Ben Sharpsteen in the beginning

Ben & Bernice Sharpsteen

In 1978, Jimmy Carter was president, “The Deer Hunter” won the Oscar, ultrasound was first used, disco was at its height, “Garfield” was first syndicated, and on September 30, the Sharpsteen Museum first opened its doors.

Benjamin Luther Sharpsteen was only 7 years old when he first spent summers in Calistoga. The year was 1903, and his grandparents had purchased about 300 acres just north of town. Traveling by train and waiting to be picked up at the depot was a memory vivid to Sharpsteen of that first visit, and for many summers to follow.

“I was greatly impressed by everything. We finally arrived at our destination, where we would spend this and each succeeding summer up to and including 1915, when I was about 20 years old.”

“About Ben Sharpsteen,” book published by the Sharpsteen Museum.

Important to Sharpsteen was the fact that his father, William, first came to the Brannan Hot Springs in 1874 when he was only 11 years old. Listening to his father’s stories of his childhood and Sharpsteen’s memories of spending summers in Calistoga laid the foundation for the Sharpsteen Museum that would come many years later.

Sharpsteen had joined the Marine Corps in 1917. When his hitch was up two years later, he found himself on the streets of New York looking for work. He managed to wangle a job with the Hearst International Film Service. The Heart Studio was licensed to handle all the characters in the Hearst comic strips, and Sharpsteen was put to work.

As the years passed and Sharpsteen’s experience as an animator grew, he received a letter from Walt Disney asking to meet in Hollywood. Sharpsteen was freelancing in San Francisco by then, but in late March 1929, he traveled to southern California and, for the first time, met Walt Disney.

No one knows the exact moment the idea for building a museum came to him, but we do know that it came from his innate sense of loyalty and sentimental instinct. The Sharpsteen Museum is dedicated to the memory of Calistoga’s pioneers.

Sharpsteen is a spirit that will not be bound by time, nor halted by death. He lives on within the walls of his museum.

Kathy Bazzoli, Weekly Calistogan, 2013

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Bernice Thoburn Sharpsteen

Bernice Thoburn came from a family of prominent Methodist missionaries. Her great aunt founded the first women’s college in Asia, Isabella Thoburn College, in India. Her father was Chancellor of Puget Sound University and later Portland University.

She was born January 24, 1895, in Tacoma, Washington, next door to the Sharpsteen family home where Ben was born in the same year. Because she had no middle name, she often used X as a middle initial. The Thoburns soon moved to Portland, Oregon, and the Sharpsteens moved to Alameda, California, but the two families kept in touch. Bernice’s father died when she was four, and her family moved again, this time to Meadville. Pennsylvania. There, she became part of the household of her grandfather, a Methodist Bishop.

In 1915, Bernice and her older sister Bella traveled to San Francisco to see the Pan Pacific International Exposition. While in California, the girls visited the Sharpsteens in Alameda and the Calistoga ranch.

Bernice graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, about 1917, then taught high school in Harbor Creek, a tiny Pennsylvania town on the shore of Lake Erie. A well-to-do cousin was so impressed by her artistic ability that he gave her a scholarship to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She was there when Ben Sharpsteen was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1919. Ben went to New York to pursue cartooning and animation work, and it was there that he renewed his acquaintance with Bernice. They fell in love and were married in Meadville on December 4, 1920.

They raised two boys: Jim, born August 31, 1923, and Tom, born January 9, 1926. Bernice did freelance artwork and occasionally worked with Ben on commercial art. The family lived in La Crescenta after Ben joined the Disney Studio. Bernice had time to develop and enjoy her artistic talent, mainly in study groups like “The Friendly Daubers.”

Bernice had a bent for the adventurous and for many years drove regularly across the country to Cleveland and back, accompanied only by the two boys. During World War II, she worked as a volunteer in airplane surveillance. In the 1950s, Bernice and her aunt, who was about the same age, applied for a Cook’s Tour worldwide. Even though no one else had signed up, the two ladies flew by themselves to remote places in the South Seas, the Orient, the Near East, and Europe.

Bernice found complete satisfaction at home in a supporting role, like so many strong women of her generation. Her abilities as an artist and teacher took a back seat, and she was more than content with her life as a homemaker and inspiration to Ben. She was even reticent about the excellent monograph she wrote for the Napa County Historical Society on The Callustro Company, a business launched by Calistoga women in the 1880s. As the Sharpsteen Museum developed, she quietly gave her advice, help, and support. Although she remained in the background, she was the second vital force behind the Sharpsteen Museum.

Bernice Thoburn Sharpsteen died on October 10, 1982.