Anthony "Tony" Pipolo, known professionally as Tom Palmer was an Italian-American animator who was active in the 1930s and worked at several animation studios. He was born with the surname of "Pipolo" but changed his name to Palmer. One of his brothers, Frank Pipolo, was a decorated New York City police officer.

Palmer's first animation credits occurred at the Winkler Studio in 1928 which made Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s...

 cartoons. Palmer moved over to Universal Pictures cartoon studio run by Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz

Walter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...

 which took over the Oswald series in 1929. By the early 1930s, he was working at Walt Disney Productions. He was lured by Leon Schlesinger

Leon Schlesinger

Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...

 to work as an animation director at his newly formed Leon Schlesinger Productions

Warner Bros. Cartoons

Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the in-house division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros. Cartoons was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical...

 animation studio which made cartoons for Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 (Palmer's credited Warner Bros. cartoons were 1933's Buddy's Day Out and I've Got to Sing a Torch Song) but Palmer was fired by Schlesinger after Warner Bros. rejected the cartoons that he had produced. Friz Freleng

Friz Freleng

Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....

 was called in to rework Palmer's cartoons and ultimately replaced him as the studio's head director.

After leaving Warner Bros., Palmer then worked at the Van Beuren Studio until it folded in 1936. He briefly returned to Disney where he worked on the cartoon The Old Mill

The Old Mill

The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937...

. His final credited work was as animator in the feature film Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels (1939 film)

Gulliver's Travels is a 1939 American cel-animated Technicolor feature film, directed by Dave Fleischer and produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios. The film was released on Friday, December 22, 1939 by Paramount Pictures, who had the feature produced as an answer to the success of Walt...

at Fleischer Studios

Fleischer Studios

Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...

.