At this point the discussion turned to the Nine Old Men. Id always heard that phrase and was thankful that they explained it. Evidently there were Nine Judges on Roosevelts Supreme Court, and in response to that phrase, Walt said that he had Nine Old Men of His own. The thing was these guys resented it because at the time, they werent really old. This was mainly a PR name for the group, they were actually known as the D-Wing Animators. It worked out as a great publicity item.
The first animator they talked about was Les Clark. He started at Disney in 1927. He graduated (HS Im guessing) on Friday and started at the studio the following Monday. He did most of the animation on the Sorcerers Apprentice, and a lot of the early Mickey drawings.
The next was Marc Davis. Burny was his assistant on Sleeping Beauty. From all accounts he was great to work with, a very hard working guy. Marc could have three Martinis for lunch and come back to work. Evidently they all hung out at Alphonses, at least thats where the execs had lunch. Among many of his projects, Marc designed the characters in Bambi.
Milt Kahl was evidently a volatile soul. He could draw his way out of anything. He would get usept with a drawing, tear it up, put it in the trash, stomp on it and get his foot caught in the Trash Can!
He was also willing to help out young animators, but only if they had really tried and were stumped. If you came to him for help, you needed to have put in the time, if you didnt, hed blow you off.
Ward Kimball was evidently THE most eccentric of all the original animators. Burney worked for him for 10 years and said he had plenty of stories, but none that he could relate at the Destination-D event.
Joe thought of one story he could relate. Now you need to know that Ward Kimball loved his trains. And Joe found him one morning sleeping on the couch in his office. It turns out that he stopped for a few drinks on the way home from work with a few friends from the studio. He came home to find his wife outside a couple blocks away from his house crying in the rain. He took her home and found the dining room table all set and realized that he had forgotten their anniversary.
Then he noticed that through the pained glass windows there were holes in the glass that resembled the shapes of his model trains. He went outside and found them in the yard, in the rain. He cleaned them up and didnt dare go back into the house, so he went to the office and slept on the couch.
Eric Larson was deemed by all as a very nice guy. They talked about how he had mastered the feminine form. He also recognized the need to train the new generation and he stuck around and helped out the next group of animators. He was willing even in retirement to give help and pointers.
John Lansberry is someone that there are not a lot of stories about. Eric said that John could draw ANYTHING. He was a great guy and very modest. He was the kind of guy that would let his inspiration build all day, he would hang out chat with people and then for the last hour or two of the day, lock himself in his office and draw what had been building up all day.
Woolie Reitherman was also a character. He started out in story, and had an off with their heads type of reputation. He did the larger than life type of characters, Monstro the Whale, T-Rex in Fantasia. Eventually he moved into directing. His talent was his ability to see the overall big picture and manipulate a scene.
The last two Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were quite the pair. They met when they were 19 while at Stanford. I think it was Oliie that was the son of an employee at Stanford and Frank went there and met him. Evidently Stanford had no art department, but they both were into art and moved to LA together to study at the art school which was partnering with the Disney studios.
They were told that if they wanted to be hired not to go in together because Disney never hired in pairs. Frank was hired in Oct of 34 and Ollie was hired in Jan of 35. These two were evidently amazing because they could handle more than one character at a time in a scene. Nowadays one animator does one character and sometimes only for one scene. The two of them worked on Pinnochio and Burny said that this was the film that brought him into the studio wanting to be an animator.
At this point they played a scene from Pinnochio and as much as I thought I could remember which one it was, I dont. I think it might have been from near the beginning of the movie when he was still a wooden boy because after they played it Joe said that you could tell that the scene was animated by Ward Kimball. Pinnochios body turned around 360 degrees, but his head stayed fixed as he was looking a Gepetto. Joe said, that was just how Ward Kimballs brain worked.
Peter Pan is the only film that all of the nine old men worked on.
Bambi was Joes all time favorite movie. In his small Midwestern town, it played nine times in three days, and he went to every showing. He was enthralled by the fact there was an animated feature about animals who could talk and that they had personalities. He wanted in on this kind of work! Im not sure that they talked much more about this feature because I would have taken notes, but I think we just heard about Joe and how much he liked the film. They showed the clip where all the little boy animals are being flirted with by little girls in their species, and how silly they become with love in their hearts.
At this point they talked about story boarding which may have come in with Pinnochio. Im sure most of you know what storyboarding is, where you take 4x8 cards with sketches on them to tell the story of the picture. First you break it down into scenes, then you break it down into every single movement that the character has to make in the scene. Before it even goes to the animator, every part of every movement is done as a rough sketch. Then the animation sketch is done, then that is given to the Animator who then draws the work that will be eventually submitted to the ink and paint department. A scene taken literally thousands of drawings, 24 images per second!
Burnys first feature film was Lady and the Tramp. He was an inbetweener, that meant that he did all the animation as the scene was changing from one to another. Often it could be pans of the countryside, the city skyline or some other non character related background.
By the way the photos are of Frank Thomas, notice the familial resemblance in his son sitting on stage. After talking about the movie they showed the spaghetti scene and mentioned how the animation of Tony and his assistant, while not at the forefront of the scene added all the depth to the moment. Walt originally wanted to cut the scene because he wasnt sure that dogs eating pasta could be seen as romantic. Frank Thomas disagreed and animated the entire scene by himself, to prove it could work. The hardest part of the scene was animating Tramp to push the last meatball over to Lady because there was just no way to do it without constricting his head in a unnatural way. It turns out that Frank didnt actually watch Lady and the Tramp until three years after it was released because he didnt like the way it came out.
On Sleeping Beauty, Burny drew Aurora in the opening scenes where she is singing, and picking berries. It took 1440 drawings to create that opening sequence, and he had to redraw the entire thing at least three different times. When the movie was finally done, all the other animators took him out to Alphonses (the big wigs watering hole) for lunch. They brought out a cake that read Happy 31, because that was the scene number of the sequence that he had to redraw so many times! They played that scene for us.
Towards the end they got a little off topic. Joe produced the Black Cauldron and this was about the time that most of the original animators were retiring and he talked about how it was difficult without a lot of experienced animators but they did pull through. He was also talking about the invention of widescreen and how difficult it made their jobs, because you had to write that many more drawings to walk your character off the screen! Becky pulled him back into the timeline though and they resumed the program.
101 Dalmations
My notes are sketchy for this one, but I have written down that Xerox technology was used on this film, but they didnt really describe how it fit into play. For this movie they played the scene depicted below where Cruella comes over to inquire about the puppies, but is told that they are still a few weeks away.
They moved on to the Sword and the Stone, and Bernie worked on this one with Eric Larson. I think because he was his assistant on Lady and the Tramp he just followed Eric to the next film. Frank Thomas also worked on this film. For this clip they played the scene where the amorous squired will not give up on Merlin.
Next we moved on to the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
I wake up to see 7:49AM on the bedside clock. Luckily I found out later that it was 10 minutes fast. We both jumped out of bed, quite a feat for Fran since she doesnt do anything quickly and we are out the door within about 15-20 minutes. We grab some bagels, juice, fruit and coffee upstairs and high tail it over to the DLH Convention Center. The line for even the Diamond Level is pretty huge, but luckily they understand about people with disabilities and reserve a couple spots for Fran and the other woman in a wheelchair who is also a friend of ours. In fact we even ran into her at dinner on our way out of the restaurant the night before.
The last time you had them at DL I went on a chocolate covered strawberry kick here at home. 
