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. A real company man, he married a co-worker, a Disney pen-and-ink artist named Marie. (The marriage lasted for 63 years, until his wife's death in 2005.)

Among animation geeks, his name came to be closely associated with a fellow member of the nine old men, Frank Thomas, who he knew at Stanford University and who retired from Disney the same year he did. The two were popular attractions on the lecture circuit and co-authored a number of books aimed at recording and preserving the story of how the Disney classics came to be made, including Bambi: The Story and the Film, The Disney Villains, and Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. Their own story was the subject of a 1995 documentary feature, Frank and Ollie, which was made by Frank's son Theodore Thomas. Their shared website is here. Frank Thomas died in 2004.