Hazel Mae Sewell (née Bounds) was an American animator, inker, and art director for Disney and the older sister of Lillian Disney.
Born on May 1, 1898; she grew up on the Nez Perce Native American Reservation in Lapwai, Idaho. Later in life, she married Glenn Omer Sewell (1893-1966), and they and their daughter, Marjorie, soon moved to Los Angeles where her husband found work. She and Lillian began working at the Walt Disney Studio as artists. In the late 1920s, Sewell divorced her husband. Shortly after, she and her daughter moved in with her sister and her new brother-in-law, Walt Disney. Because of her skills and diligence, Walt appointed her to Head of the Ink-and-Paint Department, making her the first woman to serve as a head of a division with the Disney company. She would also be one of the artists to leave Universal Pictures with Walt after lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
At the new studio, Sewell was responsible for establishing new techniques used in the process of creating animations as well as hiring and training new artists in her department. Additionally, Sewell established training classes for artists at the studio to refine their inking and painting skills. Disney animator Ward Kimball, once recalled, “Those inkers had to be really good, they weren’t just tracing animators’ drawings, they had to get the feeling of the animators’ pencil lines too.”
By the mid-1930s, Sewell and her department inked and painted the majority of the Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly Symphonies. Sewell would become an art director for Walt's, at the time, most ambitious project, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. During this time, she began seeing William Cottrell and married him in 1938. In May of that year, Sewell resigned after eleven years due to lack of appreciation. Despite leaving the company, she accompanied him to Latin America in 1941 as a part of Walt’s goodwill tour of the region. The traveling party aptly dubbed themselves “El Grupo.” This tour would inspire and produce the package films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.
She died in Los Angeles in 1975.
Filmography[]
| Year | Film | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1928 | Plane Crazy | ink artist (uncredited) |
| 1930 | Fiddling Around | inker (uncredited) |
| 1937 | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | art director |
| 1942 | Bambi | animator (uncredited) |
Gallery[]
