Born: Leslie James Clark
Birthday: November 17, 1907
Location: Ogden, UT, U.S.
Occupation: Animator, Director
Years active: 1927–1975
Died: September 12, 1979

Les Clark was born in Ogden, Utah and was raised in Salt Lake City and Twin Falls, Idaho before his family finally moved to Los Angeles. As the eldest of twelve children, he worked from an early age to help support his family since his father, a carpenter, had suffered a back injury. While in high school, Les worked at an ice cream shop close to the Walt Disney Studio. Walt and Roy Disney visited the shop often, and Walt complimented Les once on his lettering job on the menus.

After two years, as he was about to graduate high school in 1927, Clark asked Walt for a job. Walt liked the line quality of Les’s drawings and offered him a temporary position starting the following Monday. Clark graduated from high school on Thursday and reported to work at the Walt Disney Studio the following Monday.

Les began working as a camera operator and then as an ink and painter for the Alice Comedies. The young Clark was mentored by Ub Iwerks as the studio started work on the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series. The following year, the distributor of the Oswald cartoons, Charles Mintz, took control of the character and hired away nearly all of Walt’s animation staff. Clark and Iwerks were among the few to remain loyal to Disney.

Ub & Walk created the character of Mickey Mouse to replace their lost Oswald and Clark graduated to an inbetweener on Steamboat Willie. In 1929 Clark debuted as a full animator for the first Silly Symphony short, The Skeleton Dance. He animated the skeleton playing another skeleton’s ribcage like a xylophone.

When Ub Iwerks left Disney’s to form his own studio, Les filled his mentor’s vacancy; becoming the lead animator of Mickey Mouse. Clark was recognized as the Studios’ resident Mickey expert in 1935 after his animation of the character in the The Band Concert short.

As Les improved his skills, he was assigned to animate several scenes of the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He animated much of the “Silly Song” sequence. Besides three of the dwarfs dancing with Snow White, he also animated Dopey smashing his face with a cymbal, Doc’s playing of a horn, as well as Doc and Happy fleeing from Sneezy’s explosive sneeze.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Clark animated Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment of Fantasia. Les animated Mickey trying the hat on, bringing the brooms to life, dancing up the stairs, and the water vats. Additionally, He also animated the Sugar Plum Fairies of The Nutcracker Suite segment of the same film.

Next, he animated scenes of the titular Pinocchio, like when Pinocchio turns around for Geppetto’s inspection before heading of for school. Les would also animate the train to Baia in The Three Caballeros.
After working on Snow White, Les would go on to animate many of the most beloved Disney characters, including Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice, and Tinker Bell. He would later go on to become a trusted director, first as a sequence director on Sleeping Beauty, and then as a director on informational shorts such as Donald in Mathmagic Land.

Les managed the animated characters interacting with Uncle Remus in Song of the South’s Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah number. He followed up with animated the Singing Harp for the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment in Fun and Fancy Free and a year later with the bumblebee of the Bumble Boogie segment of Melody Time.

Clark shared animation duties with Eric Larson and Marc Davis for the title character of Cinderella. He animated an overgrowing Alice at the White Rabbit’s house for Alice in Wonderland, and then teamed up with Davis again for Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. In 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, Les animated the scenes of Lady as a puppy.

Walt approached him to direct in 1940, but Les had politely refused, wishing to remain an animator. After Lady and the Tramp however, Les accepted the title of director and directed and animated Tinker Bell’s opening titles of the Disneyland television program. He also directed the Five Senses animated inserts of Jiminy Cricket for The Mickey Mouse Club. Clark’s first directorial feature film was Sleeping Beauty, where he directed the opening scene of the townspeople’s arrival at the castle for Aurora’s christening. He directed more educational animated shorts, like the pool table sequence in Donald in Mathmagic Land. His final project was Man, Monsters and Mysteries before retiring from Disney on September 30, 1975.

It should be noted, in his pursuit in constant improve of his craft, Les attended art school the entire time he worked at the Studios. Clark believed that an artist never stops learning.