Working with Disney (11 page)
Read Working with Disney Online
Authors: Don Peri
DP:
Steven Spielberg, who made
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
is also a big Disney fan.
MD:
Well, I'm very pleased to see that they're bringing in a lot of people. I feel that when you don't have Walt, you should now give this thing a different look. Walt never hired big-name directors for his live-action films because he liked to direct them. He wanted people who would do what he wanted done. This was a thing from his early days.
DP:
It was always his studio.
MD:
Right. It took a long time to realize that he was hiring you to do what he wanted done. He wanted you to give him something to judge from, and he wanted the best you could do and then better than that.
Dave Hand was born on January 23, 1900, in Plainfield New Jersey. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to the East Coast and beginning his career in animation at the J. R. Bray Studio. Hand later worked for Max Fleischer on the Out of the Inkwell series. He came to California to consider live-action filmmaking but returned to animation, this time with the Walt Disney Studios. He joined the staff in 1930, animating on more than forty shorts, including
The Chain Gang
(1930),
Traffic Troubles
(1931), and
Flowers and Trees.
He began directing in 1932 with
Trader Mickey
(1932) and continued as Walt Disney's first director on
Building a Building
(1933),
Pluto's Judgment Day
(1933),
Who Killed Cock Robin?
(1935),
Thru the Mirror
(1936),
Little Hiawatha
(1937), and many more. Walt assigned Dave to be supervising director of the studio's first animated feature,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
After that triumph, Dave performed the same role for
Bambi
and then served as animation supervisor on
Victory through Air Power
before leaving the studio for an animation opportunity in England. Dave died on October 11, 1986, and was named a Disney Legend in 1994.
An interesting aspect of memory is how each person remembers events differently. While Dave recalls accepting criticism from Walt at previews, whether deserving or not, Ben Sharpsteen, in
Working with Walt: Interviews with Disney Artists,
recalls Dave trying to flee from a disappointing preview early, only to be stopped by Walt as he attempted to leave the theater parking lot in his car.
I interviewed Dave Hand through correspondence dated September 7, 1979. He was hesitant to participate in a face-to-face interview, and as consequence of that reluctance and my budget constraints, I never met him in person. Needless to say, I wish I had.
DP:
As a director of shorts and feature films, you worked closely with Walt Disney. Was it difficult for you to keep up with his innovations and experimentations? Was it difficult to follow his lead?
DH:
No, it was not difficult for me to keep up with Walt Disney's innovations and experimentations. No, it was not difficult to follow his lead. Sometimes it was difficult for him to know just where he himself was goingâhe would be trying to get a handle on his dreams.
DP:
How did you happen to go to work for Walt Disney?
DH:
I left New York to go to Hollywood to look the live-action situation over. It didn't look so good, so I applied at Disney.
DP:
What were your first impressions of Walt? Did they change over the years?
DH:
My first impressions of Walt were that “he was always right.” Even if I didn't think he wasâbut I had enlisted to learn his way of doing things, so I followed his wishes.
DP:
As a supervising director of
Snow White,
did your approach vary greatly from the supervision or direction of shorts? In other words, how
does one go about directing the first animated feature? Were you allowed much latitude, or did Walt monitor all that you did?
DH:
No, my approach did not vary in my supervision of
Snow Whiteâ
there was simply greater scope.
Snow White
was really a group of shorts (which were sequences of
Snow White),
so the only added problem was to hold it all together as a unified whole. I was allowed full latitude on all details of productionâWalt monitored the
results
from Story to Preview.
DP:
As one of the “New York animators,” was it difficult to adjust to the Disney approach to the production of animated cartoons?
DH:
The only difficulty in “adjusting” to the Disney approach was that there was no acceptance of slipshod animation (as there had been in New York) and no thought of cost relative to quality.
DP:
How did the Disney Studio compare to other animation studios where you have worked?
DH:
I saw no difference in working at the Disney Studio except as noted above.
DP:
I have heard several accounts of Walt's on-the-spot evaluations at previews of shorts that disappointed him. Did these sessions create a great deal of anxiety?
DH:
Walt's evaluations at previews of shorts that disappointed him didn't bother me. I knew that those I directed had certain weaknesses, which were evident after a preview. If criticism came my way, I sat quietly and took itâwhether it was justified or not.
DP:
As one of the first directors in a constantly evolving medium, how did you coordinate the work of animators? As the art of animation became more sophisticated, did you supervise animators differently, or was your approach to direction basically the same?
DH:
I think coordinating the work of animators took care of itself. All of us had complete dedication to Walt and the medium, and because of this we were all anxious to help each other get the very best results. As a director, I never thought I was in any way superior to the animator
(and certainly did not act it). It was teamworkâanimators helped animators, directors helped animators, and animators helped directorsâtotal unity.
I always considered animatorsâeach one separatelyâas marvelous human beings with wonderful ideas (some maybe not so good as othersâthe ideas, I mean) and always encouraged them not to take a scene until they were completely satisfied that it worked. And besides, they were all I had to “get it on the screen”!
I never changed my basis for directingâI only worked to get better at it.
DP:
What was it like for you to work at the Disney Studio during the 1930s and early 1940s, the period historians generally regard as the Golden Age of Animation?
DH:
For me, working at the Disney Studio was an intense twenty-four-hour-a-day experience, with ever-new challenges always over the horizon. The problem for me (and I suppose for all of us) was that there wasn't any way that we would know whether something was good or bad until the idea was shown to the theater audience (and then it was too late to correctâthat is, if it were bad). There seemed always to be a struggle to make an idea workâfrom story to final animation approval. There just wasn't any way to positively know whether the idea was going to get over. It would be only through experience and a sixth sense (which Walt had in abundance) that could in a manner assure some measure of success. Even so, we weren't always right (including Walt) in the way we presented an idea.
Speaking only for myself, as I gained experience, I would never take an idea that I was responsible for putting on the screen (whether when I was an animator and later when I was a director) until I was satisfied that it would work. When I became a director, I encouraged my animators to do the same thing. When I was an animator, I would argue with the director until the idea was somehow changed so that I would be happy with itâand when I became a director, I would argue with the story men (including Walt) until the idea was acceptable to me. However much Walt fussed about my approach if his idea and mine didn't
agree, I'm quite sure he secretly liked it. Why else did he select me to direct
Snow White?
DP:
On
Snow White,
animators were cast by characters, but on
Bambi,
the film was broken down by sequences, and any animator could animate any character. What kind of problems did these two approaches pose for you as the supervising director? Did you prefer one approach to the other?
DH:
I don't think you have your conclusions altogether right about the casting of animators on either
Snow White
or
Bambi.
Animators were selected for their type (style) of animation. Those animators whose style seemed to be compatible with the particular character(s) would be given key scenes in order to establish (for all the animators) a basis for the personality of the character because the character would be used in many scenes (say) throughout the picture. All key men would confer back and forth about all characters, but usually one guy would be the “authority” on his character. This was the general plan, although sometimes it was altered. This would be my approach.
Walter Lantz was born on April 27, 1900, in New Rochelle, New York. He began his animation career at sixteen, working with Gregory La Cava at the studio set up by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to create cartoons from popular comic strips. After two years, the studio closed, and Walter joined the J. R. Bray Studio. At Bray, Walter also worked as a producer, creating films that combined animation with live action with cartoon characters Dinky Doodle and Colonel Heeza Liar. But Hollywood beckoned, and Walter arrived in 1927, working first as a gag writer for Mack Sennett and then moving to Universal Studios, where he remained for most of the rest of his career. When Walt Disney lost the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to his distributor, Charles Mintz, Universal retained the copyright, and the company's head, Carl Laemmle Jr., soon asked Walter to replace Mintz as producer, giving Oswald a new lease on life and a new look under the other Walter. 1935, Walter Lantz Productions took the reins of animation at Universal and began producing cartoons under contract. Walter subsequently introduced many cartoon characters, including Andy Panda, but his most famous and most successful character was Woody Woodpecker, who had a huge box-office following,
inspired hit recordings of his theme song, spawned a vast array of merchandise, and gave steady employment to Walter's wife, Gracie, who succeeded Mel Blanc as the character's voice. Walter Lantz Productions continued to make short subjects longer than any other major animation studio, but by 1972, even he had to stop as a consequence of shrinking revenue from film exhibitors. He died on March 22, 1994.
On April 23, 1979, two weeks after Walter received a special lifetime achievement Oscar, I interviewed him in his office, which was filled with memorabilia, especially of Woody Woodpecker. He was friendly and forthright with his story and opinions and I enjoyed meeting him, having been an avid fan of his television show back in the late 1950s. I only wish he had scheduled more time for our interview, because we were in the middle of my questions when his next appointment arrived. But I am happy to present what I was able to record with this true pioneer of the animation world.
DP:
How did you happen to get started in animation? I understand that you went to work at the Bray Studio.
WL:
Long before that. I really started in 1916. My first job was for William Randolph Hearst, who had started a cartoon studio.
DP:
Hearst International?
WL:
Hearst International, yeah. Cosmopolitan Pictures. It was set up by a cartoonist named Gregory La Cava. I wasn't an animator; I was just starting in the businessâsuch characters that were famous in the Hearst papers like the Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, Jerry on the Job, and all of those. We didn't create any new characters. That's where I learned how to animate. When I was eighteen, I was an animator. From there, I went to the Bray Studios. That was about 1922. I was at Bray working with George Stallings, who was in charge. Then George left and I took charge of the entire studio. I made those combination [live action and animation] pictures. I guess it must have been about 1924. They talk
now about how combination animation is new. Gosh, I did it almost sixty years ago, because I've been producing with Universal now for fifty years.
DP:
One article discusses using blow-up photographs as opposed to combining live action and animation. I haven't seen any of the films where the backgrounds are actually photographs of a room. Did that work fairly well? Was it very effective at the time?
WL:
No. The way I did it, the cameraman would photograph me going through my action, pantomiming with an imaginary character, assuming that the character is only maybe a foot high. We'd shoot that action first. Then we would take the negative and take about every other frame and make an eight-by-ten bromide photograph of every one of them. Then I'd take these photographs and put them on my drawing board and animate on tissue paper over the photograph. For instance, if I had him in my handâI'd pantomime the action in my handâand then I'd place the Colonel Heeza Liar or Dinky Doodleâwhat I was doing at the timeâin the hand. Then we'd ink and paint cels from the drawing. Then we'd photograph each one of those photographs with that particular cel. They were numbered. We'd have maybe two or three thousand of those in a picture. We developed them in racks of fifty at a time so the density would be the same. That's how it was done. That was the first method of combining characters. Before that, Max Fleischer combined himself in the Out of the Inkwell series, but that was something different. That was rear projection. But he never used the system. In fact, I was the first one to ever use this system.
