Biography

Thérèse "Tissa" David (January 5, 1921 – August 21, 2012) 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, she directed Bonjour Paris, 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.