Mel meets Walt Disney on the polo field in 1937 and gets a job.

My polo was a weekend activity, but keeping my four horses conditioned for the stress of competition was a daily requirement. I had to arise at 5 every morning and gallop them through the hills of Encino and the surrounding walnut groves. I would ride and lead one on the gallop with my Dalmatian, Spots, close on our heels. Often I would pass my neighbors who were exercising their horses and celebrities like Clark Gable would enjoy the same early morning gallop in the hills. This was a demanding time because I had to remember that animation and art work were my career, and along with my daily work schedule, it required a great many evenings. I had just completed an MGM distribution short, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, in which the father bear’s voice was an imitation of Wally Beery.

Anticipating further production, the studio hired a fine portrait painter named Art Heinemann. Art enjoyed the fun aspects of the cartoon business and joined in our caricature wars. My caricature, portraying him as an ape man, brought about his immediate retaliation with his interpretation of me.

Even though we knew that our work was a necessity during the thirties, our enthusiasm for that work seemed to insulate us from the real world. Harman and Ising were unaware of another blow to come. MGM’s Fred Quimby cornered many of our studio’s personnel and enticed them to work directly for MGM in its new Culver City studio built just for animation. Harman-Ising Studios was close to folding. I was not invited to join this piracy, so again it looked like I was going to be waiting out another dry spell.

Walt’s studio was up against a tight schedule for shorts. They needed another cartoon short to satisfy their contract with RKO. Aware of Harman-Ising’s predicament, and his own needs, Ben Sharpsteen was sent over to supervise our work on the short, Merbabies. I did layouts, designed characters, and animated. With this additional work, Harman-Ising doors were kept open, in hopes of another release but it was not to be.

Shortly after completing Merbabies, I was scheduled to play in a big Sunday polo game at the Riviera. It was my assignment to play on a team with “Big Boy” Williams, Russ Havenstrite, and Tony Veene. Walt Disney was on the opposing team with Snowy Baker, Red Guy, and Tommy Cross.

At half time Walt came over and accused me of playing like a wild Indian. This was my first introduction to Walt Disney. Apparently, he didn’t like me using my larger horse to run him off the ball in front of a huge Sunday crowd, because he certainly knew exactly who I was. Then, lifting one eyebrow he asked, “What work are you doing now, Mel?” He knew that we had finished the Merbabies short for him, so I answered, “Nothing now, Walt.” To my surprise, he nonchalantly invited me to come over to his studio and talk to Dave Hand about working at Disney. Walt asked, “By the way, do you animate or do story?” I said, “I prefer developing characters and story ideas … I think this is my forte.” I always wondered if he was more impressed with my artwork or with my polo playing, but it didn’t matter because the work was sorely needed to keep up payments on my FHA home loan.

How could life have been better for a nineteen-year-old kid? I was my own man as I enjoyed the budding industry of animation in Hollywood, had my own ranch, and played in the exciting arena of the polo world. All the things I loved were wrapped up in one package. Art permeated everything I did. When I wanted to try a medium that the old masters used before the discovery of oil paints, I mixed tempera colors with egg as a binder, then I began a mural, four-feet tall and eight-feet long, on a piece of Masonite board that was covered with a plaster-like material called gesso. I sketched a scene depicting mythical centaurs playing a vicious game of polo. The only place I could easily work on such a project was in my tack room, so that was where I could be found. My dad also liked it there. Sometimes he would help me feed the horses, and he’d even, on occasion, go take a nap on the day bed in the tack room.

Continued in "Animator on Horseback"!

Mel recalls the growing concerns at the Disney Studio in the late 1930s over Bambi and Adolf Hitler.

By 1938, Walt had thrown everything he owned into the pot. The huge Burbank studio was almost complete and he had four features in production, but the best laid plans of Mickey Mouse and men “gang aft agley”. Europe was fifty percent of Walt’s market and it was quickly being destroyed by Hitler’s Panzer units and Stuka bombers. Now the remuneration from Walt’s pictures became a dribble, and not only that, but Fantasia, now completed, was recorded in stereo sound, which was not acceptable to the single sound systems of the day. Most theaters had a single speaker behind the screen, while Fantasia required seven speakers to give it a full symphonic effect. This meant that it had to be shown via a road show with an expensive array of sound equipment installed at each theater. It was not an economic possibility to show this film.

With the studio spread out between Hyperion and Seward Street, our Bambi unit would often be visited by Walt, Dave Hand, and Perce Pearce when they would come to view our progress at the Seward Street studio. We were used to working on our own, but recognized that Walt’s visits would quickly adjust and even change the direction of the film. One of the gag men drew up a sketch to memorialize such a visit. We knew who was boss. We were making good progress and all sequences were agreed upon, but at one point Walt thought more could be done with Bambi growing up. He suggested the young Bambi would step on an anthill causing a flood in the ant village below. We spent at least a month developing this sequence, then discarded it for straying too far from the storyline.

Delays had meant that Bambi was considerably over budget, so Walt called a meeting with Mr. Giannini of Bank of America. Giannini and his entourage arrived at our Seward Street studio dressed in dark suits and ties. They came to our unit so that Walt could use our storyboards to help him act out each sequence with great enthusiasm. His sales pitch was so convincing that I would have invested in the picture

myself if I had the wherewithal. We got the loan for a million dollars and production on Bambi continued.

Finally, amidst this financial crunch, our Bambi unit was the first to be moved into the new Burbank studio (even though it was still under construction). It was at the new studio that Rico Lebrun would set up a class on the large sound stage in the music recording building. The floor was partially covered with straw so the deer could be comfortable. The animators would situate chairs in a circle around them and listen to Rico’s instruction while they observed the movements of the deer. He was such a fine draftsman that he would make examples of anatomy for us to follow and he would come around and help us with the basic structure and action of the animal. He sketched as he lectured about the muscle and the flexibility of the limbs. And he even produced a sketch book pamphlet for us to follow. We knew he was trying to keep our drawings anatomically correct when the animators would want to return to the rubber and hose-like legs of a cartoon character. Our ultimate goal and challenge was to keep these sketches as realistic as possible, but still remember that we would have these animals speaking dialogue. It was a difficult balance to keep the story believable and not turn it into a typical cartoon. Of particular interest were the live fawns donated and sent to us by the state of Maine. It was a great help to observe these tame deer and capture the feel of their nature. One day Walt sent us one of his polo ponies so that we could study the anatomy of another four-legged animal. I made my rendering with blue and red pencil instead of the usual black charcoal.

In our new studio rooms there were many new innovations and luxuries for us to appreciate. The storyboards could now be hung on built-in hangers, our desks were constructed of beautifully polished hard wood, and upholstered chairs were designed to adjust to every comfortable “working” position. Talk of the plush chairs usually turned to teasing when the chairs’ “chaise longue” position tempted more than one of us to enjoy an after-lunch nap. One of the first napping casualties happened to be Roy Williams, a gag man working with me (later he became the “Big Mooseketeer” in Mickey Mouse Club). Walt just happened to be coming into our unit to see how we liked working in our new setup when he discovered Roy Williams snuggled deep in his new chair. Roy was the first but not the last victim of the luxurious chairs as we all found that our recliners could become a threat to our creativity. Unfortunately for Roy, this was not to be his only run-in with Walt.

Roy was a veritable gag machine and this reputation had earned him his place in the Story Department. However, at times his ideas were so wild that many directors would decline to have him in their department. But others, like myself, enjoyed the input and stimulation of his wit. Roy’s size and demeanor made him a perfect target for caricatures and studio pranks. On one particular day, Roy had left on his lunch hour to purchase some gardening equipment for his home. He stashed a wheelbarrow, bucket, watering hose, and some gardening equipment in his old Cadillac’s ample back seat. At the end of the day, as we left for home, one of the gagsters noted the wheelbarrow in the back of Roy’s car. He took the hose out and connected it to a nearby water outlet; then, leaving the wheelbarrow where it sat, he filled it with water. Later, when most of the Disney personnel had left, Roy emerged from the studio to find his car immovable. Red faced and furious, he glanced around and noticed a Model A Ford which looked like the one belonging to his biggest teaser. To vent his frustration and anger, Roy strode over to the car and gripped the headlights, perched on a bar on the front of the car. Using all his strength, he turned each of the headlights until they faced each other. Satisfied with his revenge, Roy then proceeded to use his new bucket to bail out his wheelbarrow so he could go home. Sadly for the hapless Roy, his problems were only beginning. Unbeknownst to him, the car he had mangled belonged to Walt’s secretary, so when Walt escorted his secretary to her car that evening and discovered that she had no headlights, Walt was upset. The next morning when Roy arrived at the studio, he learned that Walt had fired him. Walt had used this incident as an example to others to put an end to the outrageous pranks that plagued the studio. Some weeks later, Roy was rehired … and a more subdued gag man was he.

Gags and pranks aside, everyone at the studio kept a wary watch on the economy and how it affected our work and the future of the studio. Watching as Hitler moved through Europe was frightening to me. It filled the newsreels and we felt it at home and at work. Although the various productions moved ahead, the war was forcing Walt to scale down his training programs and personnel. Each day artists, writers, and office staff were let go, because without revenue from Fantasia and the European market, the studio had to trim back its overhead. Not everyone was pleased with Walt’s decision to scale down.

Continued in "Animator on Horseback"!