Ponyfied Fred Moore is talking to Malinda the centaurette while Lampwick lights a cigar.

Characters Animated: Dwarfs in Snow White, Lampwick in Pinocchio, The Centaurettes in Fantasia,

Fred Moore (1911-1952) was the youngest animator at Disney starting his career when he was 18 years old. He defined the Disney style of drawing and animation and his work had a life, vitality, charm and fluidness that had never been seen before in animation. Fred’s characters were alive and believable. The interesting thing about him is that he had no formal art training, instead he taught himself how to draw and animate, he could draw sophisticated and accurate drawings and had everything in the right place. He was often called “The Mozart of Animation”
Fred Moore was born in Los Angeles, California in 1911. He taught himself how to draw and his sensibilities in drawing would later make him thrive at Disney. Moore knew exactly where to place everything to make a good drawing. Even at this early age the flow and control he had over his pencil was staggering. Not much has been written about his early life but what we do know is that neither his situation nor education was very sophisticated.
In High School, Moore did take some art classes however his training was pretty basic and there is little to suggest that he got any very advanced teaching. When he graduated from high school Moore got a job as a janitor at the Chouinard art Institute in exchange for drawing classes. There are a couple of urban legends as to how Fred Moore got started at the Disney Studio, some say he was never really hired and he just showed up in the place of somebody else. Others say that people at Chouinard were so impressed by the drawings Fred submitted to the studio in grocery bags. We don’t know for sure if any of these urban legends are true. However the story that is most likely true is that his friend Chuck Couch encouraged him to apply for a job at Disney. Fred got hired by Disney in the summer of 1930 at the tender age of 18.
When Fred started his career, the other Disney artists were blown away by his talent for drawing. He was put as an assistant animator of Les Clark who would later become a member of Disney’s Nine Old Men, but they both drew very appealing drawings, had rather sentimental animation and put tons of charming personalities into their work. Clark grew to have respect for moor and was amazed by his natural talent for animation.
In 1932, Fred Moore began to be given little scenes to animate alongside being an assistant and his first time animating in a significant role was on the Christmas short “Santa’s Workshop” When he began work on another short he was a full fledged animator showing his full potential and this started the Disney Style of Drawing. The short was The Three Little Pigs (1933)
In those days, most animators suffered from the severe handicap of the rubber hose which was the very first animation style to become the standard in animation in which cartoon characters had limbs and body parts that moved like as if they were inflated rubber hoses and balloons, they would not move realistically at all, and they were downright ugly. Another problem is that cartoon characters were animated generically and not given any specific characteristic to express their feelings, acting or personality, however that was all about to change with Fred Moore’s animation of the Three Little Pigs in which he animated all of the Pigs in a different way giving them characteristics, mannerisms, expressions, poses and movements that clearly defined their personality and distinguished them from the other pigs. It was Fred’s animation on the Three Little Pigs that changed the art of animation forever. However some animators today still use rubber hose animation in modern abstract cartoons such as World of Gumball and Adventure Time.
Overnight Fred became very famous animator and for some time would be used as the front runners of the Disney animators setting an example a tend influence for all the rest of them. Fortunately his distinct sensibilities and style of animation led to his work becoming the basis of the Disney style of drawing and soon other animators began to use his style. After the success of The Three Little Pigs Moore animated a lot of Mickey Mouse shorts. His work was generic to the character. Every design and pose was tailored clearly to the personality and everything about the animation was used to enhance the characteristics of the character making him the greatest Mickey animator ever.
There isn’t a Fred Moore drawing out there that doesn’t tell you who the character is and what their personality is. This doesn’t apply to the drawings but also to the acting and performance. Fred was the first animator to define the fact that pose and action of the body should define the acting while the facial expressions should show the audience what the character is thinking. This makes a lot of his poses and action much more dynamic and believable and the work of an average animator. Some animators communicate with the expression making the body feel stiff while others communicate through the action and body language which makes the inner thoughts and feelings of the character completely absent. It’s absolutely crucial that both are present and communicate in the right way which is proved by the animation of Fred Moore.
Walt Disney was quickly developing his first full length animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and in December 1935 Fred Moore was the second animator assigned to work on the project in which he and fellow animator Bill Tytla animated the Dwarfs. In every way the two animators were in different worlds, while Fred was a natural talent Bill had extensive art training and saw himself as an ordinary artist rather than an animator. Walt hoped that the two would work together extensively on using their skills to make success but this never happened. It was too humiliating for both of them to ack for a drawing from someone and the two worked rather independently although the two versions did come together well. In the story sketches down early on the film the dwarfs looked a lot like garden gnomes and were unappealing and unattractive men who were very short and looked almost exactly alike. While in the original story the dwarfs are in differential and don’t have individual personalities Walt knew that making the dwarfs individual, strong in personality and appealing was important for the movie to work well for audiences.
Unlike the other human characters such as Snow White, the Queen and the Prince who had to be animated realistically the dwarfs could still have the roundness, life and appeal of the typical Disney style. Although Fred’s original model sheets wasn’t to significant of an improvement or solution to the challenge the one he did in 1936 proved to be one of the most important model sheets in animation history. Here the Dwarfs are distinct, appealing, round, cartoony, believable and have the lifelike vitality that he did best, Unlike the dwarfs done before he drew them much younger with white beards and gave them simplicity in their designs and best of all allowed expression and movement.
Fred Moore animated Dopey’s introduction, Dopey with the diamonds in his eyes and wiggling his ears, and Dopy throwing the sack of diamonds in the storeroom, locking the door and leaving the key by the door. He also animated the Silly Song sequence.
Fred’s influence and success in Snow White made his stardom at the studio to go the to highest possible level and to spread his talent Walt selected him to spend most of his time teaching young animators at the studio. One of the animators that he taught was Ollie Johnston who became a member of Disney’s Nine Old Men. But Fred Moore didn’t enjoy teaching at all and it was animating that he really loved to do most of all. However at that time he did animate some of his best work on a few shorts, one was the Brave Little Taylor where he animated Mickey Mouse yet again, but unlike many of his other animation of Mickey this one shows him as a boy who is naïve and wants to prove himself. Although he didn’t do much animation Moore did one phenomenal scene when Mickey is leaving the town, the townspeople were cheering him on and he says “Well so long I’ll b seeing you, I hope” This scene is excellent because it shows Mickey’s change of emotion in which he smiles and is excited but at the same time he frowns and is worried.
The more Fred Moore drew Mickey Mouse the harder the time he had at the handicap of the mouse’s body and the limitations it gave. The characters design didn’t change and felt out of place in the Disney universe so Fred decided to redesign Mickey by replacing his large black oval eyes with pupils while still maintaining the oval shapes, giving him a pear shaped body, and all of the other aspects that make up the face of Mickey Mouse that we know and love today. The new and improved Mickey Mouse was first used in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia and Fred did great animation of the new Mickey in shorts such as the Pointer and Little Whirlwind.
In Pinocchio, Fred designed the title role but his designs were scraped for Milt Kahl’s and he ended up doing no animation of the title character. Instead he was assigned to animate Pinocchio’s rude and uncouth friend Lampwick in the Pleasure Island sequence. Although only a minor character Moore did an awesome performance of him. He clearly communicated Lampwick’s severely flawed personality and in many ways, he is a lot like the Artful Dodger in Charles Dicken’s novel Oliver Twist which is not a character that you don’t want to have as a friend.
In the scene when Lampwick is turning into a donkey, it’s like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie or a horror movie. The scene starts out with Lampwick leaning on the pool table drinking beer out of a mug then his ears stretch out forming donkey ears, then he leans over the pool table and as he strikes more balls on the table his pants bulge and a serpentine tail with a tassel at the tip pops out. Lampwick then walks around the pool table unaware of his transformation and takes another shot then as he turns towards the camera we see that his face is now a donkey’s face and he smokes from a cigar. Pinocchio laughs at him and brays like a donkey and covers his mouth, Lampwick approaches him and says “Hey you laugh like a donkey” he laughs too and then he really brays and he too covers his mouth and says “Did that come out of me?” Pinocchio nods at him. Lampwick feels his mouth but instead of feeling a mouth that is flat he feels a round muzzle, then he scratches his cheeks and finds that it is furry and he moves his hands over his ears only to find that they are long instead of flat, he pulls them down and glances back and forth in shock. He turns towards a mirror and recoils in horror, then he runs around the room in a panic. Lampwick gets down on his knees and dramatically grovels to Pinocchio and as he grovels he clings onto the suspenders of Pinocchio’s lederhosen and suddenly he clinches his fingers and his hands morph into hooves and for dramatic emphasis and horror Moore finishes Lampwick’s transformation by animating his shadow on the wall morphing into a full donkey. This scene was the most frightening sequence in any Disney film.
After Pinocchio Fred Moore moved onto Fantasia in which he designed and created the centaurettes which are female centaurs which are creatures that are half human and half horse. Fred Moore designed the centaurettes after he did some sketches of girls that were called the Freddy Moore Girls. They were incorporated into the designs to give sex appeal to the centaurettes. These centaurs and centaurettes would move like both horses from the waist down and humans from the waist up. In one scene Fred animated in the pastoral symphony was when three cherubs see a centaur sitting alone. The cherubs noticed that he was lonely then another cherub flies over to them and tells them something, the fly upward and see a centaurette that is also lonely then the huddle together and decide that they should get them together. They then play flutes in front of the centaur and centaurette so that they would get them to meet and when they met they instantly fell in love. Moore even named the centaurette Malinda and the centaur Bruits.
Dumbo proved to actually be quite a hard film for Fred. It relied on cartoon acting, character relationships and strong emotions. It was during the production of Dumbo that Fred Moore started drink alcohol constantly. Also at that time Fred Moore animated and voiced a caricature of himself in The Nifty Nineties in which he and his friend Ward Kimball played two slapstick comedians on a vaudeville stage. Moore then went on to animate in Saludos Amigos in which he animated Jose Carioca and Donald Duck. He would then animate them again in The Three Caballeros and Make Mine Music. Also in Make Mine Music, Moore animated the All The Cat’s Join In segment in which we see a group of teenage girls and boys hanging out at a malt shop and dancing to the jazz music of Benny Goodman who was a famous clarinetist and bandleader in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Fred Moore’s drinking habits got worse and worse every day and in August 1946 he got fired from the studio due to his substance abuse from alcoholism. While Fred’s habits and behaviors had disturbed so many people at the Disney studio he was so famous that anyone would want to hire him and he was hired by an animator named Walter Lantz who was best known for creating Woody Woodpecker. Moore soon did some animation on Woody Woodpecker cartoons and other cartoons. However in 1948 Disney reinstated Moore after feeling sorry for firing him in the first place. Surprisingly he made quite a comeback on in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in which he animated Katrina Van Tassel who is a girl that is appealing, sexy and well off. Up next came Cinderella in which Moore animated some of the mice and the footman, on Alice in Wonderland he animated some of the White Rabbit and on Peter Pan he did some animation of the Lost Boys and the mermaids. Sadly during the production of Peter Pan on November 22,1952 Fred Moore and his wife Virginia were driving home from a football game when their car was struck head on while making a U-turn in Big Tujunga Canyon near the Angeles national forest. Fred Moore died the next day at St. Joseph’s hospital in Burbank California from internal bleeding in his brain caused by a concussion from the car crash. He was only 41 years old. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial park in Hollywood Hills, California.