Eunice Macaulay | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Eunice Bagley July 5, 1923 |
| Died | July 8, 2013 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Animator |
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.
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]
She was married to Jim Macaulay. She had two daughters, Lesley and Maggi.[3]
