Working with Disney (12 page)

DP:
In a book I read, I thought what they were talking about, in addition to doing that, was to actually photograph a room to be used as a background and then use blow-ups of the photographs with the cartoon character—just by itself in the room.

WL:
Oh, we'd do that, yeah. Now that was a still. Say we had a scene on the drawing board or in the room, then we'd make an eight-by-ten still of the room, just like a painted background. We'd animate and photograph the cels on that particular still.

DP:
I've never seen any of those kinds of cartoons. Was that effective?

WL:
Very effective. I made over a hundred of those at Bray. You see, I was with Bray for about five years. I went with him in 1922 and I came out here in 1927 and started with Universal in late 1927.

DP:
From what I've read about him, Bray sounds like he was a marvelous person and an extraordinary talent.

WL:
Did you ever see that film he made, I think it was called
Dreamy Bud?
I think he made it in 1914. He made a combination cartoon. He drew the character on every frame of film and colored it by hand.

DP:
I have a question on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. As I understand it, after Mintz had the character, about a year later, Universal took over the character, or did you take it over?

WL:
There have been so many stories about that. Most of them are all false, you know. People write them, but they didn't know what they were talking about. What really happened: When I went to Universal in 1927, Disney had been producing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal. He came up with the character of the Mouse, and Universal didn't want any part of it. They said that mice wouldn't go. So he left, and you know what became of the Mouse. He could have bought out Universal. So Universal wanted to start their own cartoon department. Mintz had been animating Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This was the black and white rabbit with the long ears. But Mintz didn't own the copyright. Universal always owned the copyright to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. [Carl Laemmle, head of Universal] asked me if I would set up a cartoon studio for them. I'd had ten years' experiencing producing cartoons before I came out here, so I said I would, but providing I could redesign the rabbit. I made him a white rabbit, which is not the Disney rabbit at all. So I produced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal for ten years. Going back, I set up a whole department for them—built desks, I had a camera built, and everything. I had to start it from scratch. We had over a hundred people working in that department, because we were turning out one every two weeks. I think I produced over two hundred. Then later, in 1937, when I went independent, Universal was having financial troubles and couldn't
produce cartoons. They asked me if I would produce them independently. They would release them.

Universal assigned all the copyrights of all the characters I had created for them, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I still maintain the copyright on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

DP:
Did Mintz ever have a copyright on that, or was it always Universal?

WL:
Always Universal owned the copyright. Universal got Mintz to make a few cartoons. I don't think they made very many—maybe half a dozen or so.

DP:
I had noticed that there was quite a change in Oswald.

WL:
Well, that was a true story. You know, one of those jerks that writes for that magazine [Walter did not identify the magazine]—it's a good magazine—made a statement that I really resented, and I wrote to the magazine. He said I swiped Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It's such a ridiculous thing for him to say. He didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But that's a true story I just gave you.

DP:
Another thing that I was curious about also in connection with Disney was something I read regarding a feature film that he was thinking about making during the war about gremlins. What I read was part of someone's doctorial dissertation. He said that, I think, you and several other studios had been planning short subjects dealing with gremlins, and I guess Roy Disney had called you and a few other studios and asked if you would make the short subjects, because they were going to make the feature. They never did make the feature. Was that kind of cooperation common among studios?

WL:
No, but we were a friendly group. We had an association, the Animated Cartoon Association, just a group like [Leon] Schlesinger [of Warner Bros.], and [Fred] Quimby of MGM, and Disney, myself. We always cooperated with each other. It was a very friendly group.

DP:
When I read that, I thought that was a pretty nice thing for people to do. I would have thought that it might have been more cutthroat.

WL:
Oh, no. As far as I know, this has never been a cutthroat business. For instance, if an animator had come to me and said he wanted to go to work for Disney, I'd call up Walt and I'd say, “Walt, this fellow thinks he can do better with you.” He'd say, “How much you paying him?” I'd tell him. He'd say, “I can't pay him any more than you're paying him.” That was the end of it. But if you could get an increase going someplace else, okay, God bless you, go ahead. No, there was no pirating of help. We had a wonderful group, and we still have. I think that animated cartoonists are a wonderful group of people. It's too bad that these producers right now haven't got the money or the time to do the type of animation like we all did in the past. See, they're limited with time and budget, and that's why they call it limited animation. All these producers that are making cartoons today could produce full animation, but I don't think it will ever be done again unless it's for a feature. I stopped producing Woody Woodpecker and the other cartoons [seven] years ago. And the reason I did, I could see the writing on the wall. They were getting to be so expensive that there would be no chance at all of getting in syndication. Those cartoons cost at least eighty or eighty-five thousand dollars apiece to produce today. When I quit, I was getting up to forty-five thousand. I said, “Jeez, this can't go on forever. I'll be broke.” Disney quit ten years before I did. MGM quit, and then Columbia and Paramount. I was the last one to throw in the sponge. But fortunately, by going independent, I own all my own cartoons. So we syndicate them. Oh, I have several hundred that have never been on television yet. So I feel very good about being able to play these cartoons on television, so that the present generation of young people can see what we did years ago.

DP:
Certainly what you did years ago is better than the kind of thing that's being produced now.

WL:
Especially see some of those musicals I made with forty-five-piece orchestras. Today, you couldn't even use a hand organ [laughs].

DP:
I remember your television show. It was on in the 1950s, wasn't it
The Woody Woodpecker Show?

WL:
Yes, in 1957.

DP:
You would come on and talk about animation.

WL:
How animated cartoons were produced. Yeah.

DP:
That was a long time ago for me, but I have a pretty good recollection of it, because I used to watch it all the time. In fact, I think one of the sponsors sold a Woody Woodpecker hat. I used to have one of those. I don't know how I ever let it slip through my hands.

WL:
Yeah, that was a good show.

DP:
I was about eight years old then, but I was really impressed with what you were doing on the show.

WL:
It had never been done before either. Our show is doing very well now in syndication. We cover pretty much of the country. Although I am not producing, we reissue thirteen theatrical cartoons a year. We go back maybe ten years and pick out thirteen real good cartoons. They play in the theaters and the drive-ins. This generation has never seen them. So you see, with the types of pictures that I made over the years, I never produce anything timely or anything that would be any problem, you know.

DP:
They don't become a fad, then.

WL:
No. No fads. And that's why they'll be good in perpetuity, I hope.

DP:
I wanted to ask you about Woody Woodpecker's voice. I was at a lecture given by Mel Blanc a couple of years ago. He mentioned something about having done the voice initially but then was under some kind of contract obligation, and you had to look around for another voice.

WL:
Yeah, that's true. Mel did the voice for Woody for about four or five pictures. Then Warner Bros. signed him up to an exclusive contract, where he couldn't work for anybody else. He used to work for all of us. They signed him up, so I started shopping around, tried various voices. I decided on using Gracie, my wife, who had a lot of experience in the theater and was a good reader. It's a speeded-up voice anyway, you know. We shoot it straight up and then speed it up. She's been doing it now, oh, since 1950. That voice when you saw the presentation of the Oscar that I received, she did the bit that Woody spoke.

DP:
Did any particular thoughts come to mind when you were getting the Oscar?

WL:
No, except it was a wonderful feeling that after all these years in this business that someone in our field—fortunately, it happened to be me—was recognized. I felt really, as I said in my short speech, that I considered it as a tribute to the entire animated cartoon industry that produced all this creative art over the years. We've all given so much entertainment throughout the world, and we've never received the recognition that we should have received, especially from the theater owners. They still pay the same price for the rental of a cartoon they paid fifteen years ago. That's why we stopped producing cartoons, because we couldn't get our investment out of the theaters. Television is what saved us, really. This has been a wonderful industry. I'm so happy to know that this art is so appreciated. That ovation that I received at the academy—very heartwarming. That showed how much they appreciated not just my work, but they showed appreciation for really all the animated cartoons.

DP:
They seemed to be really enjoying the clips, too.

WL:
They'd never seen anything like that. That clip that you saw of me fighting the wolf, that was done about fifty-five or sixty years ago. Another thing that I'm very proud of: last year I took all this memorabilia that I had saved in warehouses. I sold my other studio and moved in here a year ago. I had all this material. It goes back fifty years. A lot of it was thrown out, but fortunately I saved enough. I had seven truckloads of it. I gave it all to UCLA. They, in turn, have cataloged all of it, and they have an animation archives there in my name. Anyone like yourself or any other students of animation can go there and look up this material. There are musical scores and backgrounds and animation and maybe three hundred thousand drawings or something—a lot of material. I feel very happy about that.

DP:
That's great that you saved all that because that's all history. You know it'll be there forever.

WL:
Yes. [If it was left] in a warehouse, when I pass on, it'd probably be lost somewhere [or someone would] forget it's there. I'm getting letters
from people all over the country, congratulating me on receiving the Oscar. People I never knew. It's very rewarding to receive letters like this. Here's a picture sent to me, taken of Mia Farrow the night of the dinner. Came in this morning. She's a lovely girl.

DP:
What was Robin Williams like?

WL:
He's a very humble person. He's such a wacky guy at work, but he's a very humble person. Notice that when he was on the podium with me, he was a real gentleman. He was there, and he listened. Usually you get somebody that tries to take the whole thing away from you and tries to be real funny. A real gentleman.

DP:
He's so fast with his humor.

WL:
Oh, yeah. Oh, he threw me, you know. We had rehearsed the day before. When we went onstage, he didn't say anything we were supposed to say. I didn't have any cues or anything, so we just played it by ear, but it came off great. I mean, I think that's why it was so natural and looked so good.

DP:
There was that one point when you said that Woody was here, and he said, “You mean he's not at Michael's Pub?” [a reference to Woody Allen].

WL:
Well, that's what threw me, you know [laughs].

DP:
I guess that's what comedians like to do. Do you feel that there is a division between those who control everything themselves, who create cartoons with a small staff, versus a large studio with many people all working on the same thing?

WL:
I think it's really a division. These young people, sure, they're struggling in a sense, but they don't seem to come up with anything, with real humor. What I mean is, you take Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, my cartoons, these characters all live and breathe. They think what they're doing. For instance, look at Tom and Jerry: they don't even speak a line. They have to do everything in pantomime. They're thinking. But the characters [current animators] produce, these way-out subjects—in fact,
the last ten years, I refused to even send a cartoon in to the academy. I've received ten nominations, and I quit sending any more cartoons in, because they were giving Oscars for a two-minute dirty joke. Then they were giving Academy Awards for [short] subjects that never saw the light of day in a theater. They played in the art houses. And I couldn't see this. But they don't have any, as I say, humor in these things. They're so cut-and-dried. The characters are so ugly. They have no feeling in the characters. They're very bad drawings. I don't even go the see them anymore. I'm an old-fashioned producer, really, because I like pratfalls and comedy.