John Culhane, historian of Disney animation, 81
When 17-year-old John Culhane and three friends motored west from Rockford, Ill., in 1951, it was for much the same reason as legions before them: Someone had a friend who had a friend who knew someone big in Hollywood.
In this case, the friend of a friend was Diane Disney, daughter of Mr. Culhane’s idol, Walt Disney.
To Mr. Culhane’s amazement, the connection worked. For six hours on an August Sunday, young Mr. Culhane rambled the grounds of the Disney estate with Walt himself, who advised the fledgling writer to “work for your hometown newspaper, write for your neighbors and just keep widening your circle.”
Mr. Culhane did just that, reporting for the Rockford Register-Republic, the Chicago Daily News, Newsweek and Reader’s Digest before writing acclaimed histories of animation, Disney cartoons, special effects and the circus.
Mr. Culhane, who took detailed notes on the back of a church bulletin about his meeting with Disney, died July 30 at his home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He was 81.
His death was caused by complications of cardiac failure and Alzheimer’s disease, according to an announcement from the Walt Disney Studios.
Mr. Culhane never wrote the Disney biography that he told Walt he wanted to write. But he was so well known around the studios that animators twice created characters by caricaturing him: Flying John in “Fantasia/2000” and, more famously, Mr. Snoops, a weaselly underling of the evil Medusa in “The Rescuers” (1977).
“True, he’s the villain, but it’s a kind of immortality,” Mr. Culhane told Contemporary Authors. “I’m not only on a lunch pail, I’m even on the thermos! Delighted!”
In fact, delight was an organizing principle of Mr. Culhane’s life, despite the gritty scenes he encountered as a journalist.
As a newspaper reporter, Mr. Culhane went undercover to expose a Chicago slumlord. At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, he was beaten by police. Reporting on a race riot in Milwaukee, he took cover from gunfire under a car. In the Middle East for Newsweek, he was blindfolded by Palestine Liberation Organization partisans and driven into the hills of Jordan for an interview with Yasser Arafat.
On the same trip, he delighted children at a refugee camp with his ever-present Mickey Mouse watch.
“He started singing, ‘ Heigh-ho, heigh-ho,’ and he had all these kids marching behind him,” his wife, Hind Rassam Culhane, told the Los Angeles Times. “All he had to do was show his watch and kids would sing. He carried that magic with him.”
Born Feb. 7, 1934, in Rockford, Ill., Mr. Culhane was the son of a funeral director and a teacher.
He attended St. Louis University, picked up a job on his local paper and eventually freelanced for publications including The New York Times Magazine, Saturday Review and American Film.