--- name: "Norm Ferguson" canonical: "https://film.one/person/norman-ferguson" roles: ["Director"] born: "2 September 1902" died: "4 November 1957" reviewed_on_fi1m: 6 average_fi1m_score: 78 updated: "2026-09-17T06:01:41.175462+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Norm Ferguson Director. Born 2 September 1902 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. Died 4 November 1957. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 2 September 1902, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA - **Died:** 4 November 1957 - **Active:** 1940–1953 - **Also known as:** Norman Ferguson, William Ferguson, William Norman Ferguson, Norman Fergusan - **Works often with:** [Ben Sharpsteen](https://film.one/person/ben-sharpsteen.md), [Bill Roberts](https://film.one/person/bill-roberts.md), [Walt Disney](https://film.one/person/walt-disney.md), [Wilfred Jackson](https://film.one/person/wilfred-jackson.md), [Frank Churchill](https://film.one/person/frank-churchill.md), [Hamilton Luske](https://film.one/person/hamilton-luske.md), [Jack Kinney](https://film.one/person/jack-kinney.md), [Samuel Armstrong](https://film.one/person/samuel-armstrong.md) - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1940s 85 (3), 1950s 70 (3) - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q280187, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0272568/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/226599 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Pinocchio*](https://film.one/film/pinocchio.md) (88), [*Dumbo*](https://film.one/film/dumbo.md) (87), [*Fantasia*](https://film.one/film/fantasia.md) (80) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Norm Ferguson > Norm Ferguson drew feeling before he drew anatomy, and his characters were among the first at Disney to look as though they were thinking. As one of six directors on *Pinocchio* and *Dumbo* he is hard to isolate, and both films are the better for it. The dog cannot get the flypaper off. That is the whole of the joke in *Playful Pluto* (1934), and Norm Ferguson stretches it out until Pluto is plainly working the problem, pausing, trying again, getting crosser. Nobody had made a cartoon animal think in front of an audience quite like that before. Ferguson's drawing was loose and rough, and he did not much care whether a leg bent the way a leg should so long as the feeling came through. He also drew faster than anyone in the building, turning out about eighteen feet of animation a week when the studio average was ten. He had come to Disney in 1929 by way of Paul Terry's studio and a course in stenography, and he rose quickly on the shorts. From *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* (1937) he moved onto the features as a supervising animator, and his first big job there was the witch, the studio's first proper villain. He was a sequence director on *Pinocchio* (1940), on *Fantasia* (1940), where he had the Dance of the Hours, and on *Dumbo* (1941). Then a step up: director and production supervisor on *Saludos Amigos* and *The Three Caballeros* (1944). He went back to directing animation on *Cinderella*, *Alice in Wonderland* and *Peter Pan*, and left the studio around 1953. The two films we have reviewed are the two where his kind of drawing mattered most. *Pinocchio* is a fable about a child lied to by every adult he meets, and Ferguson had the fox, J. Worthington Foulfellow, and his silent cat Gideon, the first of the liars. We found the film frightening as children and find it stranger now, because the villains are so plainly enjoying themselves and nobody in the film seems to think that odd. *Dumbo* is the opposite case: 64 minutes, backgrounds in thin washes a child could manage, the camera kept at the height of a small elephant. Six directors are credited, Ben Sharpsteen, Bill Roberts, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Samuel Armstrong and Ferguson, and the film speaks with one voice. A baby elephant who never says a word, played entirely through his eyes and ears, is exactly the sort of problem a man who drew feeling first was built for. Which leaves the difficulty of writing about him at all. Sharpsteen supervised, Hamilton Luske worked alongside him, and the studio was arranged so that no single hand showed. Ferguson's name sits sixth on a list of six, and on the evidence of the screen that was the job done properly. Watch *Dumbo* for the film, then *Pinocchio* for the fox, and remember that somewhere in a 1934 short there is a dog with a sheet of flypaper who started all of it. ## Biography William Norman Ferguson (1902–1957), known professionally as Norm or Fergy, was an American animator and director at Walt Disney Studios. He joined the studio in 1929 after earlier work at Paul Terry’s Fables Pictures and studies at the Pratt Institute. Ferguson contributed to numerous shorts, including the Academy Award-winning *Three Little Pigs* (1933), and developed characters such as Pluto. He served as supervising animator on *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* (1937) and as sequence director on *Pinocchio* (1940), *Fantasia* (1940) and *Dumbo* (1941). Later credits include production supervisor and director roles on *Saludos Amigos* (1942) and *The Three Caballeros* (1944), and directing animator on *Cinderella* (1950), *Alice in Wonderland* (1951) and *Peter Pan* (1953). Ferguson received the Winsor McCay Award in 1987 and was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1999. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, d23.com.* ## On Fi1m (6) - *Peter Pan* (1953), Fi1m 68, Animation Director — [page](https://film.one/film/peter-pan-1953.md) - *Alice in Wonderland* (1951), Fi1m 71, Animation — [page](https://film.one/film/alice-in-wonderland.md) - *Cinderella* (1950), Fi1m 72, Animation Director — [page](https://film.one/film/cinderella-1950.md) - *Dumbo* (1941), Fi1m 87, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/dumbo.md) - *Fantasia* (1940), Fi1m 80, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/fantasia.md) - *Pinocchio* (1940), Fi1m 88, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/pinocchio.md) ## Gallery - ![Pinocchio (1940)](https://film.one/media/title/1692/still-d4a00ca55d6c.jpg) *Pinocchio* (1940) - ![Dumbo (1941)](https://film.one/media/title/12283/still-62554117546b.jpg) *Dumbo* (1941) - ![Fantasia (1940)](https://film.one/media/title/12281/still-23022b72de9c.jpg) *Fantasia* (1940) ## Also known for - *The Three Caballeros* (1944), Director - *Saludos Amigos* (1942), Director - *Three Little Pigs* (1933), Animation - *Flowers and Trees* (1932), Animation - *Santa's Workshop* (1932), Animation - *The Big Bad Wolf* (1934), Animation - *On Ice* (1935), Animation - *The Golden Touch* (1935), Animation --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/norman-ferguson