Norma Mae Swank was an inker and painter who enjoyed a 28-year career at Disney who also provided the voice of Chip for several Chip and Dale cartoon shorts throughout the 1940s and 50s.
Born in Alaska, Swank grew up in Washington. After graduating from school, she looked for work in California. In Glendale, she worked in various jobs including a traffic office before being hired at Disney Animation's Ink & Paint Department in 1943. She worked on films such as The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book.
Working in the Burbank Studios also offered opportunities beyond painting and checking responsibilities within the ink department. Swank began doing voice work for several features. Swank later began doing voiceover for Chip in tandem with in-house sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald.
Later at Disney, Norma moved into one of the more exacting roles within animation such as "Final Checking," which was much "more demanding" Norma noted. "We had to know everything about 'camera', and we had to go through each scene as if we were shooting in camera." Swank later left the studio in 1971 and moved to Boston with her second husband, Byron, before settling down in Half Moon Bay, CA.
She passed away in April of 2022.
Filmography
| Year | Film | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1943 | Private Pluto | Voice: Chip (uncredited) |
| 1944 | The Three Caballeros | Ink-and-paint artist (uncredited) |
| 1946 | Make Mine Music | Ink and paint (uncredited) Voice: Angry Woman in Crowd (segment "Casey at the Bat") |
| Song of the South | Ink and paint artist (uncredited) | |
| 1948 | Melody Time | Inker and painter (uncredited) |
| So Dear to My Heart | Final checker (uncredited) | |
| 1949 | The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad | Final check (uncredited) |
| 1950 | Cinderella | Final check (uncredited) Voice: Mice, Additional Voices (uncredited) |
| 1951 | Corn Chips | Voice: Chip (uncredited) |
| Test Pilot Donald | Voice: Chip (uncredited) | |
| Alice in Wonderland | Final check (uncredited) | |
| 1952 | Teachers are People | Voice: Schoolchild (uncredited) |
| Pluto's Christmas Tree | Voice: Chip (uncredited) | |
| 1953 | Working for Peanuts | Voice: Chip (uncredited) |
| Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom | Singer (uncredited) | |
| Peter Pan | Final checker (uncredited) | |
| 1954 | The Lone Chipmunks | Voice: Chip (uncredited) |
| Dragon Around | Voice: Chip (uncredited) | |
| 1955 | "From Aesop to Hans Christian Andersen" | Voice: singing crow (uncredited) |
| Up a Tree | Voice: Chip (uncredited) | |
| Lady and the Tramp | Final checker (uncredited) | |
| 1956 | Chips Ahoy | Voice: Chip (uncredited) |
| 1959 | Sleeping Beauty | Final checker (uncredited) |
| Donald in Mathmagic Land | Final checker (uncredited) | |
| 1961 | Aquamania | Xerox (uncredited) |
| 1962 | A Symposium on Popular Songs | Xerox (uncredited) |
| 1963 | The Sword in the Stone | Xerox check/inking (uncredited) |
| 1967 | Scrooge McDuck and Money | Xerox (uncredited) |
| The Jungle Book | Xerox check/inking (uncredited) | |
| 1970 | The Aristocats | Xerographer (uncredited) |
| 1971 | Bedknobs and Broomsticks | Xerox (uncredited) |
| 1977 | The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh | Xerox check/inking (uncredited): "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" |
Role
Gallery
Trivia
- Aside from providing voiceover in Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom in English, she performed the same parts in the Portuguese release.
External links
Norma Swank on IMDb- Farewell to the Woman Behind Walt Disney's Chip
- CartoonBrew - RIP Norma Swank-Haviland
