From Punching Holes in Paper Cels
Here was a man whose experience touched every period and aspect of animation. The man who began his profession punching holes in paper cels at the Bray Studio ended his career as an advocate of computer animation. The boy who left school at the age of 16 became one of the best educated figures in our field. The man who was formed in the factory system of the animation industry argued for independent production, creative commitment and the recognition of animation as art.

Born Janes Culhane in Ware, Massachussetts on 12 November 1908, Culhane moved to the Yorkville area of Manhattan as a child. Having resolved to be an artist at an early age, Culhane studied commercial art at the Boy's High School in Harlem. One of his schoolmates was Michael Lantz, brother of animator Walter Lantz, who was then producing cartoons at the Bray Studio, Inc. Culhane was hired by Walter Lantz in the summer of 1924, eventually working his way up through a variety of jobs as darkroom assistant, animation cameraman, and then finally as an opaquer. During lunch hours, Culhane tried his hand at animating sequences. Before he was 17, his animation had been used in a cartoon.

With the collapse of the Bray Studio, Culhane was employed as an inker on Krazy Kat cartoons for Ben Harrison and Manny Gould. When owner Charles Mintz moved the studio to the west coast, Culhane remained behind and found work at the Fleischer Studios on the "Out of the Inkwell" films as an inbetweener. The sudden departure of several senior animators left only Ted Sears, Grim Natwick and Roland "Doc" Crandall animating in the studio. Along with a group of other inbetweeners, Culhane was promoted to animator overnight. The first film by these novices, Swing, You Sinners, demonstrated the experimental, nightmarish quality of the studio's output in this period. Recalling his early training at the Fleischer Studios, Culhane later told animation historian Greg Ford, "with this freewheeling approach to mass and volume... it didn't really matter what you did with anything. There was a much less restrictive approach than the one you'd get at Walt Disney's." Culhane became the head animator or a major contributor to several Fleischer classics, including The Herring Murder Case, ChessNuts and Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle/

Going West
In 1932, Culhane joined a westward migration of Fleischer employees to Ub Iwerks' Celebrity Productions, where he worked on Flip the Frog, Willie Whopper and ComiColor Cartoons. This was followed by a brief stint at the Van Beuren Studio in New York. Dissatisfied with the artistic standards in these studios, Culhane accepted a dramatic pay cut and demotion to inbetweener in order to work at Walt Disney Productions. After a grueling apprenticeship with Bill Roberts and Ben Sharpsteen, and intensive study with Don Graham, Culhane was promoted to animator. His most notable work for Disney included the classic sequence with Pluto and the crab in Hawaiian Holiday and the dwarfs' "Heigh Ho" number in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

While animating Honest John, Gideon and the Coachman in Pinocchio (a sequence which exhibits the attention to lifelike gesture and expression that became a hallmark of Culhane's work), he was overtaken with ill health and left Walt Disney Productions for the Fleischer studio, which had relocated from New York to Miami. There, Culhane headed a unit that animated sections of the feature Gulliver's Travels as well as a number of shorts including A Kick in Time and Popeye Meets William Tell. Culhane remembered this period as frustrating because of the differences in philosophy between the Fleischer and Disney studios. After completing animation on the opening sequence of Mr. Bug Goes to Town, Culhane left for Hollywood. Following a brief stint at Warner Bros., where the animator worked on Chuck Jones' Inki and the Minah Bird, Culhane joined the Walter Lantz studio. There he directed several of Lantz's Swing Symphonies, including Jungle Jive, Boogie Woogie Man and The Greatest Man in Siam. Culhane was also responsible for some of the classic Woody Woodpeckers, most notably in The Barber of Seville and Ski For Two.