Jane Baer, a trailblazing animator who worked at Disney on films like Sleeping Beauty and Who Framed Roger Rabbit and on TV favorites like the original Smurfs, has died.
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Baer passed away peacefully in her sleep at her Van Nuys, CA home on Feb. 16, her longtime friend Mindy Johnson confirmed to Deadline. She was 91 years old.
Throughout her career, Baer collaborated with Disney’s legendary “Nine Old Men,” and later co-founded Baer Animation with her then-husband, Dale Baer.
According to Deadline, Baer Animation became one of the most successful independent animation studios in Hollywood. It brought Toontown to life in Robert Zemeckis’ iconic 1988 live-action/animation mashup, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Baer even took the wheel as the supervising character animator for Benny the Cab.
Jane Baer has sadly passed away at the age of 91.
— Cosmic Marvel (@cosmic_marvel) February 18, 2026
She was an animator on ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, ‘The Rescuers’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Pete's Dragon’ and ‘The Black Cauldron’ pic.twitter.com/qd7kTDSK5v
During the 1990s, Baer Animation was one of the few fully self-contained, independent animation studios in the U.S., with departments for every facet of production. It won multiple Clio Awards and other accolades for its commercials.
Baer Animation’s camera teams worked on key scenes for Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1990), Rover Dangerfield (1991), The Swan Princess (1994), as well as various projects for Warner Bros. Animation and Hanna-Barbera Studios. After Dale Baer left the studio in the early 1990s, Jane Baer managed the company until her retirement in the early 2000s.
Jane Baer Began Her Prolific Animation Career in 1955
Born Jane Shattuck in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on October 30, 1934, Baer trained at the Art Center in Pasadena. She started her animation career in 1955 as an assistant animator on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959), working with the studio’s renowned “Nine Old Men.” During this time, she met her first husband, animator Iwao Takamoto, who, like Dale Baer, would later receive the prestigious Winsor McCay Award for career achievement from the Annie Awards.
According to IMDb, Jane Baer’s extensive credits include the animated films The Lion King (1994) and The Black Cauldron (1985), as well as animated sequences for Last Action Hero (1993) and Fletch Lives (1989). She also served as an animation producer on the 1989 Roger Rabbit short Tummy Trouble and a character designer for Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1982).
Baer’s television career included the 1969 series Hot Wheels, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, The Smurfs, and the 1970 holiday special Santa Claus and the Three Bears. She also co-wrote and executive-produced the 1997 holiday film Annabelle’s Wish.
Meanwhile, Jane Baer was a founding member of Women in Animation. She was also a longtime member of the Motion Picture and Television academies, the Animation Guild, and Women in Film. She later shared her experience with the next generation of animators and was featured in the 2017 book Ink & Paint – The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation.
Baer is survived by her son, Michael, and his partner, Beth, as well as her brother and his family.