Derek Lamb (middle), Kaj Pindal (left) and Janet Perlman at the NFB in Montreal. Photo by Lois Siegel.

On Nov. 5, 2005, veteran director/animator/producer/composer Derek Lamb passed away in Washington. His wife Tracie Smart was at his side. In honor of his incredibly influential career, Animation World Network has collected the thoughts and memories of the animation community as a tribute to his legacy.

Karl Cohen
ASIFA-San Francisco

Derek lost his battle with cancer, but over the years he won the admiration of millions who saw his work for the National Film Board of Canada, Sesame Street and others producers. He was admired as an exceptional animation writer and as a director with a keen sense for timing comedy. He was an excellent teacher at Harvard (1966-70, 1986-87 and 1990-91), at McGill University in Montreal and at the National Institute of Design in India. He was called a great person by those who were lucky enough to know him.

I called Jeff Hale who worked with Derek on several projects over the years. He called Derek one of the greatest animation writers in the business, along with George Dunning and Stan Hayward. I was told Derek was born in County Kent in England and he knew nothing about animation when he came to Canada. When he saw a Norman McLaren screening in Montreal in 1958 he became hooked. Jeff says, “He somehow conned his way into a job with the Film Board as a writer.”

When Jeff joined the NFB he worked with Derek on a series of “clips” (public service announcements). When Derek was working on Kaj Pindal’s I Know An Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly (Derek got story and design credits, 1964) Jeff was having trouble with the script of The Great Toy Robbery. He says, “I found a hole in the story and showed it to Derek.” That was one of several occasions when he realized how brilliant Derek could be as a writer.

Derek left the Film Board in 1964 for a job with Hallas and Batchelor in London. In London he wrote, designed and/or directed several works for them. Meanwhile, Jeff joined Cameron Guess in San Francisco. Guess had worked at the NFB from the late 1950s to 1963. He left when he came into a large inheritance. He moved to San Francisco, opened Cameron Guess and Assoc. and convinced Hale to join him. Later Derek Lamb and animator Barrie Nelson joined the firm.

Guess had worked with Jeff Hale on The Great Toy Robbery (Derek got writing and design credits on that film). Guess produced The Well (1965) and The Shepherd (1967, Oscar nomination, 1970). Hale says he directed The Shepherd and Lamb wrote it and did, “marvelous, unique backgrounds using cutouts.”

Lamb went off to Harvard to teach animation (1966-70). Then he moved to NYC where he worked for Sesame Street. Guess left the animation business and moved to Florida. Hale opened his own studio, Imagination Inc., in San Francisco.

Lamb and Hale worked together again on The Last Cartoon Man (1973, winner of the Best Scenario Award at Zagreb). Hale says that Derek’s script ideas and his few rough drawings were so clear that he didn’t need a storyboard. They also thought up “an outrageous piece on religion, but we were advised not to make it.”

In 1975, Lamb accepted the position of director of the National Film Board of Canada’s English animation department (there is also a French division). He won Oscars for producing Bead Game (1977) with Ishu Patel and Every Child (1979. Derek was also given writing credit) with Eugene Fedorenko.

Derek also did a few projects during this period that were not produced by the NFB. The best known was the wonderful opening title sequence for the PBS series, Mystery Theater (1980). PBS still uses his opening based on the style of Edward Gorey.

Some of the works produced by others while he was head of department are exceptional. Janet Perlman, who later became his wife and business partner, created The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin (1981, Oscar nomination), Why Me (1976) and Lady Fishbourne’s Complete Guide to Better Table Manners (1976). [Perlman and Lamb eventually divorced, he married Tracie Smart, but remained partners with Perlman.]

Derek left the NFB in 1982. His credits since leaving the NFB include Skyward (1984, the first stop-motion work produced for the IMAX System); a series of 40 Sports Cartoons made for TV (1986, sponsored by WWF-TV, Cologne, animators included Kaj Pindal, Jeff Hale and Zlatko Grgic), Karate Kids (1990, produced and directed for the NFB and Street Kids International) and several projects for Unicef. He also wrote a graphic novel with Janet Perlman called Penguins Behind Bars. Lamb and Perlman turned it into a half-hour TV special for Cartoon Network.

A recent project that Jeff Hale told me about was Derek’s Emmy-winning Peep and the Big Wide World, a series made for Discover Kids (Discovery Channel). Derek was the exec producer and Kaj Pindal was the creative producer. Hale says Peep is a baby chicken that Kaj created years ago. When he proposed a Peep film at the NFB there was no interest in the project. The award-winning series teaches science to pre-school kids.

Jeff said that when he and Derek were in India in 1999, he still had a great sense of humor. Derek came up with a humorous song about the British leaving India. They pitched an Indian company the idea of turning it into “a very funny animated short,” but the project remains unproduced.

You may have seen Derek recently in an Oscar-winning film. He had a featured part in Chris Landreth’s Ryan (1994).