page_title: Grim Natwick
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Grim Natwick / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Sheet music cover, one of Grim Natwick's earliest published efforts.
context_page_description: Myron "Grim" Natwick was an American artist, animator, and film director. Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studios' most popular character, Betty Boop.
context_section_description: Natwick's artistic career started with cover designs for sheet music, initially for a friend who worked at a music publishing company. Natwick found that he was good at this type of work and contacted other publishers in Chicago, eventually illustrating the covers for many song sheets, usually in no more than two colours. A former school friend convinced him to try animation at William Randolph Hearst Studio, which only animated their superhero properties. The studio was under the direction of Gregory La Cava. After one year being in the studio, in 1925, he took the saving he had and sailed to the Vienna National Academy, where he mostly drew anatomy of women. Natwick was influenced by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. He graduated in late summer of 1928, moving back to New York.   Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studio's most popular character, Betty Boop, under the direction of Max Fleischer. Although legal ownership of the Betty Boop character remained with the studio (as Natwick was an employee), Grim created the original design of Betty Boop at the request of studio head Max Fleischer, who requested a girlfriend for his successful creation "Bimbo". Natwick worked for a number of American animation studios, including the Ub Iwerks studio, Walt Disney Animation Studios, the Walter Lantz studio, UPA, and the Richard Williams studio. At Disney, Natwick was a lead animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and was instrumental in bringing the titular heroine to life.
  While working for the Fleischer studios in 1939, Natwick was in charge of drawing the Prince and the Princess for Gulliver's Travels. He also helped to animate Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, Mr. Magoo, Popeye, Felix the Cat and many other 40s and 50s cartoon greats. Three of Grim's former assistants included Walter Lantz (Hearst), Chuck Jones (Iwerks) and Marc Davis (Disney).
  During the 1980s and 1990s Natwick served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute.
  There is evidence Natwick did some commercial work later in his long life. He appears to have contributed to the early images of Sonny & Gramps, according to then-contemporaries who collaborated with Natwick during his career. Sonny is the "cuckoo" animated mascot of General Mills' Cocoa Puffs.
  Natwick died on October 7, 1990 in Los Angeles, California of pneumonia and a heart attack, two months after celebrating his 100th birthday, with a party with friends such as Shamus Culhane.
  In 2010, the Wisconsin Historical Society erected a memorial plaque to Grim Natwick in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. South Wood County Historical Museum in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin is home to an extensive Grim Natwick exhibit.
  Since 2010, the Grim Natwick Film Festival has been held annually over three days in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin featuring animators from across the state and beyond in panels and screenings of work.
  Recently, Natwick’s name is an inspiration to a character in the 2017 video game, Cuphead, a run and gun game that has a style and tone of 1930’s cartoons (mostly influenced by Fleischer Studios). His name was adapted to a dragon character named Grim Matchstick, who has a similar stutter and speech to that of Grim himself.
caption: Sheet music cover from 1915, one of Grim Natwick's earliest published efforts.
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