Born: Maurice James Noble
Birthday: May 1, 1911
Location: Spooner Township, MN, U.S.
Nationality: American
Alma mater: Chouinard Art Institute
Occupation: Director, Layout Artist, Background Artist
Years active: 1934–2001
Died: May 18, 2001

Maurice James Noble was born in Spooner Township, Minnesota on May 1, 1911 and grew up in New Mexico briefly before moving to Southern California at an early age. In 1930, Noble enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and was awarded one of the school’s very first full-time scholarships. Maurice flourished at the Institute and displayed his talent in its first one-man watercolors showing. Unfortunately, his studies were cut short by the financial strains of the Great Depression, forcing him to leave Chouinard in his second year to design a prominent department store’s displays in order to support his family.

Noble was hired away from Robinson’s department store in 1934 by Walt Disney Studios for an 11% increase in salary. At Disney’s, he painted watercolor backgrounds for Silly Symphonies shorts like Elmer Elephant, The Country Cousin, Woodland Cafe, The Old Mill, and Wynken, Blynken and Nod, before he started on their first feature-length animated film, Snow White.

After painting backgrounds for Pinocchio and the Rite of Spring segment in Fantasia, Maurice was tasked with story development for the Dance of the Hours segment. He performed color coordination and character design for the classic Dumbo on the famous pink elephant sequence before working on Bambi.

Noble joined the Disney animators’ strike in 1941. When the strike was settled five weeks later, he returned to work to find his office moved into a former broom closet and he received no assignments. After about three weeks, Maurice was laid off for lack of work.

Pearl Harbor was bombed a few weeks later, and Maurice enlisted in the U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps at Fort Fox in Los Angeles. There he helped produce propaganda and hygiene booklets, posters, and fliers, as well as maps for military films. He was eventually assigned under Major Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) whose film unit did the writing, storyboards, and background designs for the U.S. Army’s Private Snafu cartoons.

At war’s end, Noble was discharged from the Army and suddenly unemployed again. Living at home with his mother, he picked up freelance work when he could before taking a full-time job in St. Louis for a company making film strips for clients like the Lutheran Church.

Maurice packed up and returned to Hollywood in 1951 when Warner Bros. hired him to be Chuck Jones’ layout artist. Rabbit Seasoning was Noble’s first animated short on Jones’ crew, and he’d go on to create designs and layouts for some of the team’s greatest films like Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century, What’s Opera, Doc?, Bully for Bugs, Robin Hood Daffy, From A to Z-Z-Z-Z, High Note, and the Roadrunner cartoons.

Noble worked on more than 60 cartoons with Jones over the following decade, gradually taking on more responsibility in the productions beyond just his layouts. This earned him co-director credits for several of their films.

The decade of work with Jones at Warner’s had a short break when Maurice left over a pay dispute with Eddie Seltzer in early 1953; a time that coincided with Warner Bros. temporarily shuttering the animation studio. Noble went to John Sutherland Productions making commercial projects and industrial films like It’s Everybody’s Business, Rhapsody of Steel, Gateways to the Mind. He bounced back and forth between Sutherland’s, Warner’s, and St. Louis for a time until finally landing at Warner Bros. in 1959; four years before The studio would close their animation unit.

In 1963 he followed Chuck to Tower 12 Productions; a company destined to become MGM’s animation unit. Together, they produced MGM’s Tom and Jerry shorts and the animated segments of The Incredible Mr. Limpet. Maurice co-directed the Oscar-winnings short The Dot and the Line and designed the animated feature The Phantom Tollbooth.

Through MGM, Noble was reunited with Ted Geisel to provide designs for How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and both design and layout work for Horton Hears a Who! They’d collaborate again on DePatie-Freleng studios’ The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, and Dr. Seuss on the Loose.

Maurice entered into semi-retirement throughout the late 1970s and ‘80s to focus on his fine art work and create limited-edition serigraphs. In 1987, he received a lifetime achievement Annie Award from the International Animation Society, ASIFA/Hollywood for his 50 years of contributions to the animation industry.

Noble returned to work in 1989 to develop Steven Spielberg’s Tiny Toon Adventures, writing and designing the Duck Dodgers Jr. episode of The Return of the Acme Acres Zone. He was named a Disney’s Living Legend in 1993 and reunited with Jones to serve as art director for Chariots of Fur short and worked as color consultant on various other productions, like Pullet Surprise.

He moved onto Turner Feature Animation where he worked on Cats Don’t Dance. Noble also received a Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Annie Award from ASIFA-Hollywood in 1995.
Maurice also began mentoring young artists while at Chuck Jones Film Productions. Besides consultation work for animation studios, he engaged in lecturing young animation artists and designers at Walt Disney Studios, Pixar, DreamWorks SKG, Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network.

He consulted with artists for Disney’s Lilo & Stitch; which marked the studio’s first use watercolor backgrounds in half a century.

Maurice Noble passed away on May 18, 2001, at his home in La Crescenta, California, shortly after his 90th birthday.