Jenny Reyn

(1913-1996)

Born Edna Reynolds in 1913, she grew up on the Fulmer Chase Estate in Buckinghamshire, and took the name 'Jenny Reyn' as her professional pseudonym after studying art at Wycombe (presumably at what was then the Wycombe Technical Institute).

In the early 1930s she started work for the poster design agency Ralph & Mott. At the end of 1939, with the outbreak of WWII, the studio closed 'for the duration', leaving her looking around for a job.

Her boyfriend discovered that the newly-formed Halas & Batchelor studio was advertising for staff. She applied and was taken on - apparently one of their first hirings, as Liz Horn recalls that when she joined the studio, as Jenny's assistant, the animation staff consisted of just Harold Mack and Jenny.

In her memoir, the first film she recalls working on was the advertising film Carnival in the Clothes Cupboard, for Lux soap flakes, animating the dancing ballerina and deer.

In 1943 she married her boyfriend Ernest (Albert Ernest Clarke) and in 1946 the birth of their first child obliged her to give up work. After the birth of their second child in 1950 Jenny signed up with the Kathleen Boland artists studio, as a freelance illustrator of children's books and comics. She continued working in this field into her 70s.

Filmography

(There is disagreement between sources on the dating of Halas & Batchelor films. This would seem to be down
to the discrepency between actual production dates and registered release dates. I have opted for the former here.)

Links to Other Sites

Bear Alley: Jenny Reyn: biography covering her career as a children's illustrator.

How I came to work for Halas & Batchelor - Jenny Reyn: a memoir presented by Jez Stewart.

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