A self-portrait. © Odense City Museums.

Time was in Hollywood, only the stars and studio heads received public recognition. Same rules applied in the animation game. But, little by little, the spotlight is widening to include others: animators, voice actors, composers and designers.

Even the guys who develop stories for animated films seem to be actually getting some recognition nowadays. A recent book by John Canemaker, Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards, sheds light on some of the fellows who toiled at Hyperion and on Alameda. And now, along comes a new biography, which celebrates one of the top story men of all time.

His tales have been animated by all the top cartoon studios and his stories have been set into motion by dozens of independent animators as well -- not only in the U.S., but around the world.

Disney's studio in particular has profited by their association with this talented individual. One of his stories formed the basis of a recent animated feature, which yielded an Academy Award for the studio. And in earlier years several short cartoons were based on his stories. In fact, one of his plots had such elemental appeal it was animated two separate times under Walt Disney's supervision. As far as I can determine, this is the only non-Mickey Mouse short film so honored. Oh, and by the way, the second version of this simple and powerful story won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

You may be now wondering who this story man is. Could it be Joe Grant? Or maybe Dick Huemer? How about Bill Peet? Possibly Ted Sears? It couldn't be Roald Dahl, could it? Stick around. I'll give you some clues. Maybe you know him.

By most accounts, he's an oddball -- gauche, egocentric, given to wild mood swings. A walking caricature. His new biographer, Jackie Wullschlager, describes personality traits he had to overcome as: "Liabilities of temperament -- wild imagination, inner rage, tormenting anxieties and hypochondria, insatiable ambition."

On the other hand, Ms. Wullschlager continues with: "He is a writer of whom one never tires, who grows in depth and maturity...whose sense of the adventure of life is infinite." To this I will add that he's excellent at pitching his own work. He is a master at using his considerable public relations talent to create an appealing and near-miraculous image of himself. His survival skills are exemplary. He can hone in on a potential sponsor and find himself with a patron who will back him forever.

Also, like many animation storytellers of the present, he was not unskilled in the visual arts.

Still don't know who it is?

Well, the worst that can be said of him was written by a near-lifelong friend whose personality was completely out of synch with our writer's. "I cannot deviate from the opinion that the best service to [him] is done by showing the world how diseased a mind he had, so it is clear to everyone, that everything repulsive, everything that the world was scandalized by, was caused by this mind."

No, our mystery story man is not John Kricfalusi, Tex Avery or Mother Teresa. But you've got to admit, whoever this is must be awfully interesting!

The passage quoted above, I should add, was penned by the fellow whose job it was to clean up the spelling and grammar of our writer. Perhaps some petulance crept into his unsympathetic opinion of his illustrious contemporary.