Eunice Macaulay
Born
Eunice Bagley

July 5, 1923
St Helens, Merseyside, England, United Kingdom
DiedJuly 8, 2013(2013-07-08) (aged 90)
Hawkesbury, Ontario
NationalityBritish
OccupationAnimator

Eunice Macaulay (nee Eunice Bagley) (July 5, 1923 – July 8, 2013) was a British-born Academy Award–winning animator whose credits range from animation to writing, directing, and producing.

Biography

Eunice Bagley was born in St Helens in Lancashire, England.[1] Her first job was as a trainee chemist at Pilkington Brothers.[2] During World War II, she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service as a radio mechanic. In the 1950s, she became a graphic artist and greeting card designer.[3] She shifted into animation when a Christmas card she had designed got her a job with Gaumont British Animation (later part of the Rank Organisation) in 1948.[2] Starting out as a tracer, she went on to hold nearly every position in animation, including background artist, ink and paint supervisor, rendering supervisor, writer, animator, producer, and director.[2]

In the early 1960s, Macaulay and her filmmaker, Jim Macaulay emigrated to the United States.[2] She worked as a freelancer in both the United States and Canada.[2] In 1969, she took a job with Potterton Productions, and in 1973 she was hired full-time by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).[2]

She worked on 25 films altogether, including 18 as artist or animator, 10 as producer, 5 as writer, and 1 as director. She won many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the 1978 film Special Delivery, which she cowrote and directed with John Weldon.[2] It also took first prize at Animafest Zagreb.[4] Funded by the NFB, it is a dryly humorous account of what happened after a mailman's unexpected death.[4] It was released in both English and in a French-language version.

She served as the producer on the animated short George and Rosemary (1987), which was nominated for an Oscar, and on Just for Kids (1983), a series of adaptations of children's stories by Canadian writers.[2] Other credits include writer on Ishu Patel's Paradise, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1985, and writer/producer on Robert Doucet's Dreams of a Land (1987), about Samuel de Champlain.[2]

She retired from the NFB in 1990 and died in Hawkesbury, Ontario.[1][2]

Personal life

She was married to Jim Macaulay. She had two daughters, Lesley and Maggi.[3]

Films as director or writer

as Director
as Writer
  • The Long Enchantment (1993)
  • Dreams of a Land (1987)
  • Summer Legend (1986)
  • Paradise (1984)
  • Special Delivery (1978)

Films in animation roles

  • The Boy and the Snow Goose (1984)
  • Real Inside (1984)
  • The Old Lady's Camping Trip (1983)
  • The Trout That Stole the Rainbow (1982)
  • Canada Vignettes: Log Driver's Waltz (1981)
  • The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin (1981)
  • The Sweater (1980)
  • Every Child (1979)
  • What the Hell's Going on Up There? (1979)
  • Special Delivery (1978)
  • Deep Threat (1977)
  • No Apple for Johnny (1977)
  • Spinnolio (1977)
  • A Token Gesture (1975)
  • The Energy Carol (1975)
  • Who Are We? (1974)
  • Ten: The Magic Number (1973)
  • The Selfish Giant (1971)

References

  1. 1 2 "Eunice Macaulay". IMDB.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Eunice Macaulay". The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  3. 1 2 "Eunice Macaulay". ObitTree. Accessed March 7, 2018. (Obituary).
  4. 1 2 Lenburg, Jeff. "Weldon, John". Who's Who in Animated Cartoons: An International Guide to Film and Television's Award-Winning and Legendary Animators. Applause Books, 2006, pp. 352–53.
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