Tissa David

Thérèse "Tissa" David (January 5, 1921 – August 21, 2012) was a Romanian-born American animator of Hungarian ethnicity, whose career spanned more than sixty years. She was one of the pioneering women in animation, a field which had been dominated by male animators.Millimeter magazine described her as "one of the few women to have reached the top in the traditionally male-dominated animated cartoon field" and "one of the world's best and busiest" animators in a story published in 1975.

In 1953, she directed Bonjour Paris, becoming the second female animator to direct an animated feature film. David later became one of the first women to create and animate a major character in a film when she designed Raggedy Ann for the 1977 movie, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure.

Born in 1921 in Cluj,Romania to an ethnic Hungarian family, Thérèse "Tissa" David was the second oldest of her family's ten children. She first became interested in animation after watching the 1937 Walt Disney animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. David initially earned a degree as a teacher. She then enrolled at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Budapest. However, she dropped out of the school to begin her career as an assistant animator at Magyar Film Iroda, a Budapest studio. In 2002, she described seeing her first animation project as, "the most exciting moment in my life." She survived the bombings during the Siege of Budapest in 1944 by eating beans and horse meat. David became the co-owner of the Studio Mackassy and Trsi after the end of World War II, where she oversaw the animated productions.

David moved to Paris, France, in March 1950 with her friend, Judit Reigl, to escape the Hungarian Communist authorities. She initially worked as a maid and cleaner in Paris while she learned French. David became the animation director and principal animator for the animated film, Bonjour Paris, after less than a year of living in Paris. She became the second woman to direct an animated feature film with her work on Bonjour Paris, which would be released in 1953. (The first female animator to direct an animated film was Lotte Reiniger.) David also worked for Paul Grimault and Jean Image, both of whom were film producers, while living in Paris.

...
Wikipedia