Animator Lamb Dies at 69

Derek Lamb, an Academy Award-winning animated film producer and one of Harvard’s first lecturers on film animation, died this month in Poulsbo, Wash. of cancer. He was 69.

Lamb came to Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in 1964 after Robert G. Gardner ’48—who was then the coordinator for the Light and Communications workshops—saw Lamb’s animated short “The Great Toy Robbery.”

“I was really rolling in the aisles,” Gardner recalled this week. But Gardner was also drawn by Lamb’s ability to transcend escapist comedy.

“It wasn’t just funny—it was really significantly on the mark in taking a look at our culture,” he said.

While at Harvard, Lamb taught several Light and Communications workshops that influenced a number of Harvard undergraduates who would later prove to be influential themselves. His students included distinguished animators Caroline J. Leaf ’68 and Eliot F. “Eli” Noyes Jr. ’64.

Henry P. Becton Jr.—who is a graduate of Harvard Law School—even changed his career plans because of Lamb, according to James M. “Ollie” Hallowell ’69. The once lawyer-to-be is now the president of WGBH, Boston’s PBS affiliate.

“It was completely life-changing,” Hallowell said of Lamb’s animation course. “Not only was he the single most influential teacher I had at Harvard, but he was one of the single most influential people I’ve ever met.”

Lamb often took a personal interest in students’ lives and work, whether that interest was manifested by encouraging Leaf to experiment with sand on glass or by holding a lamb-cooking contest with students.

Hallowell still elatedly talks of Lamb’s enthusiasm and creativity.

“Every project I ever did with him, he was as excited about it as I was,” Hallowell said.

Hallowell described Lamb as a veritable fountain of creativity, often scribbling humorous cartoons on napkins that encapsulated conversations he was having with friends.

After Harvard, Lamb began working full-time as an executive producer on the National Film Board of Canada. While there, Lamb won an Oscar for producing the 1979 animated short “Every Child,” which he also co-wrote. The film focuses on an abandoned baby left on the doorsteps of an affluent family and is told from the perspective of the family’s spoiled Labrador. The jealous dog takes on unfamiliar work, including washing the windows and sweeping the floor, eventually winning the couple over and causing them to reject the baby.

Serious topics dressed in humorous garb defined much of Lamb’s work. Gardner points to the 1978 animated short “Why Me?” as a prime example of Lamb’s talent. “Why Me?” begins with a man’s seemingly typical visit to the doctor’s office that is quickly transformed when the man is told that he has only five minutes to live. The film, which still caused Hallowell to laugh when discussing it, focuses on the man’s many reactions upon discovering this pressing matter.

“All of his films were full of comedy, but they were full of comedy in the very best meaning of the word,” Gardner said. “Everything he made carried weight, and everything he made entertained people.”

Later in his life, Lamb tackled difficult topics like AIDS and street violence. Despite these weighty issues, however, Lamb never lost his sense of humor.

“He was always what he wanted to be right up to the very end—he was an entertainer,” Gardner said.

Lamb is survived by his wife, Tracie Smart of Cambridge, his two sons, Richard of Bennington, Vt. and Thomas of Los Angeles, and a granddaughter.