Frank and Ollie
1995 film directed by Theodore Thomas
Frank and Ollie is a 1995 documentary film about the life and careers of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two chief animators who had worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios from its early years until their retirement in the late 1970s.
It was directed, produced and written by Theodore Thomas, Frank Thomas' son. A number of other important figures in the animation business are also interviewed about Frank and Ollie's influence of modern animation, and about their personal friendship.
Summary
The film primarily consists of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's anecdotes of their careers as animators during their long tenure at Walt Disney Studios, beginning with their hiring a couple of years before the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They talk about the successes and difficulties of the Walt Disney studios throughout their careers, including the production of Disney's early works such as Pinocchio and Fantasia, decrease in business due to World War II, the unexpected death of Walt Disney in 1966, and the importance of The Jungle Book's success in 1967. These anecdotes are punctuated by archival footage from various Disney films, as well as interviews with contemporary Disney animators, animation historians, and interviews with Frank and Ollie's wives. Footage of Frank and Ollie's daily lives at their nearby homes in La Cañada Flintridge, California is also featured.
Periodically in the film, Frank or Ollie (usually Ollie) will act out or describe a scene from a Disney film that they animated, and then show the scene from the film. This demonstrates the importance of acting in animation. Several of their anecdotes were also about how other animators did their scenes.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5490580. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1966 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank and Ollie” 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.