Phyllis Zane Bounds was an American producer and inker, who was the niece of Walt Disney's wife Lillian and Hazel Sewell. Well-known for being hard-working, stubborn, and opinionated; her entire life was entwined with Disney and animation in some way through her four marriages.
Bounds was born in 1919 in Spokane, Washington to Lillian's brother Wade and his wife Daise. She was hired by Walt as an inker in the animation department despite pleas from her aunts for being unreliable. During her tenure, she worked on Dumbo, supplied story art, and was briefly married studio gas station attendant Thomas Celestin Hauret.
In the 1940s, she began an affair with glamor photographer George Hurrell while she was posing for him and moved in with him. After he divorced his wife, Katherine Cuddy, they married in March 1943 and had three children. They moved to New York to continue his photography work. For the next six years, he did a combination of editorial and advertising work as well as early versions of commercials and producing his own television show about still camera techniques on a local New York television station but it only lasted a few episodes.
In 1950, she reconnected with her Uncle Walt, who had expressed interest into getting into television. Hurrell negotiated with Roy O. Disney, Gunther Lessing, and Paul Pease to create Hurrell Productions which would function on creating commercials for various brands, such as Jell-O and Peter Pan peanut butter, which all used Disney characters as well as the in-house talent. Bounds was put in charge of the established Disney Commercial Division while Hurrell remained in New York with other ventures before relocating to Los Angeles. However, frequent arguments with Walt ended his partnership with the studio and his marriage to Phyllis who still retained control over Hurrell Productions until its closure in 1959.
She remarried in 1958 to animator David Detiege, as the production studio was gearing down its work. They both produced a 1959 record album, Fess Parker in Fancy Feathers, on Parker's Cascade label. She contributed to his film The Man From Button Willow as a producer and uncredited lyricist but they divorced shortly after the film’s release in 1965. Later, following Walt's death, she inherited 2.5% of his fortune alongside his immediate family, institutions, and two other nieces (Dorothy Pruder and Marjorie Davis).[1][2]
Later, she formally met Milt Kahl through Marc and Alice Davis. They dated for about a year and married on February 14, 1968. However, Bounds' drinking and Kahl’s fiery temper broke down the marriage and they officially divorced on January 31st, 1978. By this time, Bounds was financially well off and owned two buildings on the corner of Melrose Place. One was rented to Le Restaurant and the other was the Bounds Gallery which sold posters and graphics by modern artists.
Bounds was living in a mansion in Pacific Heights in San Francisco at the time she died in 1983.
Trivia[]
- Kahl used her likeness and style as the basis for the design for Madame Medusa in The Rescuers. Animator Jane Baer, who knew the couple told historian John Canemaker, "Phyllis wore boots. Medusa wore the same boots. In that scene where (Medusa's) pulling off the eyelashes, I said, 'That's Phyllis!' You just knew."
References[]
External links[]
Phyllis Bounds on IMDb- The Animated Phyllis Bounds
- Who was Phyllis Bound?
- Disney History: George Hurrell
