David attended the Hollywood Professional School, a school for the children of film makers and film artists and for those who were already working in the film industry. At the age of 16, he changed his name to George David Pal and expressed his preference to be David Pal.

In his early 20's he worked with Wah Chang and Gene Warren at Project Unlimited, where he did stop-motion animation on MGM's The Time Machine (1960), "The Cobbler and the Elves" sequence in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), The Power (1968).

David retired and moved to Northern, California with his wife, Mariam. He concentrated his time on his new home and pursuing an interest in still photography,

He has four children, Alison, Daniela, Jeff, and Jeremy.

David had been fighting cancer for the last 14 years, the cancer took it's toll on him in the end.

Funeral was for close friends and family and held on January 17, 2026.

I became acquainted with David through my web site, I had located and visited the grave site of his father George and posted a photo on my web site of George's head stone. David saw the posting and contacted me to tell me he had designed the art on his fathers headstone. Shortly after this correspondence Wah Ming Chang passed away (2003) and I emailed David the details I had been given for a memorial service to be held. We both attended and by chance we were both booked into the same hotel in Carmel. David, his fiance Mariam and I had dinner later that day. David spoke about his time working for Wah on The Time Machine. He and Mariam were planning to come down to LA to clear out his mother's condo in Westwood, Zsoka had passed away in 2002. At this time I was clearing out my fathers house, my dad died in 1999.I told David if he needed any help like painting walls etc. I would be willing to help since I was already doing that at my dad's house.

A while later I got a phone call at home from David, he and Mariam were in town at this mother's condo and invited us over for dinner. Little did I know how that evening would change my life. We had dinner and he showed us the layout of the condo all 2000 sq ft of it. As we were about to leave David says he and Mariam are leaving in the morning and hands me the keys to the condo and says he and Mariam have removed everything they want and he wants me to take charge of liquidating everything that's left.

So for the next several weeks, my routine was drop my wife off at the UCLA campus, she worked there at the time, drive to my dad's house in Culver City and work there until noon or 1pm then swing by Piece o' Pizza and get lunch, drive to Mrs. Pal's condo in Westwood have lunch and work there until time to pick my wife up from work.

We've been friends since.