Rudy Cataldi Website

It’s nice to know that there are people from the Golden Age of Theatrical Animation who are still with us, and we can learn a little bit about them and their work.

One is Rudy Cataldi. Rudy was from Newark, New Jersey, where his father was a jeweller. He came west, studied at the Otis Art Institute, and was hired at Disney at the age of 16 in 1943. He was employed by a number of commercial studios in the 1950s, co-owned a studio with Lou Zukor and John Boersma called Animation Associates, then hopped over to Hanna-Barbera around 1963 and stayed for more than two decades. He also somehow survived directing for cut-rate producer Sam Singer, who told him there could be no more than three drawings a foot in each Sinbad Jr. cartoon (there are 16 frames in a foot of animation).

Rudy, I understand, has vision problems today, but he’s still around, and set to turn 90 next year. Rudy’s family has created a small web site in his honour, and that generous animation historian Jerry Beck was kind enough to alert me to it. So I’m alerting you. Click HERE. For me, the best part of it is the links to the Animation Guild interview he did several years ago. We hope the Cataldi family will find the time to add to it.