Early Life and The Disney Years
Bluth was born in El Paso, Texas, the son of Emaline (née Pratt) and Virgil Ronceal Bluth. His great-grandfather was Latter Day Saint leader Helaman Pratt, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney is his (half) second cousin. He is of English, Scottish and German descent. At the age of six his family moved to Payson, Utah where he lived on a family farm. In 1954 at the age of 17 his family moved to Santa Monica, California, where he attended his final year of high school. Bluth attended Brigham Young University in Utah for one year and after got a job at The Walt Disney Company. He started in 1955 as an assistant to John Lounsbery for Sleeping Beauty. In 1957 Bluth left Disney only two years after being hired. Afterwards Bluth spent two-and-a-half years in Argentina on a mission for the LDS Church. He returned to the United States where he opened the Bluth Brothers Theater along with his younger brother Fred, though he occasionally worked with Disney. Bluth returned to college where he got a degree in English Literature from Brigham Young. Bluth returned to animation business and joined Filmation in 1967 where he worked on layouts for The Archies and other projects. He returned full-time to Disney in 1971 where he worked on Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, The Rescuers and directing animation on Pete's Dragon. His last involvement with Disney was the 1978 short The Small One. Then he went on to make and produce his first short, Banjo the Woodpile Cat (1979), which takes place in his hometown Payson, Utah during the 1940s as Banjo travels to Salt Lake City to find the urban world.
Read more about this topic: Don Bluth
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or years:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)
“We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)