About the Author

Frank Reilly (1906-77) was trained as an artist in New York and worked for AP Newsfeatures as comics and cartoon editor. He joined Disney as head of its comic strip department in January 1946. He wrote at least one comic strip, Scorchy Smith, when he was with AP Newsfeatures.

Jesse Marsh (1907-66), a native of Alabama, started work for Disney even earlier, in 1940, making preliminary sketches for proposed feature cartoons. He was laid off after the famous 1941 strike, served in the army (only briefly), and returned to Disney in 1943. He left again in 1946 to embark on a free-lance career illustrating comic books.

Manuel Gonzales (1913-93), a Spanish immigrant who joined the Disney staff in 1936 as an "inbetweener," the lowest rung on animation's ladder, advanced within a couple of years to the comic-strip department. He made the pencil drawings for the Mickey Mouse Sunday page, and later for cartoon stories such as Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland, and then for all cartoon installments in the Treasury of Classic Tales.

Richard Arnold Moores (1909-86), a Midwesterner who worked in the Disney comic-strip department from 1942 to 1956, made the finished ink drawings from Gonzales' pencils in the early years of the Treasury; he also drew the Sunday-only strip Walt Disney's Uncle Remus featuring B'rer Rabbit from 1946 to 1950, and Scamp (a daily and Sunday spin-off from Lady and the Tramp) in 1955. In addition he illustrated comic books with Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and B'rer Rabbit. He later became best known for writing and drawing the long-running Gasoline Alley comic strip; he succeeded the strip's creator, Frank King.