Richard Edmund Williams ( Lane; March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian and British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)—for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993).
His work on the short film A Christmas Carol (1971) earned him his first Academy Award. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field include the title sequences for What's New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.
In 2002, he published The Animator's Survival Kit, an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned into a 16-DVD box set as well as an iOS app. From 2008, he worked as an artist in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and in 2015, he received both Oscar and BAFTA nominations in the best animated short category for his short film Prologue.
Early life and education Williams was born as Richard Edmund Lane in Toronto, Ontario, the only son of the commercial illustrator Kathleen "Kay" Bell (1909–1998) and Leslie Lane (1905–1993), a London-born painter and photographic retoucher. Lane left when Williams was a baby, and he was adopted by his stepfather, Kenneth D. C. Williams (1910–2003),Obituary, The Times, 19 August 2019. an advertising executive who worked for Brigdens, a printing and design company in Toronto.
Williams grew up on Golfdale Road, a suburban street in Toronto, where he and his childhood friend Martin Hunter put on magic shows and comedy acts for the local neighbourhood: "We collected $16.25, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice".Hunter, Martin, Young Hunting – a memoir, ECW Press, Toronto (2008), 40 Williams' mother Kay was an accomplished illustrator whose work was inspired by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Kay read her son the stories of the Arabian Nights, which would later inspire his magnum opus The Thief and the Cobbler. "Kay introduced us to The Thief of Baghdad with its flying carpets, magical horses and wicked viziers".Hunter, Martin, Young Hunting – a memoir, ECW Press, Toronto (2008), 38 At the age of five, Kay took her son to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a film which made a "tremendous impression" on him. Later he would quote his mother as saying to him, "You saw ‘Snow White’ when you were 5, and you were never the same."
Williams was educated at the Northern Secondary School, Toronto, then known as the Northern Technical School. One of his classmates, Lars Thompson, recalled: "Under the name of Ivan Yurpee, [Dick] played a trumpet in a band of fellow zanies. In class, he would sketch our teachers with an animator's sure touch, and without detection".I Remember Richard Williams, Lars Thompson, Toronto Globe & Mail, 23 August 2019
At age 15, Williams travelled to Hollywood from Toronto on a five-day bus trip, where he took the Disney studio tour three days running, each day breaking away from the guide to seek out the studio animators and being ejected from the studio lot. He was finally invited to meet the animators, who showed him how the Disney animation process worked, after his mother contacted a friend who worked for Disney.Obituary at The Guardian 20 August 2019 Retrieved 21 August 2019 "I always wanted, when I was a kid, to get to Disney. I was a clever little fellow so I took my drawings and I eventually got in. They did a story on me, and I was in there for two days, which you can imagine what it was like for a kid."Obituary of Richard Williams at Bristol Live, Georgina Stubbs and Kate Wilson, 17 August 2019 Retrieved 8 October 2019
With help from his stepfather, Williams was already earning a living as a commercial artist at age 17, creating advertisements for companies such as Dr. Ballard's Pet Food. After graduating from high school, Williams enrolled in the advertising program at the Ontario College of Art. He did not receive a diploma, however, as he changed his course of study to join the fine arts program after his third year, where he would study drawing under the artist Eric Freifeld.
Career 1950s: Ibiza, London and The Little Island
In 1953, Williams saw an exhibition of paintings by Rembrandt and was "moved to tears". For a time, he "lost all interest in animation".Obituary at The Independent Retrieved 15 October 2019 He left Canada and settled in Ibiza, where he lived for two years and became a painter, finding inspiration in the clowns and performers at a local circus. These sketches would eventually become the short film Circus Drawings, completed over 50 years later, in 2010. While in Ibiza, Williams played in a jazz band; his passion for the cornet would be an enduring one, and he would lead several bands over the years, inspired by the music of Bix Beiderbecke.
In Ibiza, Williams began to draw storyboards for an animated film about three misguided idealists. In 1955, Williams left Ibiza and moved to England, where he began working at fellow Canadian George Dunning's company, T.V. Cartoons Ltd., working mainly on television commercials. He also began developing his animated short film, The Little Island, during this period. Williams later explained that he was drawn back to the craft of animation because his "paintings were trying to move" and he "couldn't stand the idea of doing paintings for rich industrialists’ wives, and that whole art world was just repulsive as a way of life".Obituary of Richard Williams at www.bfi.org.uk 21 August 2019 Retrieved 14 October 2019
In the 1983 Thames Television documentary The Thief Who Never Gave Up, Williams credited animator Bob Godfrey with giving him his start in the business: "Bob Godfrey helped me...I worked in the basement and would do work in kind, and he would let me use the camera...[it was] a barter system".
In the mid-1950s, fellow Canadian Jacques Konig was studying at the University of London: "Dick did not play his cornet and lead his band just for the love of music, it was a significant and necessary contribution to his income. In my role as student president of the University of London's Chelsea College and Chelsea Arts School (1956–57), I booked his hard-driving traditional jazz band for many of our events, and we knew all his available cash was being used to finance his hand-drawn and highly imaginative short film".I Remember Richard Williams, Jacques Konig, Toronto Globe & Mail, 23 August 2019
In 1958, Williams completed The Little Island, the film that launched his career, telling the story of three men on a desert island; each representing a single virtue: truth, beauty, and good. The film won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film.1958 BAFTA Award results
1960s: Richard Williams Animation, film titles, and commercials
The critical and financial success of Williams's next short, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me (1962), which was narrated by Kenneth Williams, enabled him to establish his own company, Richard Williams Animation Ltd.Love Me Love Me www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 12 October 2019 He made the short film A Lecture on Man that same year.A Lecture on Man at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 13 October 2019 Richard Williams Animation Ltd. eventually completed over 2,500 TV commercials, and won numerous awards, at its home at 13 Soho Square in Soho, London.
In 1965, he made the short film The Dermis Probe,The Dermis Probe at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 12 October 2019 based on on Idries Shah's retelling of the Blind men and the elephant, and also animated the title sequences to What's New Pussycat? (1965). In 1966, he animated the titles for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Also in 1966 a television documentary, The Creative Person, was made about his life and work. In 1967, he completed the short film Sailor and the Devil, mainly animated by the illustrator Errol Le Cain,Sailor and the Devil at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 Oct 2019 and also animated the title sequence for Casino Royale.
In 1968 his studio won accolades for the animated segments in Tony Richardson's epic feature film about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968),Charge of the Light Brigade www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 Oct 2019 which Williams described as "the best job I ever had". Film critic Vincent Canby described Williams' work as “marvellous animated line drawings, done in the style of patriotic mid-19th-century cartoons".
In the mid-1960s, Williams began work on the personal project that he intended to be “the best animated feature ever”, based on the tales of Mulla Nasrudin, and initially titled Nasrudin. The project evolved over time and in 1973 he would settle on a new story and title, The Thief and the Cobbler.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Williams hired and brought to London a number of the great Hollywood animators from the 1930s, elderly men who were by then nearing retirement. These included Art Babbitt (Goofy), Grim Natwick (Betty Boop), and Ken Harris (Wile E. Coyote). Babbitt, in particular, gave masterclasses at Williams' studio at 13 Soho Square, training a new generation of animators.
Following the 1967 release of Disney's The Jungle Book, Williams first met master animator Milt Kahl, with whom he would become friends. Kahl had animated Shere Khan, the tiger, and Williams knelt down to polish his shoes. But Kahl said to him: “You can stop cleaning my shoes because you draw better than I do; but then you can clean them some more because you can't animate.”
TV commercials provided Richard Williams Animation with its main source of income. Although Williams despised the form, director Clive Donner persuaded him to raise his game. Following a successful commercial for Guinness beer, set in London's Royal Albert Hall, which won multiple awards, William's studio became well known for commercials, bringing characters such as Cresta Bear to life.
1970s: A Christmas Carol and The Pink Panther In 1971, Williams directed the Academy Award-winning A Christmas Carol, an animated adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella. The design of the film was based upon the original 1843 engravings. A Christmas Carol was broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
In around 1973, Williams fell out with his business partners over the feature film Nasruddin, and began to re-imagine the story, which soon morphed into a new tale about a mute thief who is obsessed with stealing three golden balls which protect an ancient city from invasion. Williams animated many of the scenes himself, and spent years perfecting a single scene in which the villainous vizier ZigZag shuffles a deck of cards.
In 1975, Williams animated the title credits for Blake Edwards' The Return of the Pink Panther,Return of the Pink Panther at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 23 August 2019 and in 1976 his studio completed the animated credits for The Pink Panther Strikes Again.The Pink Panther Strikes Again at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 October 2019 Art Babbitt, who was working for Williams at the time, described his employer's talent: "He's a director, designer, animator, and has a good layman's knowledge of music. He's a dreamer. He has more to learn as far as animation is concerned, but God, he can draw like a bastard".Letter to The Guardian, 9 October 2019, from Quentin Falk
In 1976, Williams did the illustrations for Idries Shah's English translation of the stories of Nasrudin, titled The Exploits of the Incomparable Mullah Nasruddin.The Exploits of the Incomparable Mullah Nasruddin by Idries Shah, Illustrated by Richard Williams. Picador (1976) ASIN: B00698X8LA Retrieved 14 October 2019