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Feature of the Month

John Canemaker: Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation

Walt Disney's Nine Old Men

Of the many men and women who have researched and written extensively about Walt Disney, John Canemaker holds a special place. Not only is he the author of such significant books as "Paper Dreams," and "Before the Animation Begins," he is an internationally recognized animator and animation historian. He designed and directed animation for the Academy Award-winning documentary, "You Don't Have to Die" and the Peabody Award winning documentary, "Break the Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse."

A professor of film and television at New York University, Canemaker's latest work is a tour de force of research and graceful prose. It's called "Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation," and is being published by Disney Editions. It provides insights into the lives and efforts of nine enormously talented men who began to work with Walt in the early years of his career. Though Walt's may have been the name the public associated with the production of his studio, he personally acknowledged a life-long appreciation for their work, and contribution to his success. Following is an excerpt from the book; if you'd like to order it, just visit the Museum Gift Shop.


LES CLARK

Les Clark

Walt Disney's job offer changed Les Clark's life. Throughout his lengthy career he repaid Walt with loyalty and a dogged striving to improve his work. In return, he gained a "knowledge of the (animation) business from the ground up." During Clark's first year at the studio, he happily toiled in the industry's lowest entry level positions: the first six months he operated the animation camera, then spent a subsequent six months as an inker/painter. That is, he traced hundreds of animation drawings onto sheets of clear celluloid acetate ("cels") in ink with a crow quill pen and painted them on the reverse side with opaque colors (black, white and gray only, in those pre-Technicolor days).

Clark entered animation at a pivotal time and participated in events that shaped not only Disney's future but the history of the art form itself. When he arrived the ALICE series was winding down and a series starring a new character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was beginning. Ub Iwerks, who became Clark's mentor, was the studio's top animator, capable of turning out large numbers of cleverly animated drawings each day.

Ub and Walt, both born in 1901, had been business associates as teenagers in 1919 in Kansas City. They were a great team whose contrasting personalities and artistic abilities complemented each other. Quiet, shy Iwerks communicated primarily through his impressive, facile draftsmanship; Walt was an out-going salesman with limited drawing ability. His greatest creative talent lay in constructing entertaining stories around believable cartoon personalities, an ability that Ub lacked and had little interest in. Walt dominated the studio and controlled every aspect of the filmmaking process. At impromptu story meetings, he shaped gags into a narrative, timed the animation after it had been drawn, and made out the exposure sheets, which cameramen used to shoot the scenes. Sometimes he ordered a special "pencil test" (film shot of roughly drawn preliminary animation) in order to study the action's effectiveness before committing the drawings to ink and paint; often he sent scenes back for revisions.
Walt was groping toward a new type of animation that incorporated the "stylistic conventions of live action films" with emotions derived from the character's personalities. "I want characters to be somebody," he said in 1927. "I don't want them just to be a drawing!"

Clark couldn't help but notice quiet dissension among the animators due to Walt's strong personality. The boss's demeanor at work was different than over a lunchtime confectionery counter. He behaved, well, like a boss. He clashed often with some artists about their work, and in turn they grumbled about Walt's impatience, verbal abuse, and staff firings. Several of the Kansas City animators had ambitions to open their own studio and were biding their time until opportunity beckoned.

Even Iwerks was not immune to Walt's demands. They had on-going differences regarding the timing of characters' actions and Iwerks's method of animating "straight ahead." That is, he made every drawing one after the other, from, say, drawing A through drawing Z. Walt preferred the "key pose" method, in which a head animator makes main (or "extreme") poses of an action and an assistant fills in the "inbetween" drawings. The pose method would allow the already speedy Iwerks to turn out even more animation, a saving of time and money. Eventually Walt pressured Iwerks into seeing things his way.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was a success and in March of 1928 Walt went to New York to renegotiate his contract. But, to his shock, the series' distributor asked him to accept inferior terms. If he did not, Oswald would be taken from him, for the character's copyright belonged to Universal Pictures, not Disney. In addition, the distributor said he had secretly signed up Walt's animators -- with the exception of Iwerks -- and they were prepared to leave him to work on Oswald at a new studio. Les Clark was not approached; though he had risen to "inbetweener," he was still considered a greenhorn. Walt refused the distributor's offer and, during the return ride back to Los Angeles (legend has it), he thought up a new character to replace the stolen rabbit. It was, of course, the mouse that Walt's wife, Lillian, named Mickey.

Back at the studio, the soon-to-depart animation crew finished the remaining Oswalds on Disney's contract. (One can only imagine the stressful working environment.) In a backroom Walt secretly worked with Ub designing the new mouse character and creating his first film PLANE CRAZY (1928). Mickey's circular form, tube-like appendages, and white mask on a black head were a generic formula used by all the studios. Ear shapes mainly distinguished one character from another: Felix the Cat's sharp points, Oswald's oblong lozenges, and Mickey's rigid globes. "The reason that Mickey was drawn in circles," explained Clark years later, "was that it was easier and faster to draw: the round head, the round body, the round fanny, and so forth." Iwerks, facile master of loopy, eccentric patterns of rubbery action, once made 700 animation drawings in a single day. Small wonder he completed PLANE CRAZY by himself in two months.
Clark admired Walt's determination and strong ego. "I think that is what enabled him to surmount the difficulties on Mickey and get it going." he said. "I mean, he was fighting real odds." A new young man, Wilfred Jackson, talked his way into a job during this difficult period. "I needed to learn how to make cartoons," he said. " [Walt] said he didn't know if there was going to be a studio here in a week anyway. I thought that's a funny way for a guy to be talking. In a week everybody walked out except two or three of them."

In general, there would always be a difference in attitude toward
Walt between novices trained on-the-job (including all of the Nine Old Men), and animators who came to Disney's with prior experience. With exceptions, most of the former were more loyal to and fond of Walt and his ways than the latter. Jackson (who became one of Walt's best, most meticulous directors) was, like Les Clark, devoted to the man who gave him his start. "It wasn't just because he was the boss," Jackson said. "It wasn't just bread and butter. Somehow it was the most important thing in the world to me to get what Walt wanted in the picture."

Copyright Disney Editions 2001.


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