- Born
- 11 April 1914Stirling, Scotland
- Died
- 27 January 1987Montreal, Canada · aged 72
Norman McLaren
A pioneer of animation who painted directly onto film – and lived for fifty years with his partner Guy Glover.
Norman McLaren grew up in Stirling, Scotland, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Too poor to buy a camera, he began scratching and painting images directly onto film stock. In 1937 he met Guy Glover, who became his partner for the rest of his life.
In 1941 McLaren went to Canada to set up an animation unit at the newly founded National Film Board. There he made more than fifty films and experimented with everything: hand-painted film, sounds drawn directly onto the soundtrack, abstract animations to music, and “pixilation”, in which real people are animated like puppets.
His anti-war film “Neighbours” (1952), in which two men fight to the death over a flower, won an Academy Award. Films such as “Begone Dull Care” (1949) and “Pas de deux” (1968), a dreamlike dance film, are classics of animation. McLaren was a pacifist and shared his techniques freely, travelling to China and India for UNESCO to teach animation.
Guy Glover, also a producer at the National Film Board, lived with him in Montreal for some fifty years. McLaren died there in 1987, aged 72.