ron a letter and he responded with a phone call.  That call led to a phone interview about Kelsey in January 2011, and from there, a burgeoning friendship.  The three thousand miles between our homes didn’t stop us from talking on almost a weekly basis.  We shared an appreciation for the unsung heroes of animation and loved to talk Disney.  Coming home to one of Ron’s packages on my front porch was like Christmas.  Within each came a crash course on Ron’s adventures in art and animation followed by an accompanying lecture on the phone.

        The timing of our friendship was felicitous.  Where my life at twenty-eight was just beginning, Ron was in the twilight of his years.  He was seventy-four, undergoing cancer treatment, and reflecting often on his life and artistic endeavors.  I’d remain quiet on the phone as the spoken words of his amazing life’s story traveled cross country to me.  He was patient with my questions, generous with his answers, and recognized my genuine interest in him.  Ron gave so much to all of his fans.

        In one of my interviews with him, he talked not only of his seeing Snow White as a child, but the book that meant so much to him.  Battered and beaten over the years, Ron's copy of The Walt Disney Parade was given a new lease on life with a repaired spine, but his childhood neighbor's crayon scribbles remained on the pages.  They angered him as a boy, but he found the markings endearing as an old man.  Where his neighbor saw the pages as a canvas, Ron found inspiration, and from there, a dream that came true in 1956 with Sleeping Beauty.     

Ron Dias at his home studio in August, 2012 (photo by Vincent Randle).

Disney's Lost and Found: James Lewis

(An updated edition of the article originally published on July 1, 2018)

        This post marked a first in a series of articles devoted to lesser known individuals of the Walt Disney Studio.  The young man pictured to the right is Robert James Lewis of Novato, California; a onetime aspiring filmmaker and employee of the Studio from 1955-1959.  My discovery of him - like many Disney employees lost to time - was accidental.  In conducting research for my article, Perri:  A One-of-a-Kind Disney Adventure, I had learned that Lewis was an assistant to effects animator, Joshua Meador, on animated segments of Disney's Perri (1957).  With my interest piqued, I began preliminary research on Lewis and was pleased to find a string of newspaper articles published during his stint at Disney.  Here, I will share my findings, but Lewis' story is by no means complete.  Thanks to this online medium, articles such as these can be updated at anytime.  Therefore, I welcome my readers to reach out if they know anything about individuals like Lewis.  Together, we can ensure that creative individuals such as Lewis are no longer lost to the past and preserved for the future.

        Robert James Lewis was born on May 13, 1936 in Sausalito, California to Robert Ernest Lewis of California and Elizabeth Gail Binford of Utah (although Robert James Lewis shared his father's first name, past articles refer to him as Jim, Jimmy, or James, so to avoid confusion, this article will now refer to the subject of this article as James Lewis and his father as Robert Lewis).

        James Lewis spent his youth growing up in Marin County, California (three years of which he spent bedridden due to a heart valve defect) until his employment at the Walt Disney Studio at nineteen-years-old.  His father, Robert, was a commercial artist (according to the 1940 census, Robert Lewis was a commercial artist for a "textile manufacturing company").  James Lewis was a 1954 graduate of San Rafael High School (during which time he bought his first film camera) and studied art for a year-and-a-half at the College of Marin.  Lewis took a keen interest in film, and enjoyed shooting personal films with family and friends.

        James Lewis' hiring at the Walt Disney Studio as an inbetweener on August 2, 1955 was a fortuitous one.  Kenneth Seiling was Personnel Director of the Studio at the time, and happened to be acquainted with James Lewis' Uncle George Schuchert and Aunt Gertrude Binford of Burbank, California.  A visit to a newly opened Disneyland is what brought the Lewis family to southern California the summer of 1955.  The interview with Seiling fell shortly after.  According to an August 3, 1955 Daily Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA) article:  "After more than five hours of interviews during which James exhibited his portfolio of animations, photographic work and cartoons, the youth was complimented on his general attitude and enthusiasm."  Lewis got a call 24 hours later and landed a position as an inbetweener (apparently starting on a Donald Duck cartoon).  Lewis resided with his aunt and uncle in Burbank while working at Disney.

        In March of the following year, Lewis was promoted to assistant animator under Al Severance, thus bypassing the position of breakdown artist (at Severance's insistence according to a March 9, 1956 Daily Independent Journal article).  At the time of his promotion, Lewis was working on an "atom picture" (presumably the 1957 Disneyland television episode, "Our Friend the Atom") and gearing up for work on Sleeping Beauty (1959).

        Lewis worked for Disney by day, but by night he exercised his interest in filmmaking in the hopes of capturing footage for Disney Studio consumption.  By the mid-50's, Walt Disney's interest in live-action films and television shows was in full swing, and Lewis saw this as an opportunity.  1957 Daily Independent Journal articles reference footage Lewis captured at various points throughout that year with the intention of showing them to Disney.  Some of the various footage included snow and ice scenery at Mammoth Lakes and Lakeport, California along with underwater shots of trout "from the fishes point of view."  One article referenced Lewis' association with a certain artist named John Noel Tucker (according to Internet databases, Tucker was an animator for several studios throughout the 30's and 40's, including Disney).  The extent of their relationship is not known, but Lewis did put together a film highlighting Tucker's watercolor technique with the intention of it being utilized during lectures. It was around this time (May of 1957) that Lewis was promoted, yet again, to effects animator under the tutelage of master effects animator of the time, Joshua Meador.  Their first noted project was Disney's one-and-only True-Life Fantasy, Perri.  Essentially, Lewis worked with Meador to create animated effects of snowflakes and sparkly transitions of animals morphing during a dream sequence.  The relationship that Lewis and Meador shared is worth mentioning.  Not only did they continue to work on projects together throughout 1957 (including work on Disney's Zorro television series), but they became quite friendly outside of the Studio.  In late November of 1957, Lewis' parents were invited on the set of Zorro and the following evening dined with Mr. and Mrs. Meador at their California residence.  James Lewis was certainly making a good impression at Disney.

James Lewis takes a moment to pose while
shooting footage for Disney's
"Magic Highway, U.S.A." in August of 1957.

        A generous August 1957 San Rafael article was written about Lewis and his association with a Disney television project called "Magic Highway, U.S.A."  This project would go on to be an episode of Walt Disney's Disneyland television show (it would air on May 14, 1958).  Lewis' contribution to this episode (originally entitled "The Highway Story") highlights Lewis' zeal for filmmaking and the dangerous lengths he went to capture just the right shot.  The footage (as seen in the finalized television episode embedded below) was captured in and around the San Francisco area.  Shooting took place the week of August 11th 1957.  On the 11th, Lewis flew out of his hometown airport of Novato, California to capture aerial footage of the Carquinez Straits northeast of San Francisco.  On August 12th, while clinging to the fender of his father's car, Lewis shot wheel-level footage of the car speeding out of San Francisco's Walden Tunnel and various highways in the surrounding area.  James Lewis' father, Robert, was at the wheel the whole time.  During that same week, Lewis captured footage on and around the Golden Gate Bridge.  Just before scaling one of the bridge's towers to shoot footage, Lewis told a reporter:  “Disney Studios are unique for big Hollywood studios.  It’s nearly a one-man operation with Disney inspecting every foot of film that is produced.”  It was evident that Lewis idolized Disney, and was willing to go to any lengths to prove his worth at the Studio.  Actual footage shot by Lewis for "Magic Highway, U.S.A." can be seen in the embedded video below between 2:45 and 4:30:

        Apart from this Disney adventure, Lewis scaled the heights of California's tallest mountain, Mt. Whitney, in 1957 and turned his experiences into a fictional story for the December issue of Walt Disney Magazine.  During the trek, James Lewis and a friend (named Don Smith in the magazine story) took many photos and filmed their experience during blizzard-like conditions on Mt. Whitney.  James Lewis' "photo-illustrated article" in Walt Disney Magazine was penned by the author himself and includes a couple of original photographs from Lewis' journey.  The entire article (entitled "Mountain Challenge") can be read by clicking on the following scanned images of the original magazine:

        What's especially evident in reading past newspaper articles about James Lewis is how involved his family was in advocating his love for film.  Several of the personal films Lewis shot involved the help of various family members, including that of his parents.  His father, Robert Lewis, was often credited for the sound effects in his son's films.  On one particular occasion, while working on a personal film entitled Ghost Town, Marin County police were called to Robert Lewis' residence due to complaints of loud noises and gun shots.  Police soon discovered that the family was simply recording audio sound effects for James Lewis' movie.  In August of 1958, the Lewis and Binford families collaborated on another James Lewis project called The Death of Billy the Kid.  Lewis' own maternal grandmother, Gail Binford, starred in the film.  The movie essentially recounted the death of the American Old West's famous outlaw and gunfighter.  James Lewis' driving motivation for producing such a film was to prove to Walt Disney himself that he was capable of taking the reigns as a live-action director.  Whether Disney ever saw the finished film is unknown, but at the time, this personal film was a semi-exciting ordeal in Lewis' hometown of Novato.  

        In 1959, Lewis enlisted in the Army, thus ending his short tenure at Disney.  He was assigned to the Army Dental Laboratory in Bad Kreuznach, Germany.  There he met his future wife, Ingeborg Estenfeld (a dental hygienist at the laboratory), who he would marry in late February of 1961.  After his release from the Army by 1962, Lewis decided to remain in Germany because he felt more opportunities awaited him there rather than Disney back in California.  He was quickly hired as a cameraman for a German television network out of Stuttgart.  During and after his enlistment, Lewis spent much of his free time filming his surroundings in Germany while befriending many of the locals (many of which willingly assisted him and starred in Lewis' personal films).  According to a 1962 Daily Independent Journal newspaper article out of San Rafael, California, some of Lewis' projects were financed by a "German" that he met while sketching in Bad Kreuznach.  

        One particular aspiration that Lewis had was to produce a film inspired by Schumann's Rhine Symphony.  The film was produced and depicted a collage of Lewis' personal footage such as:  clouds, rivers, German locales, and interior shots of a Baroque church on the Rhine, while driven by Schumann's music.  In a way, it was Lewis' own live-action Fantasia.  The final product was sold to the Southern Germany and Danish TV networks.   

James Lewis with his first wife, Ingeborg Estenfeld, in Germany around 1962.

        Although Lewis grew homesick and wished to return to California someday with his wife, Inga, the two remained in Germany.  Throughout the ongoing years, Lewis continued to work for German television and shot and engineered the sound on his personal films.  Lewis, in fact, felt much more free as an artist in Germany than he did under the restrictions of unions back in the States.  "I have a chance to do something on my own here," he shared with Daily Independent Journal reporter, Ellen Bry, in 1962.  With a flair for Disney coupled with his love for filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Lewis went on to create personal projects that focused on the romance of life and nature in documentary form.  Lewis told Bry that he felt there was no room for the documentary form in the U.S. at the time and that filmmaking focused more on cowboys and mysteries.  His love for life and film was palpable to the German natives he encountered.  On one particular project, citizens of a German village opened up their homes and barns to Lewis, and even assisted him in setting up shots for scenes in a film driven by the works of Beethoven.  Through his interactions with the German culture, Lewis' fluency at speaking its native tongue improved and he became more and more ingrained in the German way of life.

        Apart from two of Lewis' personal films receiving attention at film festivals in France and San Francisco throughout the 60's, any documented attention regarding James Lewis' life and work reached a dead end as of July 2018.  Attempts to reach out to members of the Binford family at the time were made with no response.  The historical society of Novato, California was gracious with their time, but had no information regarding this once Novato native.  Lewis' mother, Elizabeth, passed away in 1985, and the obituary at the time listed James Lewis as still living with his wife, Inga, in Germany.  It seemed I had reached an impasse, but the 2019 Christmas season surprised me with a most welcomed and unexpected gift thanks largely to Paul F. Anderson, founder and guardian  of the Disney History Institute.  

        It began as a comment on Anderson's Facebook post about the "Magic Highway, U.S.A" Disneyland episode and led to a generous email from German Disney historian, Andreas Keßler.  Keßler provided me additional information regarding Lewis on the European front.  It was met with both excitement and a tinge of sadness - James Lewis had died several months after my initial July 2018 posting of this article.

        Keßler's email included a link to James Lewis' November 29, 2018 obituary by Stuttgart author, Goggo Gensch.  The article goes into detail on Lewis' filmmaking activities from the mid-60's to his retirement in 1998.  It reveals that Lewis had found what he was looking for across seas, thanks largely to his acquaintance with the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). 

        Samuel Beckett was a renowned Irish writer of novels, short stories, poetry, and plays from pre-World War II until his death in 1989.  By the mid-60's, Beckett's writing transitioned to personal televised projects that would be filmed in a studio of the broadcast system, Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR), for the Baden-Württemberg region of southwest Germany.  Beckett's first foray as a writer and director for television began with the German version of his story, Eh Joe, in 1966.  James Lewis acted as lead cameraman at SDR (with a recommendation from Disney) and worked very closely with creator and director Beckett to ensure the writer's bleak vision translated seamlessly to the small screen.  Filmed by Lewis in one long camera shot, here is Beckett's original German televised work:

        From Eh Joe on, a friendship was cemented between Beckett and Lewis, and the two would collaborate on television work five more times until 1985.  According to Goggo Gensch, "Jim Lewis drove regularly in Paris (Beckett's home base) to prepare the broadcasts" and "they...designed the often visually complicated solutions that Samuel Beckett had in mind."  A look at Beckett's minimalist approach to his films through the years offers one a window into an abstract world filled with darkness and gallows humor which Lewis clearly appreciated.    

        Gensch's 2018 article goes on to share that Jim Lewis also did camerawork over the years for German filmmakers Tom Toelle, Franz Peter Wirth, and Fritz Umgelter.  It also reveals that Lewis took on small acting roles in various televised German films and co-created some programs of his own.  In a translated version of the article, Gensch shares that Lewis made video clips for rock bands like Deep Purple, Steppenwolf, and Savage Rose.    

        Lewis retired in 1998, "rediscovered painting," and married again; this time to a certain Regina Rickert.  Of all his experiences working in film, it was his work with Samuel Beckett that he was most proud of.  Lewis once said: "The greatest thing in my life was my acquaintance with Beckett."  Beckett had great respect for Lewis in return, as he dedicated a poem to him in 1979 entitled "for good and ill" which Lewis made into a 60-minute film in 2006 with Hamburg filmmaker, Rasmus Gerlach.  

        Lewis did not intend to stay in Germany for nearly a lifetime, yet his creative endeavors in Europe seemed destined from the time he was a child.  While bedridden with a heart condition as a young boy, Lewis drew pictures of European cities.  "For him, these were places of longing," Gensch wrote.  James Lewis spent his final years on the island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea, in the small town of Burg, where he died in late November of 2018 at 82 years old. 

Please feel free to comment or reach out to me personally regarding James Lewis at vrand83@gmail.com.