Bill Melendez, 1916-2008 - Page 2
Melendez was an active participant in the bitterly fought strike that led to the unionization of the Disney artists in 1941, after which he moved to Schlesinger Cartoons, animating Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other classic Warner Bros. characters.
In 1948, Melendez joined United Productions of America and was delighted by the company's innovative approach to animation. "The animation we were doing was not limited, but stylized," he recalled in a 1986 interview. "When you analyze Chaplin's shorts, you realize people don't move that way — he stylized his movements. We were going to do the same thing for animation. We were going to animate the work of Cobean, Steinberg — all the great cartoonists of the moment — and move them as the designs dictated."
After animating numerous UPA shorts, including the Oscar-winning "Gerald McBoing-Boing" (1951), Melendez served as a director and producer on more than 1,000 commercials for UPA, Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Productions. In 1959, he directed the first animation of the "Peanuts" characters for a series of commercials advertising the Ford Falcon.
He was married for sixty-eight years (yes, really! In a row! To the same woman!) to his wife Helen and had two sons, six grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.
This makes me very sad, as sad as I was when Charles Schulz died. Bill was truly an icon in the business...they don't make them like this any more. This is the third memorial post I've made this week...it seems to come in threes, so maybe it's done for a while.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.
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