The problem with using IMDb as a source for these articles—and let’s be real, with two posting a week, I don’t have time to read a ton of books even if the books are there—is that their statements are generally unsourced. So I can’t prove with any certainty that she was laid off after over fifty years with Disney. It’s possible she just retired, especially as the reference is so throwaway even in her biography there. But if it’s true, it’s appalling. I mean, a career stretching from Song of the South to Home on the Range starts and ends in a weird place, but it’s long enough that a company should be ashamed to fire you.

There is not a lot available online about De La Torre Sanderson; she is one of many women who worked in the Ink and Paint Department over the years—probably the best-known of their ranks is Lillian Disney, of course, but the department was mostly filled with women. De La Torre Sanderson made it through training quickly and started working on actual production. Apparently she was ready after three days of training and at work immediately.

It was a busy part of the studio in those days. 1946 saw the production of Make Mine Music, Song of the South, and thirteen shorts, all of which went through the department. It was meticulous work. Look at the array of colours in any classic Disney feature and remember that the women in the department had to be sure they were using the right one at any given time. I believe they mixed the colours as well. And inking is exactly what it sounds like; basically, primarily male animators drew the initial imagery and primarily female ink-and-paint workers transferred them onto cels and added the colours.

I don’t know how many of them moved with the changes in the studio as animation techniques changed, but De La Torre Sanderson certainly did. With the advent of Xerography at the studio, starting with its initial use in Sleeping Beauty, she learned the process and kept working. She became a supervisor and kept going. I’m not an expert on the department, but she seems to have worked at every level in it. And when the switch to computers began, she learned how to use computers and kept going.

We haven’t covered everything she worked on for Disney Byways—leaving aside that you’d have to pay me on Patreon or Ko-fi for Home on the Range or Hercules, even. And obviously she didn’t work on everything we covered there. However, she worked on no few stone-cold classics, not to mention a lot of the more obscure stuff. She worked on “A Symposium on Popular Songs” and “Donald in Mathmagic Land.” She worked on, from what I can tell, every mid-century combination of animation and live action that the studio released theatrically. It is unjust that she is not yet a Disney Legend; they certainly had enough time to induct her in her lifetime.