Longtime Disney employee who worked as an Animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp. He also directed Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, and several other popular Disney movies.
He began his career at Disney in the early 1930s, working on such classic short films as Elmer Elephant and Music Land.
He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his Service in World War II as a member of the United States Air Force.
He spent his earliest years in Munich, Germany, but was raised primarily in the United States. His marriage to Janie Marie McMillan Reitherman lasted from the mid-1940s until his death in 1985 and produced sons named Richard, Robert, and Bruce.
He and Les Clark were part of a group of animators known, collectively, as "Disney's Nine Old Men."
