Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men," borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of US Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.
Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Mr. Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
Mr. Johnston worked as an assistant animator on "Snow White" and became an animation supervisor on "Fantasia" and "Bambi" and an animator on "Pinocchio."
He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi" and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi's mother at the hands of a hunter.
"The mother's death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion," he remarked in 1999.
Mr. Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "101 Dalmatians," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," "Robin Hood," and "The Rescuers."
Among the scenes he drew were Thumper's recitation in "Bambi" of eating greens, Pinocchio's nose growing as he lies to the Blue Fairy, and the antics of Mowgli and Baloo in "The Jungle Book" as they sing "The Bear Necessities."
People "know his work. They know his characters. They've seen him act without realizing it," said Leonard Maltin, film historian. "He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation."
