Webb Smith

Storyboard inventor

Ward Kimball reports in an interview that Webb Smith was generally considered to be the inventor of the storyboard technique, although Dick Huemer attributed it to Ted Sears when he was still working at the Fleischer studio in New York.

Homer Brightman describes his encounter with him in 1935: “Suddenly, a lean man of about fifty strolled into the room. He had a sun-dried face and curly, white hair. He rolled a cigar around in his mouth and grinned at me, crow’s feet crinkling away in long lines from the corners of his pale blue eyes. Suddenly, I remembered what I had heard about him. He had a slow way of telling a story and was said to drag it out, chuckling all the time. He used to get Walt’s goat, for Walt was an impatient man. By the time [Smith] had reached the second line of sketches on the first storyboard, Walt would be studying the last sketch on the last board. [Smith] had a funny style of drawing, and his room, it was said, connected to that of [Ted Sears]. All gags submitted (except mine, seemingly) landed on [the latter]’s desk first. The rumor went around that [Sears] and [Smith] evaluated them together, and [Smith] would redraw the best gags in his funny style and pin them upon his storyboards for study.”

On a photograph taken in the music room Webb Smith is seen playing the piano, meaning that, unless the scene was staged, he had many talents.