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Born: José Cuauhtémoc Meléndez
Birthday: November 15, 1916
Location: Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico
Alma mater: Chouinard Art Institute
Occupation: Director, Producer, Animator
Years active: 1935–2006
Died: September 2, 2008
Bill Melendez was born in Hermosillo, Mexico. His family moved first to Arizona in 1928 and then onto Los Angeles in the early 1930s. There, Melendez trained at the Chouinard Art Studio.
Inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bill earned a spot at Disney in 1938 as an assistant animator to Hawley Pratt. He worked on feature films Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi and also as an animator for a Donald Duck short, The Flying Jalopy.
In the aftermath of the 1941 Disney strike, Melendez was hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions (which would become Warner Bros. Cartoons) for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. He worked in Bob Clampett’s unit, first as Rod Scribner’s assistant animator, and then as a full animator. In 1949, when the number of animation units at Warner Bros. was downsized, Melendez was moved to Robert McKimson’s unit, but after animating a few shorts, Bill was fired by producer Edward Selzer.
Melendez moved on to UPA, where he animated on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950). While there he also produced and directed thousands of television commercials for UPA, John Sutherland Productions and Playhouse Pictures.
While at UPA, Melendez began doing work for the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, whose client list included Ford Motor Co. The auto manufacturer was interested in using PEANUTS characters to sell its cars on television. Bill prepared his animation work and showed it to PEANUTS creator Charles M. Schulz in 1959. Melendez became the only artist Schulz personally authorized to animate the characters.
In 1963, Melendez founding his own studio, Bill Melendez Productions in the basement of his Hollywood home.
Bill Melendez animated the “Peanuts” productions: 63 half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, voicing Snoopy himself. He recorded gibberish and then sped it up to give Snoopy language without having to use specific words.
Melendez also animated “Garfield on the Town,” “Cathy,” “Babar Comes to America,” and “The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe.”
Over the course of his career, Melendez amassed 17 Emmy Award nominations and eight Emmy wins, an Oscar nomination, two Peabody Awards, one Clio, three National Cartoonist Society Awards, and more than 150 Advertising Awards. Bill was also a faculty member at the University of Southern California’s Cinema Arts Department.
Bill Melendez Productions, Inc., its sister studio Melendez Films in London and Sopwith Productions (Melendez’s art distribution unit) continued to animate, direct, and produce feature films and commercials under Bill’s son, Steven C. Melendez.
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