CULHANE, John (William) 1934-

PERSONAL:

Born February 7, 1934, in Rockford, IL; son of John William (a funeral director) and Isabel June (a teacher; maiden name, Robidoux Fissinger) Culhane; married Hind Noel Rassam (a professor of psychology), August 27, 1960; children: Michael Noel, T. H. Education: St. Louis University, B.S., 1956; Columbia University, certificate in advanced international reporting, 1966. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Global travel, the environment.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—150 Draper Lane, Apt. 3B, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522. Agent—Carl D. Brandt, Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc., 1501 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

CAREER:

St. Louis Globe Democrat, St. Louis, MO, reporter, 1955; Rockford Register-Republic, Rockford, IL, daily columnist and reporter, 1956-61; Chicago Daily News, Chicago, IL, reporter and foreign correspondent, 1962-66; Newsweek, correspondent in Chicago bureau, 1966-69, associate editor, New York, NY, 1969-71; freelance journalist, 1971-85; Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, NY, roving editor, 1985-93; Johimith Robidoux Productions, roving writer, beginning 1994. Richard Williams Animation, writer, 1973. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, clown, 1974-84; "mousetro-of-ceremonies" for Mickey Mouse's fiftieth-birthday retrospective and whistle-stop train tour across the United States, 1978; provided voice of the dragon for the animated television special The Last of the Red-Hot Dragons, 1980; coproducer of the television documentary Circus!, 1984. Disney on Film (forum on animation and fantasy filmmaking), moderator at North American college campuses, 1981; University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, senior lecturer in animation history, 1997-98; Disney Institute, artist in residence, 1999; lecturer on animated film at institutions in the United States and abroad, including School of Visual Arts, 1972, Northwestern University, 1995, New York University, 1996, 1997, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2000, Museum of Modern Art, and California Institute of the Arts; commentator for the documentary films Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece, 1991, and Frank and Ollie, 1995, and the television special The Flying Wallendas: Legends on the High Wire, 1998; public speaker. Military service: U.S. Army, member of touring entertainment unit, 1957-58; served in Europe.

MEMBER:

Writers Guild of America, Clearwater Association, Sigma Delta Chi, Alpha Sigma Nu.

AWARDS, HONORS:

First prize, Illinois Associated Press, 1959, for a profile of Carl Sandburg, 1961, for the article "A Quadriplegic Conquers," 1963, for "The New Math," and 1964, for "The Negro in Chicago"; Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award, Society of Professional Journalists, 1964, for public service in newspaper journalism, and 1968, for magazine journalism; Ford fellow, Columbia University, 1965-66; Alumni Merit Award, St. Louis University, 1982, for career as a writer and film historian; grant, Illinois Humanities Council, 1991; Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1993.

WRITINGS:

BOOKS

(With Michael K. Frith and Bonnie Johnson) The Art of the Muppets, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Special Effects in the Movies: How They Do It, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1981.

Walt Disney's Fantasia, Abrams (New York, NY), 1983.

The American Circus: An Illustrated History, Holt (New York, NY), 1990.

Disney's Aladdin: The Making of the Animated Film, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1992.

A Taz Thanksgiving, Warner Bros. Worldwide Publishing, 1994.

Fantasia 2000: Visions of Hope, foreword by Roy E. Disney, additional commentary by James Levine, Disney Editions (New York, NY), 1999.

TELEVISION

(With Shamus Culhane) Noah's Animals (animated special), National Broadcasting Co., 1974.

(With Shamus Culhane) King of the Beasts (animated special), National Broadcasting Co., 1976.

(With Shamus Culhane) The Last of the Red-Hot Dragons (animated special), National Broadcasting Co., 1980.

Backstage at Disney's (special), The Disney Channel, 1983.

Disney's Aladdin: A Whole New World, The Disney Channel, 1992.

Also coauthor of Arabian Knight, 1995. Contributed "Statue of Liberty speech" to the television special David Copperfield Vanishes the Statue of Liberty, 1983.

OTHER

The Thief and the Cobbler (feature film), 1995.

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (CD-ROM), 1998.

Contributor to books, including The Fifty Greatest Cartoons, 1994. Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, American Film, Reader's Digest, and Newsweek.

SIDELIGHTS:

As a journalist John Culhane has written extensively on American popular culture. In addition to his books, Culhane has coauthored scripts for animated television specials. In the volume Walt Disney's Fantasia, which is extensively illustrated, Culhane chronicles the development of the ground-breaking animated movie. Released in 1940, Fantasia pairs various classical music compositions with lavishly animated sequences, such as the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" (starring Mickey Mouse) by French composer Paul Dukas and "The Dance of the Hours" by Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli, a segment which features dancing hippos and crocodiles. In Walt Disney's Fantasia Culhane discusses the impact of the film on both audiences and the art of animation itself. A reviewer in Choice "enthusiastically recommended" the book "for its clarity, intelligence, thoroughness, beauty, and insight" into the making of Fantasia. In the New York Times Book Review, a critic remarked that Culhane provides "interesting insights into the combination of technical brilliance and musical naivete that Walt Disney himself brought to the project."

In the course of researching The American Circus: An Illustrated History, Culhane served as a guest clown with the celebrated Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Culhane's text is an examination of the "big top" and its performers, as well as a history of the circus's steadfast position in American popular culture since the eighteenth century. The first American circus, according to Culhane, was actually an equestrian exhibition held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1785. Over generations the circus developed into a popular three-ring attraction as clowns, exotic animals, and acrobats were incorporated into the show. The American Circus also discusses how the circus has evolved into a still-profitable enterprise—moving from tents into modern arenas—and relates the story of Irving Feld, the promoter who was instrumental in ushering the circus into the modern age. Incorporated into the narrative are accounts of such personalities as the renowned clown Emmett Kelly and lion-tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams.

"Culhane tells the reader so much about the circus that in describing the book one is virtually driven to the same verbose exudation that characterizes big-top ballyhoo," commented Richard E. Shepard in the New York Times. Shepard noted that the author "explains how the circus works, how riders do horseback somersaults, how acrobats coolly probe the limits of a handhold." In the New York Times Book Review, Arnold Aronson considered The American Circus "a loving and thorough" account, although "somewhat plodding and redundant." Jonathan Yardley stated in the Washington Post Book World that the volume "is crammed with delights and surprises… on almost every page it offers proof of how deeply the circus is ingrained in American culture."

Culhane once told CA: "Delight is the basis for all my work—or should I say all my play? In over thirty years as a journalist, I have covered murders, riots, and war, but I much prefer spending the time of my life with makers rather than destroyers. In my books, and in hundreds of articles for such periodicals as Newsweek, New York Times, Reader's Digest, and American Film, I have tried to celebrate the people and the institutions that bring delight. I once wrote seven cover stories in a row for the New York Times on the following topics: the circus, clowns, comic strips, valentines, Muppets, and the animated cartoon. Along the way, I delighted in becoming a connoisseur of gags. The New York Times even printed 'The Culhane Motif-Index and Thesaurus of Gags,' my system for classifying and connecting those humorous bits. The chief qualification is that you love to laugh.

"While gathering material for The American Circus, I frequently took time out to be a guest clown with several circuses, particularly Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. I have taken pies in the face and received resounding slaps from some of the very clowns who helped introduce me to delight when I was a child: Lou Jacobs, Emmett Kelly, Otto Griebling, and Prince Paul, to name a few. While chronicling the making of Aladdin, I sat with codirectors Ron Clements and John Musker and supervising animator Eric Goldberg as they edited the inspired improvisations of Robin Williams into the genie's supersonic riffs. What a delight!

"When I speak in public, it is usually of delightful things. I have taught and lectured on animated film from coast to coast—from the School of Visual Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and Lincoln Center in New York City to the California Institute of the Arts. I was Mousetro of Ceremonies for Mickey Mouse's fiftieth-birthday retrospective and whistle-stop train tour across the United States in 1978. In the spring of 1981, Disney on Film, a forum on animation and fantasy filmmaking in the 1980s, took me, again as master of ceremonies, on Walt Disney's own private airplane to twenty-nine colleges throughout the United States and Canada to introduce students to some of Disney's finest artists, past and present. One of those students, Ellen Woodbury, is the first woman ever to become a Disney supervising animator, on The Lion King.

"When I write profiles of people, I much prefer delightful people: Walt Disney, Frank Capra, Dolly Parton, Salvador Dali, Bucky Fuller, Carl Sandburg, Bette Davis, Jack Lemmon, Chuck Jones, Jim Henson, Gunther Gebel-Williams, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Sam Waterston, and my best friend in grade school, Harlan Farnham, who let me explore the haymow maze he built in his barn before he died of polio at the age of twelve. These are just a few of the many who have added immeasurably to the delight I take in life. Curiosity is the key to delight, I believe, and my everlasting curiosity has not gone unnoticed. I have snooped around film studios for so many years, doing research for articles and books on animation, special effects, and other aspects of filmmaking, that the Disney studio animators caricatured me in their 1977 feature The Rescuers as Mr. Snoops. True, he's the villain, but it's a kind of immortality. I'm not only on a lunch pail, I'm even on the thermos! Delighted!"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1992, p. 14-4.

Choice, April, 1984, review of Walt Disney's Fantasia, p. 1143.

New York Times, March 20, 1977; June 14, 1990, Richard E. Shepard, review of The American Circus: An Illustrated History.

New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1983, review of Walt Disney's Fantasia, p. 73; April 22, 1990, Arnold Aronson, review of The American Circus, p. 25.

People, May 9, 1977.

Universitas, fall, 1993, p. 26.

Washington Post Book World, April 11, 1990, Jonathan Yardley, review of The American Circus.*