Robert Bentley

Born 1907-03-11 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Died 2000-11-28

Robert Bentley (11 March 1907 – 28 November 2000) was an American animator. Bentley started his animation career in 1929 as an assistant animator at the Van Beuren cartoon studio in New York City, later working for Les Elton's independent studio on his 1931 cartoon "Simon the Monk". He moved to the West Coast in 1935 to work briefly at Walt Disney's studio, then spent the next few years as a full-fledged animator in Frank Tashlin's unit at Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio for Warner Bros. In 1939, Bentley, along with other Tashlin animators like Joe D'Igalo and Nelson Demorest, moved to Miami to work for Fleischer Studios, as they were hiring experienced West Coast animators to tool up for their first animated feature, Gulliver's Travels. In the early 40s, Bentley returned to California to animate for the Walter Lantz studio on Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker cartoons, and by the mid-40s was a top animator of both Tex Avery's and Dick Lundy's animation units at MGM's cartoon studio. Bentley spent the majority of the 50s animating back at Lantz's studio, before being hired by Hanna-Barbera to work primarily on TV animation. From then on, he bounced between stints at numerous television animation studios like DePatie-Freleng and Filmation, where he contributed to such animated productions as Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974), Spider-Man (1967), and others. [biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]