Don DaGradi

Donald Da Gradi, known as Don DaGradi, was an American cartoonist and screenwriter born March 1, 1911, in New York City and died August 4, 1991, in Friday Harbor, Washington. He began his career at Disney Studios in the mid-1930s as a set painter and writer for short films. Appointed art director... More

Donald Da Gradi, known as Don DaGradi, was an American cartoonist and screenwriter born March 1, 1911, in New York City and died August 4, 1991, in Friday Harbor, Washington. He began his career at Disney Studios in the mid-1930s as a set painter and writer for short films. Appointed art director on Dumbo (1941), he went on to design the characters from The Three Caballeros (1942) to The Cocktail Song (1946), then the styling of The Toad and the Schoolmaster (1949) to Peter Pan (1953), and supervised the graphic design of Sleeping Beauty (1959). Starting with Lady and the Tramp (1955), he became one of the studio's leading writers, both for animated films and live-action films such as Pollyanna (1960), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Son of Flubber (1963), Ladybug (1969), and The Teenage Witch (1971), most of which he worked with Bill Walsh, and Mary Poppins (1964), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay with Walsh. He retired in 1970 and was named a Disney Legend in 1991.