Leo D. Sullivan was a pioneering Black animator whose credits included the intro to “Soul Train.”
- Died: March 25, 2023 (Who else died on March 25?)
- Details of death: Died at a Los Angeles hospital of heart failure at the age of 82.
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Leo D. Sullivan’s legacy
After getting his start in the late 1950s working on “Beany and Cecil,” Sullivan co-founded Vignette Films with former Disney animator Floyd Norman. They created cartoons about great Black Americans including George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. Sullivan’s early TV animation credit with the 1969 TV movie “Hey, Hey, Hey, it’s Fat Albert” led to later work on the series “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.” He also co-created the animated locomotive introduction for “Soul Train.” Sullivan continued working in animation throughout the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, with credits including “Super Friends,” “Richie Rich,” “BraveStarr,” and “Animaniacs,” and later partnered with Norman to found AfroKids.com, creating content geared toward Black children and families.
Notable quote
“I worked on the Super Friends. I worked on all the characters. They didn’t assign Black animators the Black characters. We did them all. You know we were just workers. We were the grunts in the trenches. But we had a certain skill, which the studios paid for. Because we had to learn how to do that skill of moving little drawings around and making them act and all that sort of thing. We did not know we were making history until later, you know.” —from a 2014 interview for Museum of Uncut Funk
Tributes to Leo D. Sullivan
Full obituary: The Hollywood Reporter
