James "Shamus" Culhane (1908-1996) was a veteran animator and director. Considered one of the finest of the era, Culhane worked at almost every studio of the time, starting at Hearst and Bray Studios, moving on to Fleischer Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio, secured a job at Disney, made a brief return to Fleischers, had a very brief stint at Warner Bros. in the Chuck Jones unit, but the most important part of his career would have to be his tenure at the Walter Lantz cartoon studio, where he directed some of the best shorts of the studio, including the Woody Woodpecker short "The Barber Of Seville", no. 43 on The 50 Greatest Cartoons list.