MUMBAI: After serving Disney Studios for 45 years, Norman Palmer expired on 23 March, the studio has announced. He was 94.
 
In his service at Disney, Palmer slowly became closely associated with the studio‘s acclaimed True-Life Adventure short-subject series of documentaries.
 
Palmer was part of the Disney live-action films Ten Who Dared (1960), The Legend of Lobo (1962), The Incredible Journey (1963), The Gnome-Mobile (1967) and The Shaggy D.A. (1976) and had almost two dozen credits on Walt Disney‘s Wonderful World of Color and other TV shows from the mid 1950s to the early ‘80s.
 
The True-Life Adventure nature films provided early production experience for Roy E. Disney, who began his career in the studio‘s editorial department and went on to become the studio‘s vice chairman and head of animation. Palmer served as his mentor.
 
"Stormy was one of the key players in creating the classic Disney True-Life Adventures series, and he was a true pioneer in the field of nature documentaries," said Dave Bossert, producer and creative director at Walt Disney Animation Studios and the producer (along with Roy Disney) of the True-Life Adventures DVD collection.
 
"He took tens of thousands of feet of raw footage and was able to craft it into some of the most riveting, beautiful and entertaining nature films ever created. That series of Oscar-winning films set the gold standard for years and helped to inspire the many generations of nature filmmakers that followed," he added.
 
Palmer edited other titles in the True-Life series as Beaver Valley (1950), Nature‘s Half Acre (1951), The Living Desert (1953), The African Lion (1955) and White Wilderness (1958). He also edited the CinemaScope film Grand Canyon, the 1959 Oscar winner for best live-action short.
 
He retired from Disney in 1983.