See that drawing above? That's how our friend Floyd Norman recalls his one-time boss, Walt Disney. Floyd was hired by the studio in time to work on Sleeping Beauty…and that wasn't even his first cartooning job. As a teenager, he worked for Bill Woggon on the Katy Keene comic book. Working for Disney was his second real cartooning job and it made him the first black artist hired at the studio.
Quick Aside: Floyd is a great artist and gag-man but his greatest skill is this. He is the absolute master in any studio situation at drawing hilarious and insulting cartoons about his employers and fellow employees. During the years he worked at Hanna-Barbera, he took what most would regard as a waste of company time and raised it to a high art. Some of those shows may not have been funny but the walls in the studio, covered as they were in Floyd cartoons, were hysterical. Naturally, other cartoonists he ridiculed wanted to get back at Floyd…but how do you do that? He was talented. He wasn't fat or ugly or lazy or mean. He was a genuinely nice guy, loved by all. How do you draw a derogatory caricature of someone like that? His targets were stymied.
Then one day, a former Disney artist wrote a book about his years laboring for The Mouse. He didn't mention Floyd by name but he did say that while he was working there, the place was full of white guys and that "There was only one lone negro in the halls."
That was all Floyd's cartoonist friends needed. Suddenly, they had a hook and cartoons began appearing of Floyd in a cowboy hat and mask, riding through an animation studio as The Lone Negro. They were all over the place and I'm still surprised Joe Barbera didn't add a dog to it and sell it as a series.
Floyd worked for Disney. He worked for Hanna-Barbera. He worked for other studios. A few years ago, the Disney folks named him a Disney Legend. Lots of us think he's even more than that and you'll hear about his adventures if you tune in Stu's Show today when Floyd is interviewed by your happy host Stu Shostak and today's co-host, cartoonist and Oddball Comics Authority Scott Shaw! Here is how you do that.
Stu's Show is heard via this website. You can listen live when they do the show, which is at 4 PM Pacific Time, which is 7 PM Back East and other times in other zones. It's supposed to run two hours but has been known to run longer. So to hear it while they do it, go to that website at the appropriate time and it's free if you do. If you miss it, go to that website starting an hour or two after the webcast and you can download it for a measly 99 cents. There are other great shows there you'll enjoy and they're the same price — or four for the price of three. Best deal on the Internet…and trust me: You'll enjoy Floyd Norman. I always do.