In this excerpt from Disney animator Jack Bradbury's autobiography, Jack remembers his tenuous start at Disney's as an inbetweener.

Old Disney studio on Hyperion. The first Monday after arriving, I hurried out to Hyperion Avenue on the east side of Hollywood, where the studio was located. There I was taken in to meet George Drake, the man in charge of the Inbetween Department and new trainees.

We had a little informal chat first, then sitting at an animation desk in his office, George flipped through an animated scene to show me how the progression of drawings gave the illusion of movement. This was fascinating, for I was now seeing just how it was done. George took out a couple of key drawings.

“These,” he said, “are called ‘extremes’. They are the important or key drawings in the scene. The animator creates the movement by drawing the character moving through the scene as prescribed by the director. His main key drawings are the extremes of the action. Then an assistant breaks it down to simple inbetweens, which are done in this department. That’s what you will be learning to do here.”

As he said this, he placed the two key drawings, numbers 43 and 47, on the two pegs that held the drawings in place. Turning on a light beneath, we could now see the bottom drawing through the top one. He then put a blank sheet of paper on the pegs over the other two. Then flipping the top two separately, he began to create a drawing that was half-way between the two. He again flipped the two top drawings separately to show me the bit of movement between the three drawings. “See how it works?” he said.

“Always leave the bottom drawing still, just flip the top two and do it constantly as you draw, to see just where to put the lines as you make the middle drawing, called an inbetween.”

He pointed to a little vertical line drawn in the corner which was divided in half, then in half, then in half again. Each division was numbered. The middle one between 43 and 47 was numbered 44, the next one dividing 44 and 47 was 45, and the final drawing between 45 and 47 was 46.

“You see,” George explained, “here the animator has indicated he wants the inbetweens done this certain way, which will slow the action into 47. Do you understand?” George smiled at me scratching my head. I didn’t quite get it, not until later. “Think you can do that?” he asked. I wasn’t at all sure, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “I’ll sure give it a good try.” I grinned not too confidently. He gave me an old scene from a past production, from which he’d removed all the inbetweens. Then he handed me a metal Eversharp pencil and a small box of long, thin HB leads.

From his office in the rear, he walked me through the large, well-lit inbetweener’s room of five or six rows of animation desks, each row having three or four inbetweeners cheerfully busy at their work. They seemed like a happy crew and glanced up, smiling as we walked by. In the front end of the big room was a row of four desks kept only for those “trying out”. I was the only one at present, but soon I’d see others come and go, most of whom would leave disappointed, never to return.

“There’s plenty of paper above you there on the shelf, Jack. So go to it. And if there’s anything you don’t understand, or if you have any questions, just come back and see me.” I thanked him and sat down to look at the scene on which I’d be making that so-important “tryout”. I tried holding it in one hand and flipping the pages with the other as George had done, but I was awkward and clumsy. I switched hands and got the same result.

Finally, I got so I could flip the pages well enough to see the action more clearly, and as I sat studying the movement, it suddenly occurred to me that this scene, created by one of the talented animators, had already been seen on the screen by millions of people. A little chill of excitement ran through me.

Placing the scene on the shelf, I took the first two extremes from the stack of drawings, number 1 and 5, and placed them on the pegs, then a blank sheet of paper on top of both. Then taking out a thin HB lead, I inserted it into the Eversharp and I was ready to go. No, not quite. As thin as the lead was, it still had a blunt point, so I took another sheet of paper and worked the point sharp. Now I was ready.

Trying to flip the two top drawings, as George had so easily done, was difficult to do. And there was no sense trying to draw the inbetween until I could flip the drawings well enough to see where to put the darn inbetween lines. For a long time I sat just trying to flip the two top drawings properly. Unable to perform this simple requirement right off, I felt like a clumsy dummy, never suspecting that everyone seated behind me in that big room had also probably gone through the same thing. I don’t know why, but I was positive they’d all been able to master this trick right away.

It took me a couple of days and a lot of wasted paper to get a decent start, but as I got into it, I began to see how many things you could do wrong on a simple inbetween. It is so easy to get the size of the head, or the hands, or the body of your inbetween character wrong. Yours might be smaller, larger, too thin, or somehow unlike the other two drawings. It is difficult to see at first, and being able to do inbetweens right comes only after working hard at it for quite some time.

Still sitting alone in “try-out” row, I could hear the other inbetweeners behind me working away happily, talking and singing as they banged out their drawings. I knew I could learn to do this and I wanted badly to become one of them.

Continued in "Walt's People: Volume 16"!

In an interview with Michael Broggie, Walt's personal secretary, Lucille Martin, talks about his moods, the only time he got angry with her (it involved Bob Hope), and other topics.

MB: People talked about Walt’s moods and tempers and things like that.

LM: I never saw it. In the office he was even keel. He got mad at me once, but it was the only time. It was on a Friday and everyone went home early on a Friday afternoon then, but not Walt. He would say, “Get so and so,” and I found out they left for the day. Then he’d say, “Get the next person,” and I’d say, “Left for the day.” “Somebody else.” “Left for the day.” And on it went. So I’d say, “Sorry, they left for the day,” and he’d say, “That’s okay, they’re working all the time. They’re creative and you just don’t turn that off. So it’s okay if they leave early, they’re working.” He never got mad at them and never got mad at either one of us, except that one time he got mad at me.

It was his last summer and he was really looking forward to this cruise in Alaska and all the children were going, and it was kind of unusual to get all the children together. I think Ron and Diane had six kids. They were going, and Bob Brown and Sharon, and Victoria who was a baby. She was, I think, nine months old. They flew up to Seattle and boarded the yacht. He called in every evening to get his messages and anything we needed him for.

There was this airline strike then, and Bob Hope chartered a yacht when Walt left. He was going to go fishing with some of his buddies and he called and said could he fly up to Seattle on the plane going to pick up Walt and his family. I asked Walt and he said, “Fine, no problem.” So I made arrangements with Bob and I asked the pilots what time Bob Hope and his buddies should be out at the flight office in order to be there at the time Walt specified to pick them up in Seattle. I think they were taking the boat from Canada to Seattle.

The night before they were due to be picked up, Bob Hope called the captain to see that everything was alright and it just so happened that Walt was in the cabin with the captain. So the captain said, “Walt’s right here.” So Bob asked to speak to him. He wasn’t prepared and didn’t know exactly what to say, so kiddingly he said, “This is great, we really appreciate you giving us this ride, because we can’t get a plane up, but why did you have to get us up so early?”

And Walt was upset and the next morning he called me and said, “Why did you make Bob Hope get up so early?” I said, “It was the time the pilots said they had to leave in order to pick you up at that time.” He said, “We could have changed our time.” But I know with all those children and with Mrs. Disney waiting, just because Bob Hope didn’t want to get up early, and a nine-month-old baby, there’s no way I should have done any different. I’ve always been like that. If I know I’m right, it doesn’t bother me. I’m very apologetic if I’m wrong. But he came in and walked right past my desk.

MB: So you knew something was up. What was his usual greeting?

LM: “Good Morning,” and “Get me a cup of coffee.” But it didn’t bother me. I thought, “He’ll get over it. I know I did right. He’ll get over it.” But he did it for about two days. Didn’t call my intercom to make any phone calls and then it was all over. But it really didn’t bother me. Tommie said about the girl before me, who was there just a couple of weeks, that if he said anything cross to her that she would cry. Tommie would say, “You have to go someplace else and cry. You can’t sit at this desk and cry.” But it didn’t bother me a bit, and he was always so nice, and in a couple of days it was over and forgotten about. I know I asked Diane and Sharon, “What did he say about that?” They said he never mentioned it, never said a word. He knew he was wrong, and he never complained about it or said a word.

We were always asked to find a gift for Mrs. Disney, and I remember Tommie was on the phone trying to find a piece of jewelry or a watch or a new perfume and suggest it to him, and he said, “No.” After a couple of days he came in one morning and said, “I got it. Send her…” I can’t remember what the anniversary was. It was like thirty-seven or thirty-nine red roses. He said “And say, ‘you lucky girl’.” Mrs. Disney didn’t remember that, but I remembered it. I was so touched by it. I thought it was pretty special. He was very pleased about it.

MB: Did you have anything to do with having the hat bronzed? It was given on Valentine’s Day one year. It was the hat that Lillian had flipped right into the bullring when they were in Mexico.

LM: Oh no, that must have been before my time.

MB: She hated that hat. We have one of them in the barn on display. It was a favorite hat that he liked to wear. So she pulled it off his head and flipped it right into the bullring, hoping the bull would trample and ruin it, so she wouldn’t have to look at him in that silly hat.

LM: She was a gutsy lady.

MB: One of the toreadors who retrieved it brought it back over and handed it to him, so he brushed it off and put it back on, and as a gift for Valentine’s Day he had the crown shaped as a heart and had it bronzed on a plaque, and it was still hanging on a wall in the pool house at Carolwood. When I used to go and visit Mrs. Disney, there it was right on the wall.

LM: It wasn’t there when I used to go in.

MB: The children, did they ever come around the offices?

LM: Yes, they did. I can’t remember an occasion, but they did come in and out. I can remember, I think it was when Patrick was born, and he was so eager to get out to the hospital to see Diane and his new grandson.

MB: He was very pleased when Walter was born: finally a son. He was beginning to wonder, because he wasn’t happy the first one wasn’t named after him. [Christopher was the first grandson.] So there were a couple of girls who came along after, then finally Walt, and he had these cigars made up.

LM: I remember seeing those cigars.

MB: He passed them all around. He was very proud. My father didn’t smoke, but he had a collection of cigars that had been given to him, and they were on this little gadget on the back of his desk. I remember, when I was kid, I would look at the cigars because they had this writing on them. One of them was that “Walter” cigar.

LM: And then he got two more boys, because it was Walter, Ronnie, and Patrick. He was gone when Patrick was born, so it was Ronnie he visited. [Ronald was born on October 9, 1963, and Patrick onNovember 19, 1967.] I went to work for Ron [Miller] after. I stayed on and wrote “Thank You” letters for Mrs. Disney. We had a lot of those to send out and we answered every one of them. Mrs. Disney and Diane answered them, and I stayed on another year in the office. I don’t remember when I went on to Ron Miller’s office. So I was in Walt’s office and Ron was just a vice president, and I went to work with him and then he was made president and we went back to Walt’s office. When Michael Eisner came in, he was in Walt’s office.

MB: Didn’t you work with Card Walker, too?

LM: No, I never went to work for him. I went from Walt to Ron to Michael.

MB: Donn Tatum was in there, too, with Card.

LM: Donn Tatum had Mary Mullen that worked for him.

MB: Did they all take Walt’s office at one time or another?

LM: No. Just Walt and Ron and Michael had Walt’s office.

MB: As I understand, for a long time the offices were just kept closed and all the furniture was there and they finally took it all out and took it down to Disneyland.

LM: What happened was they closed his office and Ron didn’t want to go, as he thought it was a bit presumptuous to go to Walt’s office. But Card Walker talked him into it when he became president. So they closed it for a while and then the Archives went in there and then when Ron became president, Card talked him into moving back in it. When Michael came in, he came right into it, too.

MB: What was the change in atmosphere when Michael and Frank [Wells] came aboard?

LM: Michael was trying very hard to be the thing. Two assistants came with him from Paramount, but didn’t stay very long. They always called him “Mr. Eisner”, and after I finally got “Walt” down, I was calling him “Michael”. And, you know, it was “Ron” [for Ron Miller]. Michael said, “I’m not so sure I like to be called by my first name,” because the other girls called him “Mr. Eisner”. I said Walt went by “Walt” and I think I showed him my little picture and he said, “Well, let’s go along with it.” At that time I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. Michael came in with two girls, so I went over to Universal and applied for a job with Jules Stein. He was a good friend of Walt’s and he had been in and out, and he knew me. So I went over thinking, “I better get a job,” because these two girls were going to replace me. It was about at that time there was an employees’ recognition party, and Michael and Frank Wells passed out the awards and Frank was talking about all the assets the company had and how they were going to have to get used to the parks and this and that, and Michael got up and said, “and I got Lucille,” and everybody clapped. So that was when I knew that I had a job.

Continued in "Walt's People: Volume 16"!