Burny Mattinson, Animator, Director, and Disney’s Longest-Serving Employee, Dies at 87

Burny Mattinson, an animator who was the Walt Disney Co.’s longest-serving “cast member” and helped bring to life many of the studio’s most beloved classics, including Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and The Lion King, died Monday, the company announced. He was 87.

In a press release attributing the death to a short illness, Disney said that Mattinson had been set to receive his 70th anniversary service award (“the first ever”) in June. At the time of his death, he was still working full-time at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a story consultant and mentor, according to the company.

“Burny’s artistry, generosity, and love of Disney Animation and the generations of storytellers that have come through our doors, for seven decades, has made us better—better artists, better technologists, and better collaborators,” said Jennifer Lee, Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer. “All of us who have had the honor to know him and learn from him will ensure his legacy carries on.”

Mattinson arguably made his mark on Disney most profoundly in the 1980s, when he was handed the reins to 1983’s classic short Mickey’s Christmas Carol, going on to help produce and co-direct hidden gem The Great Mouse Detective several years later.

But it was decades prior that the creative spark that would define and transform Mattinson’s life was first instilled. Born in 1935, the legend goes that Mattinson was 6 years old when his mother took him to see Pinocchio. “Ever since I saw that film, this was my dream—to work in this business,” Mattinson later recalled, according to the company’s press release. “So, I worked every day, drawing.”

Mattinson graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1953, and was promptly dropped off at Disney’s Burbank gates by his mother. Landing a job in the studio’s mail room, it was all of six months before the teenager wedged his way into working on Lady and the Tramp as an in-betweener, drawing the intermediate frames between key poses.

After Lady and the Tramp, Mattinson lent his pen to the creation of more beloved films like Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians, serving as an assistant animator under the watchful eye of Marc Davis, one of Disney’s famed Nine Old Men. Another legendary mentor was Eric Larson, another one of the Nine under whom Mattinson labored for more than a decade on projects like The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats.

Mattinson had proved his mettle by the 1970s, and bounced from classic to classic, served as an animator in his own right on films like Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too, Pete’s Dragon, The Fox and the Hound, and The Rescuers. In the ‘90s, during Disney’s renaissance, he worked as a storyboarding artist on The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Beauty and the Beast‌.

“Burny was the Renaissance man of Disney Animation,” said Disney animator and friend Eric Goldberg. “He literally did everything that could be done at the studio.”

Just after the turn of the century, Mattinson reflected, “I mean, 50 years is a long time, but I still feel like that 18-year-old kid that came here back in ’53, you know? I never feel like I’ve gotten old.” A few years later, in 2008, he was named a Disney Legend, an official company title. In 2018, he broke the longevity record previously held by fellow company lifer John Hench, who’d served just over 64 years.

“One of the things that I found when I first started here, and it has never changed, is that sense of the anticipation of what’s going to happen here at the studio the next day,” Mattinson said at that ceremony. “I could hardly wait to get here and... there was always something that was remarkable that happened and you felt a part of it.”

Mattinson is survived by his wife, Ellen Siirola; his son, Brett Mattinson; his daughter, Genny; and four grandchildren, according to Disney.

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