Don Lusk
American animator and director

Donald Ross "Don" Lusk (October 28, 1913 – December 30, 2018) was an American animator and director.
Lusk joined Walt Disney Productions in 1933 and remained there until 1960, animating on most of the studio's features of the period, among them Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He interrupted that work to serve in the United States Marine Corps animation unit during World War II.
After leaving Disney he worked briefly for Walter Lantz Productions and then moved into direction, working on the Peanuts television specials for Bill Melendez and, from 1961, at Hanna-Barbera, where he directed episodes of series including The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo and The Smurfs. He received the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in 2014 and, by the time of his death at 105, was the last surviving animator from Disney's golden age.
Early life
Donald Ross Lusk was born on October 28, 1913, in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles, California to Perceval Knox Lusk and Louise Opie Ross Parrish, who were married in 1908 in California. He served in the United States Marine Corps for three years, during World War II, in its newly created Animation Unit.
Career
Lusk was hired by The Walt Disney Company in 1933 as an Inbetweener. His first film as an animator was 1938's Ferdinand the Bull adapted from 1936's The Story of Ferdinand by author Munro Leaf. He worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia (The Nutcracker Suite and The Pastoral Symphony Segments), Bambi, Song of the South, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
“Don Lusk” enters the record as american animator and director. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lusk, American and animator can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Don Lusk” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lusk, American and animator provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3035823. VIAF identifies the subject as 66658748. The Library of Congress control number is no92009154. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2018, 1933 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Don Lusk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.