B: February 1, 1913 in Montréal, Québec
D: October 13, 1993 in Burbank, California
In addition to his most memorable work as a director, The 2000 Year Old Man, Leo Salkin was mainly a writer and served occasionally as a producer. He started his career in 1930 as an “inbetweener” animation artist for the great Walter Lantz. He became a writer for animation 2 years later and worked on the original Oswald the Rabbit cartoons. In 1937 he joined Walt Disney and wrote stories for various cartoons into the early 1950s. Later in his career he became more involved in the production of cartoons and headed his own production company for a number of years. He served as Executive Producer and wrote some of the stories for the original Alvin animated series when The Chipmunks became popular. It has been written that his face was the inspiration for the cartoon character of Mr. Magoo and he contributed stories to the Mr. Magoo animated series in the 1950s. If this is true it is perhaps fitting that another Northernstar, Leslie Nielsen, was chosen to play the non-animated version of Mr. Magoo in the 1997 film. In 1983, Leo Salkin was the recipient of the Windsor McCay “Annie” Award presented by the International Animated Film Society in Hollywood. These are just some of his credits as a writer: |
Features & TV Movies: Phantasy (1942) Cold Turkey (1951) TV Series: |
