Joe D'Igalo

You’d like to think people who worked hard through the tedium of animation in the age of theatrical shorts lived to be a ripe old age and in good health.

Some did. Others, not so much. Their minds were intact but their bodies gave out.

That was the case of journeyman Joe D’Igalo, formerly of Disney, Warners, Fleischer and one of the big industrial studios in the Midwest. Boxoffice magazine of January 20, 1969 put out a brief story on his retirement to Carlsbad. He moved to Texas in October.

Joseph Marbelle Igalo (the "D'" was added later) was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 25, 1898. He served in the U.S. Army in World War One. In 1930, he was employed in Chicago as an artist for the Atlas Educational Film Company (he was married in Chicago in 1928). But he decided to try his hand at theatrical work and was hired by Walt Disney. He moved to the Walter Lantz studio and was evidently loyal to Tex Avery. When Tex was hired as a director by Leon Schlesinger, D’Igalo, Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland and Cecil Surry all left Lantz to work with him at Warners. Surry left for MGM while D'Igalo moved into the Frank Tashlin unit before quitting to work for the Fleischers. He was back in Los Angeles in 1944; the Voters List simply reads “artist.” Within five years, he was back in Chicago.

Ten years ago, I posted D’Igalo’s obit on the Golden Age Cartoon forum. It’s by Judy Gotterer of the Santa Fe Reporter, Aug. 19, 1987. D'Igalo died July 29th. You will see why Disney hired him.

Early last May, Joe D'Igalo touched his paintbrush to paper and stroked in the tiny facial creases in the portrait of a young Indian woman; he dipped his brush again, and the watercolors glided across the sheet in shades of the pale nuanced skies sometimes seen in New Mexico.
Even at the age of 88, D'Igalo was still painting with energy and control, as he had thoughout a long career as an artist and illustrator, a career that included several years as an animator for a friend named Walt Disney. But on May 12, he collapsed in a fall at his home. Though he was not injured in the fall, he never seemed to recover. He was placed in a local nursing home, and there, on July 29, he died of what was termed "natural causes."
Blanche D'Igalo, his wife for the last 10 years of his life, remembers her husband as a man who was "always kind and soft-spoken." She speaks of a near-idyllic marriage, the second for both. Because both were childless, they were able to focus their attention on each other and their hobbies, without the distractions of grown children. And because D'Igalo was retired when they married, the couple enjoyed an easy life together, traveling, gardening and taking care of their home. But before that final tranquil decade, his wife notes proudly, D'Igalo had a full and exciting career.
A native Santa Fean, D'Igalo discovered his artistic talent early, and did some illustrations for The New Mexican, Santa Fe's daily newspaper, as a very young man. He served in the U.S. armed forces during World War I, and when it was over, and he was in his 20s, he left Santa Fe to seek wider opportunities.
He enrolled in the Art Institute in Kansas City, Mo., and while studying there he took a job with the Kansas City Film Advertising Co. A fellow worker was a young man named Walt Disney, and the two struck up a friendship, based largely on their mutual interest in the animation of characters on film.
When D'Igalo graduated from the Institute, he took a job making educational films in Illinois, and in 1928 he married his first wife, Ann Boyd. Then in 1930 Disney offered him a job in Hollywood, and D'Igalo took it. He worked for Disney as an animator, and stayed on for several years, through the production of the historic "Snow White," the first full-length animated cartoon, which was released in 1938.
And of course, reports his widow, "he worked on Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse through the years." In fact, at D'Igalo's 88th birthday party last November, a small family gathering with his brother and sister and their spouses, Mickey and Minnie adorned the birthday cake.
After leaving Disney in the late 1930s, D'Igalo went with Fleischer Studios, then in Miami. He worked there on two other full-length animated films, "Gulliver's Travels" and "Mr. Bugs Goes to Town."
He spent the last 20 years of his professional life, 1949 to 1969, with Wilding Studios in Chicago, making educational films and films used in training by the military services. After his retirement he moved to Abilene, Texas; and in 1976 his first wife died.
In 1977 D'Igalo remarried. For the next several years he and his wife moved from place to place, making homes in Texas, Nevada, New Mexico and Arkansas. Then in 1985 they moved permanently to Santa Fe, because they liked the climate here and enjoyed being close to other family members who lived in the city.
D'Igalo’s life, and that of his wife, during their 10-year marriage, was filled with hobbies: painting, photography, gardening, and astronomy. He loved having a beautiful lawn and flowers, says Mrs. D'Igalo; and only a couple of weeks before the onset of his final illness, the two of them were working in the garden together. And until his final two-month illness, he continued to take photographs of landscapes and of wildlife, and then made paintings from them, often adding images from his mind's eye—a clapboard house, a red barn, a cluster of animals, geese in flight. He also encouraged his wife to begin painting, and served as her instructor—even after his last illness caused him to move to Casa Real nursing home.
D'Igalo's final illness began on May 12, with a fall that occurred just as he was about to begin work on a painting. "He had fallen many times before," his wife recalls, "and had never broken any bones, and he didn't break any bones this time, either. It was as if he had run out of energy."
In addition to his wife, D'Igalo is survived by his sister Stella Schwanke and her husband, Jack, of Santa Fe; his brother Lorenzo Silva and his wife, Julia, also of Santa Fe; and by many nephews and nieces, nearly all in the Santa Fe area.

I’ll spare you a list of D’Igalo’s cartoons; you’ll have to take your chances with the fan-puts-up-data websites. Suffice it to say he’s one of almost countless old-time animators who deserves a little bit of the spotlight.