Foreword

by Tom Sito

Since the creation of the art of animation at the beginning of the 20th century, there has been the problem of how to pass on to future generations the accumulated knowledge gathered about the medium. Like all new technologies, it took almost a generation for people to begin trying to preserve their past. Hollywood studios treated old short cartoons and their artwork like they were old newspapers. James Stuart Blackton, the first American animator, did not even bother to mention in his memoirs that he was the first animator. It is not just about the mechanical lessons of how to animate, but the knowledge of the shared experiences of animation artists in their time. The way Samuel Pepys’ memoirs of Restoration England of the 1660s were considered inconsequential in their day, and are now considered an essential resource to understanding their time.

People have written how-to books since Edwin Lutz’s Animated Cartoons, How They Are Made (1920), that young Walt Disney found so useful. Preston Blair’s 1953 workbook, Halas & Batchelor’s Techniques in Film Animation, and Frank Tomas and Ollie Johnston’s Disney Animation—The Illusion of Life, became standard texts. There have been many great schools teaching animation over the years: Chouinard, CalArts, The University of Southern California, UCLA, Sheridan, The School of Visual Arts, NYU, The Savannah College of Design, The Ringling School, The Ecole des Gobelins, The Filmakademie of Baden-Wurtemberg, and more. Add to that all the online courses and software tutorials and it becomes a pretty substantial amount of scholarship.

Yet for most of the animators of my generation, nothing compared to being able to learn about your craft at the edge of the desk of some great animator of the past. For many years, the best way to learn the art of animation was master-to-apprentice.

I was fortunate enough that when I began my animation career in the 1970s, many of the artists of the Golden Age of Hollywood Animation were just beginning to retire. I was able to hear from their own lips what they experienced, and their impressions of great people like Walt Disney and Mary Blair. The animators of my generation were taught to venerate these master craftsmen. The elders themselves were often eager to pass on what they knew to ensure their knowledge would live on and not fade into obscurity.

Many of the Walt Disney animators of the Second Golden Age (Silver Age, Renaissance of the ’90s, whatever) were tutored by masters like Eric Larson, Marc Davis, Elmer Plummer, Kendall O’Connor, Jack Hannah, and T. Hee. After an official period of training, they would go on to work under master animators like Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Glen Keane often spoke of maxims he learned from Ollie, like, “Don’t move a character until they want to.” Andreas Deja spoke about everything he learned from Milt Kahl. Nancy Beiman learned a great deal from Kendall O’Connor. For those of us who began our careers outside of the Mouse House, Richard Williams was known for bringing in past masters like Art Babbitt and Ken Harris to teach us. Maurice Noble took so many young artists under his wing that they were collectively known as The Noble Boys. These included future Disney animator-directors like Rob Minkoff, Kelly Asbury, Michael Giaimo, Sue Goldberg, and Chris Bailey.

I myself was fortunate to learn my craft under Shamus Culhane, Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, and Chuck Jones animator Ben Washam. What they taught me was exponentially way more advanced than what I had learned in my college-level animation courses. Everything from timing tips and calculating compensating pans to twisting a rubber band across your pegs to hold your pages down while drawing. That last tip I got from Helen Komar, who was once an assistant to Bill Tytla in New York.

As much as they taught us by telling us their maxims, we also learned from their experiences, their challenges, like Samuel Pepys, in their day-to-day occurrences. What they did to get to be as good as they were. Which of their outside experiences influenced how they animated. Marc Davis told me Grim Natwick taught him not only how to animate, but how to enjoy good wine and fine cuisine. Bill Tytla trained at the Art Students League in N.Y., as I did. Dave Hilberman traveled to Leningrad and studied avant-garde theater arts under Mayakovsky. Before Walt brought in Don Graham to lecture, Art Babbitt and the other artists hired models and held informal life-drawing classes in their house to improve their skills. They taught us by example as much as by lecture.

Most of those voices are silent now, as it is in the Circle of Life. We the living are left hoping we collected a complete enough record of what they said. That is why it is so important to record and publish verbatim their thoughts and recollections: that future generations may benefit. That was their final wish. Today when I teach students, I do it not just to make a living, but I am paying back my debt to Babbitt and Culhane for their confidence in me.

That is why I am so grateful to Didier Ghez and his team of archivists for continuing this series of books. Didier’s search for first-person accounts of life at the Walt Disney Studio helps preserve these precious nuggets of information for future scholars. Recording the thoughts of some Disney employees who otherwise might never see the light of day. Things that may seem trivial to some, to others may open a door to a new revelation. So read on, and enjoy.

Introduction

There is still so much to learn about Disney history. The Hyperion Historical Alliance (HHA), a non-profit association that I have the honor of leading, just released the 2019 Hyperion Historical Alliance Annual a few days ago and each and every article it contains was a revelation to me, opening new doors and bringing to the fore hidden documents and knowledge. This is also true, of course, of the two upcoming monographs from the HHA: The Making of Walt Disney’s Fun and Fancy Free by J.B. Kaufman and Disneyland 1959 by Todd James Pierce and Joe Campana.

What I find especially stunning is the number of historical gaps that remain to be bridged. I was writing an essay a few days ago about one of Disney’s first female story artists, Grace Huntington, and the amount of new information I was able to dig up surprised me. But what really bewildered me is that, by researching that specific subject, I was able to make a number of significant discoveries related to the proposed Mickey features in the 1930s. Yes, “features,” plural, you read properly. I was also recently conducting some research about the origins of Disney’s “Publicity Production Department,” the internal art department headed at different points in time by artists Mique Nelson, Tom Wood, and Hank Porter, and there again I realized that not much had been written about that specific subject and that lots remained to be discovered. Then there is the history of “True-Life Adventures,” which is absorbing a lot of my time right now. And again, I am finding out that most of what we know or thought we knew is based on myth and publicity stories created by the Disney studio. The real story is more complex and more exciting that anything we knew.

None of these discoveries would happen, however, without three important factors: New historical documents being discovered (the correspondence and diary of Grace Huntington, the papers of Al and Elma Milotte, etc.), enhanced collaboration between Disney scholars, and new venues to release the fruits of our research.

Among the nicest documents that I unearthed in recent months is the excellent article by Joe Collura about Sterling Holloway. When I started researching Holloway, I realized that surprisingly little had been written about him, hence my excitement when I located this article and when Joe allowed me to include it in this volume of Walt’s People. It was thanks to enhanced collaboration between Disney scholars, and especially thanks to the probing of my friend Julie Svendsen, that I was able to conduct the in-depth interview with Imagineer Jeff Burke which concludes this volume. As to the piece which opens this volume, the correspondence with British artist Peter Adby, it would not exist if it weren’t for the efforts of Bob McLain and of my good friend and fellow Disney historian, Libby Spatz.

I hope you will enjoy the fruits of our collaboration and all those new discoveries!