Tissa David

Biography

Thérèse "Tissa" David was a Romanian-born American animator of Hungarian ethnicity, whose career spanned more than sixty years. She was one of the pioneering women in animation, a field which had been dominated by male animators. Millimeter magazine described her as "one of the few women to have reached the top in the traditionally male-dominated animated cartoon field" and "one of the world's best and busiest" animators in a story published in 1975. In 1953, David directed Bonjour Paris [fr], becoming the second female animator to direct an animated feature film. David later became one of the first women to create and animate a major character in a film when she designed Raggedy Ann for the 1977 film, 'Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure'.