Review: A Disney trailblazer steps into the spotlight in Huz: Drawn to Life

Disney documentaries, especially documentaries about Disney animation, are pretty common, and I'm always happy to see them. Sometimes they center on a specific time in the studio's history, like the fantastic Waking Sleeping Beauty, which chronicled the shift into the so-called Disney Renaissance in the late eighties/early 90s. Some are about a specific movie, like last year's very enjoyable Not Just a Goof, which celebrated A Goofy Movie for its thirtieth anniversary. Still others put the spotlight on a specific figure who factors into the studio's long and storied history. That's where the lovely (and succinct) Huz: Drawn to Life falls.

Premiering later this week as part of PBS SoCal's Black History Month programming, Huz: Drawn to Life celebrates the life and career of Ron Husband, the first Black animator at Disney. Directed by Disney legend Don Hahn (who also directed Waking Sleeping Beauty), the film clocks in at just shy of an hour, but manages to cover a lot of ground. We get background about Husband's early life, growing up Monrovia with his three brothers and single mother. He and his wife, LaVonne, talk about how they met in high school and fell in love, despite him being so quiet (his hot body helped, LaVonne notes). And, of course, we hear a lot about what it took to make it at Disney.

The film is full of Disney luminaries and legends. Alongside Hahn, we hear from the likes of Glen Keane (a close friend and one-time office-mate of Husband), John Musker, Kirk Wise, Lorna Cook, and many others. So while serving as a caring and celebratory portrait of Husband and all his achievements, the film is additionally a kind of time capsule of Disney Animation during what was probably its first seismic shift: when the studio was looking for new talent to take over from the Nine Old Men, the legendary animators who worked alongside Walt himself.

A theme throughout this documentary is how important it is to be generous with your knowledge and your talent. Husband is a very religious man, and he borrows and tweaks a quote from Chariots of Fire to express how he feels about drawing: "When I draw, I feel God's pleasure." As a Christian, it makes sense that he thus wants to share his talent, his art, with the world. Just as he was a beneficiary of the animators who came before him and passed their knowledge on (Eric Larson is mentioned as a particularly meaningful mentor for the new crop of animators), so he now passes on what he has learned. Retired from Disney, Husband now teaches art classes, and so the cycle of generosity continues.

As a bonafide trailblazer, the film also talks about the difficulty of being a Black person in a space that has, historically, been predominantly white. Husband talks about how a Black person has to be twice as good just to be in the same conversation as their white peers, and The Proud Family creator Bruce Smith talks about how there was so little Black representation in animation growing up, and how Black people had to find their way in despite not having a long history of predecessors. Someone has to be the first. In this case, it was Ron Husband.

Of course, part of what's great about this doc is learning about what sequences and characters are Husband's work. He cut his teeth on movies like The Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, and The Small One, the length of his animation in those works being enough to get him officially deigned an animator. The film also calls out some of the characters he supervised, like Djali the goat in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Dr. Sweet in Atlantis: The Lost Empire (the first Black hero in a Disney animated movie, no less).

Ron's sketches for the elk in Fantasia 2000

With its pretty brief runtime, I was impressed how much ground this film covers. It obviously can't get super deep in less than an hour, but it feels like Hahn really managed to find out what makes Husband tick: his faith, his work ethic, his ever-present sketchbook. And, man, I'm just so happy to see documentaries like this (and Floyd Norman: An Animated Life -- Norman is in this one, too) that celebrate these great artists while they're still alive. They deserve this time in the spotlight, and to get their flowers.

Huz: Drawn to Life premieres Thursday, February 12 at 9:00pm on PBS SoCal and Tuesday, February 24 at 10:00pm on PBS SoCal Plus. It was also be free to watch on the PBS app starting February 12 through the end of the month. You can read more here.