Lester Novros

Lester Novros (born in 1909 in Passaic, NJ - died September 10, 2000) was an artist, animator and teacher.

He studied painting at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He was also an active member of the Art Students League of New York, and studied at the prestigious Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. His curiosity in the study of movement lead to an interest in motion pictures. In 1936 he was recruited by the Walt Disney Company to come to Hollywood to work on feature animation projects. Novros was an "in betweener" on the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and received a credit for art direction for the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence of Fantasia (1940).

In 1941, Novros left Disney to form his own production company, Graphic Films. That same year he joined the faculty of the Cinema Department of the University of Southern California. Thousands of students took his course on "Filmic Expression" before his retirement in 1984.

Graphic Films found immediate success producing training films for the military during World War II. As the USAF and NASA emerged in the post war period, Graphic's expertise in animating the visual dimensions of space exploration played a key role in interesting the United States Congress and the general public in supporting the country's first forays into space.