LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The last of Walt Disney's original team of animators, known as the Nine Old Men, has died at the age of 95, a Walt Disney Co spokesman said on Tuesday.
Ollie Johnston worked for Disney for 43 years, drawing characters for animated Mickey Mouse short films before contributing to such classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio", "Peter Pan" and "The Jungle Book."
Johnston died of natural causes in a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington on Monday.
Born in Palo Alto, California in 1912, Johnston showed early artistic promise and attended Chouinart Art Institute in Los Angeles. During his final year of college in 1935, Disney approached Johnston to join his fledgling animation studio.
Starting with "Song of the South" in 1946, Johnston became directing animator and served in that capacity in nearly every subsequent film. He retired in 1978 after completing some work on his final film, "The Fox and the Hound."
Johnston devoted his retirement to writing, lecturing and consulting and to model trains, of which he was considered one of the world's foremost experts.
In 2005, he became the first animator awarded a National Medal of the Arts, and he and his lifelong friend and fellow Disney animator, Frank Thomas, were profiled in the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie."
Disney Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, who pioneered computer animated films such as "Toy Story" and "Cars," considered Johnston and Thomas as mentors.
"He taught me to always be aware of what a character is thinking, and we continue to make sure that every character we create at Pixar and Disney has a thought process and emotion that makes them come alive," Lasseter said in a statement. Continued...
Ollie Johnston in 1993 
American animator Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's so-called "Nine Old Men", has died at the age of 95.

Johnston died of natural causes on Monday in Sequim, Washington, according to Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard E. Green.

Johnston worked on many of the Disney's classic films, including ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' (1937), ''Pinnochio'' (1940), ''Fantasia'' (1940), ''Bambi'' (1942), and many others. 


Johnston worked extensively with his best friend Frank Thomas, a fellow "old man" who died in 2004. The pair met at Stanford University in the 1930s and worked together until Thomas' death. They retired from animation in 1978, but remained popular speakers and authors about Disney and animation.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," said Roy E. Disney.

Johnston devoted much of his retirement to writing and lecturing, but perhaps even more to model trains, a field in which he became considered one of the world's foremost experts.

Ollie Johnston's last film was ''The Fox and the Hound'' (1981) on which he worked as a supervisor.