Patterson began his career in the early 1930s as an
in-betweener at the
Charles Mintz Studio, and then moved to
Universal Cartoon Studios. He began working at the Walt Disney Studios in 1935, contributing to Disney's short subjects as well as their to five theatrical films:
Pinocchio,
Fantasia (
Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria Segment),
Dumbo,
The Three Caballeros and
Make Mine Music. Patterson eventually left Disney in 1946 and moved to the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. Initially he worked with
William Hanna and
Joseph Barbera on
Tom and Jerry (the same unit as his brother
Ray worked in) before moving to a unit headed by
Michael Lah and
Preston Blair to animate three
Barney Bear shorts. He left MGM after the Lah and Blair unit was disbanded by management not long after. In the early 1950s, Patterson returned to Universal as the animation studio was now called Walter Lantz Productions and became one of Lantz's four key animators, along with
Ray Abrams,
Laverne Harding and
Paul Smith. Patterson died on December 12, 1998, at
Santa Barbara, California, just 14 days short of his 89th birthday. == Selected filmography ==