From the November 2000 Peg-Board
Animator, director and union activist BILL HURTZ has died at the age of eighty-one. Hurtz came out from Chicago and after studying at Chouinard started at Disney in 1938 as an assistant. He assisted Art Babbitt on the mushroom dance sequence of Fantasia.
Hurtz was very active in the Screen Cartoon Guild and made the motion to strike in the 1941 Disney Strike. Much press was made of his budding love affair with his wife Mary who was in the secretarial pool at Disney, "kissing through the fence" and such. They were married shortly before the strike ended and Bill remained a passionate union activist.
After spending the war years at FMPU, he was one of the founders of UPA. He directed the short The Unicorn In The Garden, and co-designed Gerald McBoing Boing and other classic films of the UPA era. Bill was later one of the top directors of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, George of the Jungle and Fractured Flickers. He did commercials with Shamus Culhane's studio and directed animation for Frank Capra's Bell Telephone Science series. He was a great talent and a great champion of artists rights.
Contents © by TAG Local 839 IATSE. All rights reserved.