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Don Griffith

Don Griffith

Born: February 3, 1918
Died: September 30, 2005
in Butte - Montana - USA
Don was born on February 3, 1918 in Butte, Montana and moved with his mother and brother and sisters to Hollywood when he was a young boy after his father died. His mother ran a boarding house in Hollywood. When he was 19 he got a job at Disney Studios on Hyperion Street in Los Angeles as an inker. He worked his way up to layout, background and art director. When Disney Studios moved to its Burbank location Don met Katherine (Kay) Lane, a secretary at the studio, and they were married. Don worked at the studio for 52 years only taking a break to join the Merchant Marines when World War II broke out. He and the other Disney animators lived by the adage, "He who dies with the most toys wins!" Each animator's office was usually littered with multiple toys which were played with often during the day. When Walt Disney opened Cal Arts Don taught drawing classes there in the school's first few years. He retired from Disney Studio after 52 years and passed away only a few years after his retirement on February 9, 1987. He and Kay had one daughter, Dolores. Kay died on September 30, 2005. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tammy Rogers

Movies for Don Griffith...

Waking Sleeping Beauty
Title: Waking Sleeping Beauty
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 5, 2009
Type: Movie
Click for Details
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
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