Pioneer woman animator Libby Hilberman dies

Posted:
Aug 2, 2006

Libby Hilberman, the wife of "Bambi" art director Dave Hilberman and a woman pioneer in animation, died July 11, The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) announced Tuesday.

She was an artist at UPA, Tempo and Disney. Her husband, a founder of UPA, was one of the few artists named by Walt Disney as a suspected Communist during 1947 testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee, said Tom Sito, president of Local 839 from 1992 to 2001.

Dave Hilberman was one of the original founders of UPA in the early 1940s, when it was called Industrial Film and Poster Service.

"She and Dave endured harassment (and) blacklisting in Hollywood as well as in New York until they settled in Palo Alto (California) to teach," recalled Sito. "Despite all that, they always kept their spirits up and their dignity. They never compromised their principles when it would have been much more lucrative to cave in."

Sito said that he first met the Hilbermans in 1991 when he helped organize a 50th anniversary picnic of the Walt Disney strikers. He spoke with the couple at length two years later for his book Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson, to be published by University of Kentucky Press in October.

"In their old age, this gave them a kind of inner peace that I found admirable," he wrote on The Animation Guild's Web site (www.animationguild.org). "The satisfaction that they did the right thing, and because of it made an impact on all of us, was something they carried with them all their lives. Because of people like the Hilbermans, animation artists in California have the highest standard of living and best conditions of any animators in the world."

Libby and Dave Hilberman were married in 1936. They had a son, Dan, of Menlo Park, California.