James Nelson Algar was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He received the Disney Legends award in 1998.
Algar was born in California and studied at Stanford where he developed his skills as a cartoonist by drawing for the university's satirical magazine "The Chaparral". He joined Disney in 1934 initially as animator before becoming a director. He also directed the classic "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Fantasia, as well as several sequences of Bambi.
Algar was one of several key personnel to whom Walt Disney delegated higher executive functions. During the 1950s, he assumed the mantle of chief writer/director for Disney's True-Life Adventures series, turning out Oscar-winning documentaries, such as The Living Desert and The Vanishing Prairie. He also directed the Oscar-winning documentary White Wilderness, which contains a scene that supposedly depicts a mass lemming migration, and ends with the lemmings leaping into the Arctic Ocean which caused some controversy over animals right and misinformation.
He retired in 1977 and died in 1998.
Filmography[]
- Servants' Entrance (1934 animator - uncredited)
- Broken Toys (Short) (1935 animator - uncredited)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 - animator)
- Fantasia (1940 - director: segment The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
- Bambi (1942 - sequence director)
- Four Methods of Flush Riveting (1942 - director)
- Victory Through Air Power (1943 - director)
- Something You Didn't Eat (1945 - director)
- Health for the Americas: Cleanliness Brings Health (1945 - director)
- Tuberculosis (1945 - director, writer - uncredited)
- Seal Island (1948 - director)
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949 - director: The Wind in the Willows segment)
- In Beaver Valley (1950 - director)
- Nature's Half Acre (1951 - director, writer)
- The Olympic Elk (1952 - director, writer)
- Bear Country (1953 - director, writer)
- Prowlers of the Everglades (1953 - director, writer)
- The Alaskan Eskimo (1953 - director)
- The Living Desert (1953 - director, writer)
- The Vanishing Prairie (1954 - director, writer)
- The Magical World of Disney (1954-1978 - director, producer, writer)
- The African Lion (1955 - director, writer)
- Secrets of Life (1956 - director, writer)
- White Wilderness (1958 - director and writer)
- Grand Canyon (1959 - director)
- Ten Who Dared (1960 - associate producer)
- Jungle Cat (1960 - director, writer)
- The Legend of Lobo (1962 - producer, director, and writer)
- The Incredible Journey (1963 - writer, co-producer)
- The Gnome-Mobile (1967 - co-producer)
- Rascal (1969 - producer)
- Project Florida (1971 - producer, writer)
- Run, Cougar, Run (1972 - producer)
- Carlo, the Sierra Coyote (1974 - director, producer)
- Return of the Big Cat (1974 - producer)
- Animals of the South American Jungle (1974 director, writer - uncredited)
- Two Against the Arctic (1974 - writer)
- The Boy Who Talked to Badgers (1975 - producer)
- Fantasia 2000 (1999 - director: segment The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
Gallery[]
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page James Algar. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. Text from Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. |