Maurice Noble; Designer Behind Disney and Warner Animation

Maurice Noble, one of the most respected designers and layout artists in the history of American animation, has died. He was 91.

Noble died Friday at his home in La Crescenta.

As a layout artist and designer, first at Disney and later at Warner Bros., Noble helped create and shape the look of some of their best-known and most loved animated features and shorts. He worked with such noted directors as four-time Oscar winner Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. and Disney’s Dave Hand and Ben Sharpsteen to give animated cartoon characters a logical space on the screen in which to act.

He used color and form the way a live-action set designer would to emphasize the action on the screen.

At Disney he worked on the classics “The Old Mill,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia,” “Dumbo” and “Bambi.” His best known Warner Bros. work included “Bully for Bugs,” “Robin Hood Daffy,” “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Duck Amuck.”

Each of the Disney films presented special challenges. For “Snow White,” Noble and his fellow artists strove to capture the look of 19th century German storybooks. “Pinocchio” demanded radical shifts in mood, from the innocent charm of Geppetto’s workshop to the sinister undertones of Pleasure Island. Noble was able to give his imagination freer rein in the brightly colored, metamorphic nightmare set to “Pink Elephants on Parade” in “Dumbo.” But Disney insisted on a greater realism in his pre-war features than the freewheeling cartoon shorts Noble would design at Warner Bros. after World War II.

When he discussed his work, Noble emphasized the importance of finding colors and designs that fit the tone and subject of each film: “For ‘Robin Hood Daffy,’ I hit on a free, fun style to support the free and fun slapstick quality of the film. I think one of the great moments of animation is when Daffy is sitting on Porky’s lap, and they’re laughing and laughing and laughing, and all of a sudden Daffy says, ‘How jolly can you get?’ ”

Born in Spooner, Minn., in 1910, Noble moved to California at an early age and studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, which is now the California Institute of the Arts. After a stint in advertising, he was hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1935, where he stayed until 1941.

He spent World War II in the Army Signal Corps, working on films for the military. The “Private Snafu” cartoon series for the Army-Navy Screen Magazine introduced him to his future associates, Jones and Theodor Geisel, who became known as Dr. Seuss. Noble joined Jones’ unit at Warner Bros. shortly after he was discharged, and the two worked together off and on for nearly 50 years.

For the Road Runner-Wile E. Coyote cartoons, which he worked on with Jones at Warner Bros., Noble designed boldly minimal deserts in tans and bright oranges. Jones’ Wagnerian send-up “What’s Opera, Doc?” featured extravagantly stylized mountains, trees and pavilions that spoofed “Fantasia.” Noble created a bizarre city of clear plastic ramps and platforms, guarded by electronic eyes with human pupils and eyelashes, for the science fiction satire “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century.”

Jones explained their working relationship:

“I would call Maurice in, go over the storyboard with him and ask for inspirational sketches,” he said in an interview Monday. “He’d come up with ideas like the electronic eye and the evaporator in ‘Duck Dodgers.’ He would know exactly where the characters were going to be in a scene and he would build a set, just as you would for a play.

“Maurice understood that the character’s performance is the key to the success of a scene and would work to enhance that performance.”

After Warner Bros. closed its cartoon studio in 1964, Noble continued his association with Jones. They revived the “Tom and Jerry” series for MGM and made a string of award-winning television specials based on Dr. Seuss books, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (1966), “The Cat in the Hat” (1971) and “Horton Hears a Who” (1978). Noble and Jones co-directed the Oscar-winning short “The Dot and the Line” (1965).

Noble went into semi-retirement during the ‘70s and ‘80s and devoted most of his time to creating limited-edition serigraphs. He returned to the cartoon industry in the ‘90s, when he did preliminary sketches for “Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures” and art direction for Jones’ short “Chariots of Fur” (1994). He received an Annie Award from the international animation society, ASIFA/Hollywood, in 1987, and Disney’s Living Legend award in 1993.

In commenting on his work in a 1991 interview, Noble said:

“I am a great believer in the idea that color and visual impact have a lot to do with the response of the audience. I would play for dramatic impact in both design and color, in terms of putting over a story point. You look around and say, ‘Gee, what’s this all about, and does it feel right for this given picture?’ Then you design from that standpoint. . . . It was a conscious seeking after something that I thought would support the mood of a picture.”

A popular lecturer, Noble took special pride in mentoring young animation designers, including artists now at the Walt Disney Studios, Pixar, DreamWorks SKG, Warner Bros. and the Cartoon Network. But he exerted his greatest influence through the excellence of his work, which animation artists continue to study.

Brad Bird, director of the critically acclaimed animated feature “The Iron Giant,” said, “The Warner Bros. cartoons, which were always the funniest animated films, had a marvelous sense of style and caricature when it came to design of their characters, but that style didn’t always translate to the whole cartoon. Maurice gave a sense of style and elegance to the films that stands out to this day. His sense of design was not only sophisticated and elegant, it was witty. The world he created in ‘Hare-Way to the Stars’ is an example of great design--and it’s really funny. Something we don’t see often enough in animation is the idea that humor doesn’t have to be confined to the characters.”

Noble’s complete filmography can be found on the Web at https://www.nobletales.com.

Noble is survived by his wife, Marjorie, two children and one grandson. A memorial service is planned for June.

Solomon, a frequent contributor to Calendar, is the author of “The History of Animation: Enchanted Drawings,” which was the first film book to be nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award.