Pigs, Affairs and Candy

In 1950, he was a 58-year-old maintenance worker for a candy company in Los Angeles. That doesn’t sound like the description of a fairly significant name in the world of theatrical animation. But that’s a snapshot of the life of Burt Gillett, director of the Three Little Pigs and Flowers and Trees.

Gillett tends to be a controversial figure, partly because of Shamus Culhane’s experiences with him at the Van Beuren studio. Culhane claimed Gillett was unstable, maybe even mentally ill. Animator/Director Dick Lundy told author Joe Adamson that Gillett spent loads and loads of money and never knew where his pictures were going.

Most of the material you’ll read about Gillett, not surprisingly, involves his work for Walt Disney. But I found a few stories in local papers from his time at Van Beuren, one of them praising the studio’s cartoons.

Gillett was born in Edmeston, New York on October 15, 1891. The 1892 Census has the family in Elmira. He liked art at an early age; the Connellsville, Pa. Daily Courier in 1907 reported he was in high school and won second prize in a weekly magazine’s drawing contest. Census documents reveal in 1910, he was living on West 57th in Manhattan and working as a cashier for a lumber company. He was attending the Art Students League at the time. He was a cartoonist on the Connellsville, Pa. Daily Courier when it reported on its front page of Jan. 25, 1911 he had eloped with the family maid. Louise Clawson had been employed for two weeks and was fired. Gillett married her a week later. “Love at First Sight,” proclaimed the sub-headline. He was 19. The “remarkably pretty girl, graceful of figure and a brunette of fascinating type” was 15.

Two years later, the Newburgh, N.Y. Directory tells us he was a cartoonist with the city’s Daily News. In 1916, Gillett landed a job in the Barre-Bowers cartoon studio. Gillett then opened his own $70,000 studio which took up the entire fifth floor of a building on 42nd Street in New York. The Connellsville Courier of Aug. 7, 1925 stating he had partnered with Ben Harrison, Dick Humor [sic] and Manny Gould, with brother Clyde as business manager of “Associated Animated Studio.” It made Mutt and Jeff cartoons and shorts called “Fun From the Press” for Literary Digest. It had a short life. Animation researcher and restorer Devon Baxter went through Harrison’s personal notes, and Harrison admits he used the company’s gilt-edge, but worthless, stock to plug a hole in his shoe.

In April 1929, Walt Disney visited Pat Sullivan’s studio where still-silent Felix the Cat cartoons were being made. Gillett was animating there and Disney hired him. Jack Cutting, an artist later put in charge of Disney’s foreign department, was hired in August that year, and reminisced in a 1973 newspaper story that there were 19 men on staff and Gillett was the oldest.

Gillett had tremendous success at Disney. Meanwhile, back in New York, Amedee Van Beuren was paying for third-rate cartoons being churned out by his staff. Why not entice the director of the most famous animated short to that time to take over and whip the operation into shape? So it was in early 1934 that Van Beuren hired Burt Gillett. “I was reluctant to leave California as I like the climate and my associates out there very much,” he told the Newburgh Daily News in a story published June 22, 1934. “However, business is business and this looks like a splendid opportunity, so here I am.”

Here’s a story from the Matt Richardson’s ‘Round Town column in the Elmira Star-Gazette, Dec. 3, 1935.

Leaves Newspaper Grind For the Newer Grind Of Color Cartoons
IT IS A GREAT THRILL for Burt Gillett, when he returns to Elmira periodically for a look around, and to ponder old times. . . These visits are a happiness tonic, too, an aid to longevity. It was 31 years ago that Mr. Gillett started out to make his way in the world and he chose newspaper work—of all things! . . . He landed in Newburgh, and for 10 years wrestled with court reporting for sustenance, while dabbling in art for the love of it. . . Older heads recognized Burt's ability, and advised him to stop trying to beat, his way through life on a typewriter and stick to his sketching. . . It proved good advice. . . The young man thought he liked cartooning, hurried to Hollywood, and tied up with Walt Disney of Mickey Mouse and "Silly Symphony" fame. . . He became a director of these amusing little characters and the artists who produce them. . . It was Gillett, if you please, who directed the "Three Little Pigs," which touched off a national hysteria of laughter. . .
ALL THIS HAPPENED 18 years ago. And now the former Elmiran is back east again, in Manhattan, associated with the VanBuren Studio, specializing in rainbow color movie cartoons. On his staff is a corps of 100 artists constantly turning, out this art that screen lovers have learned so much to admire. . . Burt doesn't draw any more. . . There is greater pecuniary reward in watching others do the actual work and seeing that they do it correctly. . . For a while, out West, Mr. Gillett was able to return to Elmira only twice, these visits being separated by a 10-year interim. . . But now, from New York to Elmira, is an easy "jump," proven by the fact he has made the jaunt three times the past year. . .
THE MOVIE DIRECTOR'S FATHER was Lewis M. Gillett, who for years—until 1904—when the family moved to Pennsylvania, conducted a jewelry store at the corner of West Water and Main Streets—present site of the Les Kelly drug store. . . In there Burt strolled, closed his eyes and tried to look back in retrospect to the days of his boyhood. . . He endeavored to imagine all around him were clocks, silver and pewter instead of ivory sets, porus plasters and pills. . . And was fairly successful—a dream boy for the moment. . . Burt has never been quite weaned from Elmira, you know. . . He sees many old landmarks, far too few old friends, and there comes a fund of reminiscences which he delights to peddle around to those willing to lend an ear and capable of remembering, perhaps.

Animator Izzy Klein was at Van Beuren at the time and said Gillett was constantly firing people not up to his standard. As well, Gillett brought Tom Palmer with him. Palmer was an ex-Disneyite who was picked up by Leon Schlesinger in 1933 and made production manager. Sound department head Bernie Brown told historian Michael Barrier that Palmer was inept at putting together a story, giving vague instructions to “do a funny bit of business here.” At Van Beuren, the two of them came up with the dreadful live action/animation “Toddle Tales,” then invented the unhilarious Molly Moo Cow.

But Van Beuren was going in the right direction, though Tom Sito’s book on animation unions, Drawing the Line points out “big sections of the shorts were thrown out as substandard [by Gillett] and [artists] were forced to work unpaid overtime hours to replace them.” But it’s obvious the studio’s animation improved with people like Carlo Vinci, Bill Littlejohn, Pete Burness and Jack Zander. The studio had licensed Felix the Cat and The Toonerville Trolley characters. Under writers like Joe Barbera and Dan Gordon, they could have been very funny, rollicking cartoons. But RKO, which had a stake in Van Beuren, decided in 1936 it was better simply to kill the studio and release Walt Disney’s shorts instead of putting ersatz Disney “Rainbow Parade” cartoons in theatre. Gillett went on a month-long trip to England, returning in August 1936 and immediately took a job again with Walt Disney, who had said when Gillett left in 1934 “Who needs him?”.

Meanwhile, Gillett lost interest in that “brunette of fascinating type.” The Bergen Evening Record told all in its issue of Jan. 20, 1937. The clipping to the right below is from the Dec. 22, 1936 edition of the Passaic Herald-News. It should be of note to people who doubt Culhane’s story of instability and reports that Gillett was a souse.

Gillett, Aide To Disney, Ordered To Pay Alimony
Edgewater Woman Wins $70 Weekly From Mickey Mouse Cartoonist In Separation Action
Burton F. Gillett, cartoonist for Walt Disney, is under court order today to pay $70 weekly alimony to Mrs. Louise Gillett, 647 Undercliff Avenue, Edgewater, and $750 counsel fees as result of her recent separate maintenance divorce suit decree.
WORKS IN HOLLYWOOD
Gillett, who is working at Disney's Hollywood studios, also was ordered by Advisory Master N. Demarest Campbell in Chancery Court at Hackensack to give his estranged wife half the income from his property. He owns a $15,000 house in Edgewater and a $40,000 home in Los Angeles.
According to the petitioner her husband misconducted himself with Miss Edith [Ethel Vera] Falkenberg, model in his office, in an apartment at 360 Central Park West, New York, on various dates.
Although Gillett earns as much as $325 a week he failed to provide proper support for his wile, she charged at the trial.
Jan. 10, 1936, Mrs. Gillett took part in a raid on her husband's apartment and said she found him partly dressed with Miss Falkenberg. The couple have a child and Gillett wants to marry the girl, his wife testified.
The defendant did not appear in court to contest the accusations but he was represented by Vincent J. Aiken of Fort Lee.
Lawrence A. Cavinato, counsel for Mrs. Gillett, contended the artist failed to support his wife in the manner to which she was accustomed and entitled after he became friendly with Miss Falkenberg.
The couple was married Jan. 25, 1911, at Cumberland, and have one grown son.
Another of Mrs. Gillett's allegations was that her husband drank excessively and on one occasion when she protested said he wanted to stay drunk so he wouldn't have to look at "your homely mug.”
Trial of the case took two days.
Mrs. Gillett declared that her husband threatened to kill himself when she refused to grant him a divorce to permit him to marry the Falkenberg girl. On a vacation cruise to Europe last summer he even threatened to throw her overboard if she declined to divorce him, Mrs. Gillett told the court.

The divorce was granted in December 1937 and Gillett took out a marriage license with his former employee the following March. There was a 20-year age difference between the two.

In September 1938, Gillett was gone from Disney and began writing and directing for Walter Lantz. He lasted about a year; his final cartoon was released March 4, 1940. Lantz explained to Joe Adamson that Gillett never properly laid out his cartoons like other directors meaning he never knew how long they were. “Gillett never knew where he was going; he’d wind up with a nine-hundred-foot picture,” as opposed to the usual 600 feet which meant less animation time, less inking and painting, and less money. Lantz was big on saving money. “After he made a few of those, I said, ‘Burt, you’re going to put me out of business.’”

In 1940 his occupation in the Burbank City Directory is “writer.” His World War Two Draft Card, dated Apr. 25, 1942, states he was employed at McDonnell’s Restaurant. Gillett and his former paramour divorced and he married Theckla Virginia Monberg of Huntingdon Park in 1943. Oddly, he showed up in Connellsville in August 1949, with the Daily Courier reporting he was visiting his ex-wife’s sister. The 1950 Census indicates he and Virginia were separated (she died in 1953).

Gillett had one more last hurrah in animation. In April 1961, the San Francisco Museum of Art screened a number of films, including The Three Little Pigs. Gillett was invited to attend.

With nary an obituary, at least that I can find, Gillett died in Panorama City on December 28, 1971.