The death of animator Ollie Johnston, at 95, marks the end of our first-hand access to an era: Johnston, who worked at Disney from 1935 until his retirement in 1978, was the last member of the core group of the studio's animators who were known collevtively as "the nine old men." (Most of them were in their twenties when they were given that label.) Johnston worked in various major capacities on such features as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Bambi; among other accomplishments, he was famous, or notorious, for having animated the death of Bambi's mother, thus making him responsible for several generations of childhood traumas.
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