Legendary 84-year-old animator Don Bluth is an icon who believed in the survival of hand-drawn animation, a style that has slowly waned in favor of computer animation. Bluth is best known for directing the hand-drawn animated features The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), and Anastasia (1997).
Throughout his filmmaking and animation career, Bluth not only proved that he could make animated features to compete with Disney's immensely popular output, but that he could also beat them at their own game and live to tell the tale. Ever since Bluth saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) from a young age, he dreamed of making his drawings come to life at Walt Disney Animation Studios. After his family moved to California, he got a job as an in-betweener and assistant animator on Sleeping Beauty (1959), working under Disney animation veteran John Lounsbery.
After studying English at Brigham Young University Bluth and going on a mission trip for his Mormon faith, Bluth returned to Disney in 1971, after running a musical theater for three years alongside his brother Toby and working as a layout artist at Filmation Studios. His first work back at Disney was as an animator on Robin Hood (1973), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), and The Rescuers (1977).
As Don’s reputation grew, Disney made him the animation director for the live-action/animated hybrid film Pete’s Dragon (1977), and the director/producer of the animated short The Small One (1978). While working between the production of those films, Don tried to experiment with the Disney classic style by working outside the studio’s system during nights and weekends on an independent animated short project called Banjo the Woodpile Cat (1979).
Meanwhile, Disney was cutting corners and production costs on the films they were making at the time, paying less attention to the artistic integrity of the individual films and more on corporate executive oversight. Dissatisfied with the new direction the animation department was heading, Bluth and his partners handed in their letters of resignation to studio head Ron Miller, claiming they were leaving the company in the name of Walt Disney, followed by 11 more members of the department the next day. This result had Disney lose fifteen percent of their animation department and push back the release of The Fox and the Hound (1980) by a whole year.
Bluth turned his attention towards adapting Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which had been previously turned down by Disney. The goal was to make something that resembled the early Disney films from the golden age of animation and develop a film with a strong story and characters. Despite the team stringing the film together on a tight production budget and schedule, The Secret of NIMH was released in the summer of 1982 to critical acclaim and was a modest box office success. It would eventually gain a cult following in its video release and cable showings. The Secret of NIMH helped put Bluth and his team on the map as a major force in the industry, but its low-profit earnings combined with an industry labor strike forced Don Bluth Productions to file for bankruptcy and rename themselves as the Bluth Group.
Eventually, they caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who loved and admired the work they had done on The Secret of NIMH and wanted to collaborate on an animated project that would turn into An American Tail. However, the movie faced many production challenges from the team's relocation to Ireland to an extensive studio oversight on the film's production, and union difficulties. Released under Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and distributed by Universal Studios, the movie outperformed at the box office becoming the most successful animated film within its first run and earning more money than Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (1986). As An American Tail’s success marked Bluth's studio as an official legit competitor to the Mouse House, especially after their major failure The Black Cauldron (1985).
Bluth’s next collaboration with Spielberg was The Land Before Time. Executive producers Spielberg and George Lucas forced Bluth to cut 11 minutes from the film for being too scary and intense for younger audiences. This creative decision led to the film having a shorter running time of 69 minutes and a G rating. The film managed to beat Disney’s Oliver and Company (1988) during opening weekend, as well as secure a higher worldwide box office total and greater critical reception
During that same year, Bluth's company teamed together with Goldcrest Films to produce their upcoming animated films starting with All Dogs Go to Heaven. This deal would allow for more creative control over the films. The film was not met with the same success as The Land Before Time because it was released at the same time as Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989). Despite the film's initial failure in theaters, it made up its losses thanks to the film's popularity on VHS. Unfortunately, Bluth’s career began to slide downhill during Disney's revived success with the critically acclaimed and high-quality animated features such as Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994) Bluth's next efforts, Rock-a-Doodle (1992), Thumbelina (1994), A Troll in Central Park (1994), and The Pebble and the Penguin (1995), all performed poorly at the box office and gained negative critical reception. They were no match for Disney's renaissance.
Due to production troubles and the financial failures of the last four films, things grew worse for Bluth's studio and eventually hit rock bottom in 1995 when the studio closed its doors. Bluth was eventually contacted by the newly formed Fox Animation Studios for the sweeping animated musical Anastasia, which went on to become the highest-grossing film of Bluth’s career. Disney re-released The Little Mermaid to push audiences away from Anastasia but Bluth's film took the crown that Thanksgiving holiday season and earned two Oscar nominations for its music.
The next film on Fox Animation’s lineup was the science fiction action-adventure film Titan AE which was originally conceived as a live-action piece. The production had many cutbacks, from 20th Century Fox laying off a lot of its Fox Animation staff in 1999 and having the animation be outsourced by other studios and Fox Animation champion Bill Mechanic being fired from his position at 20th Century Fox. Titan AE was released in the summer of 2000 and opened to a mixed critical and poor financial reception. A few days after its release, Fox Animation Studios closed its doors.
Titan AE was Bluth’s last theatrical animated feature. In the years since, Bluth has been working independently by getting back to his old roots from providing animation for several gaming projects, working on getting funds for an unproduced film version of his game Dragon’s Lair, and developing a new animation studio to produce an anthology series called Bluth’s Fables.
Looking back, Don Bluth has had one of the most fascinating careers within the field of animation. The exceptional artistic quality and timeless storytelling of his films inspired some truly heated competition with Disney. Bluth made emotional and engaging films that helped general audiences rethink their perception of animated films, and transported generations of younger audiences to places outside their comfort zones by challenging their emotions.