Working with Disney (15 page)

DP:
Did you work with any directors? Was Dave Hand there, or was he gone?

LN:
Dave Hand was there when I first got there, but he was gone not too long after I got there—a year or a couple of years later. Gerry Geronimi—I worked with him.

DP:
How was he to work with?

LN:
He was good. Gerry was a little hot-tempered. You know—he wasn't temperamental; he just had a temper. But he was a good director. He was a damn good director. He was a good timer: he knew how to time the stuff, and he knew what he wanted. God, if they know what they want—

DP:
I imagine there would be nothing worse than somebody hoping that by giving you a vague description you're going to come up with what they want when they really don't know what they want.

LN:
Well, yeah, let you animate it and then see if that's what they want. Now, if they don't, you've got to do it over. Of course, story and layout's a different thing. They can watch it as it goes along, but animation, if they hand it out and it's all timed, then for an animator to go through it and rough it—that's why at Disney's, I believe, actually they saved money by roughing it and then pencil testing it and then letting the director see it or let Walt see it. Then if they have to change it, you haven't lost too much. But at Hanna-Barbera, you draw direct. Every drawing you make is
the
drawing. That's the last drawing you're going to make on that character. So it was a difference.

DP:
Would there ever be a case where you might work with another layout man on a layout, or generally does a layout man do his own specific sequence?

LN:
Well, in my case, yes. I worked with Don DaGradi and several other layout men if it was a big picture.

DP:
Did you work with Ken O'Connor?

LN:
I worked for Ken as his assistant. He's a good man. He was a great one for perspective. Ken O'Connor's a perfectionist on that. Architectural design of any kind, he could handle that. I worked as his assistant for several years. I learned a lot from Ken. He taught me quite a bit in my approach to layouts. Ken Anderson was [another] amazing man. He was completely paralyzed. [He had] strokes.

DP:
Ken Anderson? I didn't know that.

LN:
He had a stroke on his right side. He was swimming, and it hit him on his left side. He recovered almost 100 percent. He went back to work and designed and drew [story]boards. He is very careful about his health. If he gains even three-quarters of a pound over the weight that he has set for himself, boy, he'll go on a crash diet right now to get rid of it. But he was completely incapacitated. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He couldn't do anything. And how he ever made it out of there, I'll never know. Determination. He's always been that way. Just determined. But he was always tight, real tight, too.

DP:
I noticed in
The Art of Animation,
by Bob Thomas, that you are listed as an art director on
Fantasia,
a story man on
Fun and Fancy Free,
and then a layout man on all the others. At that time, were you trying to find your niche or—

LN:
Well, really I got into layout. I was trained by Hugh Hennesy, who was one of the finest layout men that ever existed in the business. He'd take a little bitty stub of a pencil, and—boy, this guy was a genius, absolute genius.

DP:
Are there any outstanding memories of any of the films on which you worked?

LN:
I tell you, the film that I thought was one of the best they've ever made and one that I really enjoyed working on was
Lady and the Tramp.
[And I was an art director on]
Fantasia.

DP:
Did you work on “The Pastoral”?

LN:
Yes, “The Pastoral.” And story,
Fun and Fancy Free;
layout,
Make Mine Music, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp.
Well, after all this was over, I became a story man again.

DP:
Which films did you work on in story?

LN:
I worked on the hookups. I did
Paul Bunyan
and
[The Saga of] Wind-wagon Smith.
Then I did the bridges of the Goofy pictures [for television]. Goofy would start out, and we'd interject in there
How to Play Baseball,
and we'd have to make bridges so that it would all run smooth. This was a hell of a job. An art director could be a layout man in my case.

DP:
Did you work on any films that you didn't particularly enjoy working on?

LN:
Yes. I loved
Pinocchio.
That was a great thing.
Cinderella
was good.
Alice in Wonderland
—I didn't particularly like that because, I don't know, they just could never seem to hook it all up to me. It just was so jumpy. Actually, when it finally got on the screen, it wasn't too bad. I enjoyed it then. But in working on it, it was a little difficult. I enjoyed working on all the shorts. I particularly enjoyed working on Pluto pictures. Nick Nichols directed them. I did most of the stories and layout. I worked on both that time. He finished the story, and then I'd lay it out. That was a fun deal.

DP:
On
Pinocchio,
do you remember what your layout sequences were?

LN:
I worked on nearly all of the fox and cat stuff. That particular shot that I gave you, they were going up the road. I think the cat was hiding around the post [in] that wall there. That wasn't the final layout. That was a sketch to set it up for the approval of Hugh Hennesy. He was a great man. That man drew with such ease. He'd take a piece of pan paper and a five-field pen, take a little stub pencil, and he'd start drawing. That paper'd just roll by. He'd fill it up. He was a genius.

DP:
Do you think there's one particular feature that's the best as far as the art of animation?

LN:
One feature in there that I thought was the best? I still think
Lady and the Tramp.
There are so many little spots that I think back over. It was a fun picture. The design was never difficult. It was a nostalgic thing; you didn't have to just make it up. You could go back and get references on the type of houses, the streets, stores, everything.
Sleeping Beauty
to me was too cold. No warmth in the picture anywhere. The background painter who designed that stuff, Eyvind Earle—God, he was a great painter! It was a masterpiece as far as color and all that, but you never warmed up. But I guess it made money.

DP:
It eventually made money.

LN:
Yeah, everything they've ever made is in the black now. Reissuing them. They wait five years [seven years at that time]. What a great thing they have. Every five [seven] years is another generation. They just reissue them.

DP:
How did you happen to go to work for Disney?

XA:
I was born and raised in Colorado. I came out right after high school to California, and I wanted to get into the cartoon business. I had an aunt whose husband was a musician on Scrappy cartoons [at] the [Charles] Mintz Studio. He said he could probably get me a job. So I came out. He took me over to Mintz. I hadn't any formal art training at that time. They were interested in the few drawings I had in my portfolio, but they thought it would be better if I went to art school for a little while. So they suggested I go to Chouinard's, which had a preanimation course at that time. So I went to Chouinard's. We had two teachers there who were also teaching night classes at the [Disney] studio, Gene Fleury and Palmer Schoppe. At the end of the semester, they asked us to get a portfolio together that they would take out to the studio to be critiqued by the animators: Freddy Moore, Ward Kimball, Ben [Sharpsteen]—all those guys. I said, “Well, no, I'm not interested. I'm kind of committed to go over to Mintz, you know. I'm not interested.” Schoppe kept after me. He said, “Well, come on, get this portfolio together. At least you'll get a
good critique.” So I threw some things together into a portfolio, and they took them over to the studio. This was at the end of the school term, and I had thought, “Well, I'll go over to Disney's and see if I can get a job, a summer job, in Traffic and then go back to school.” By that time, I was into the school part of it. So I went over to the studio, and in the meantime, they had called my home to come out for an interview. So our messages crossed. When I got there, I ran into two or three of the other fellows from Chouinard's there and wondered what they were doing. “Oh, well, there [go] my chances of getting a job now that these guys are looking for work, too.” Then I was called into George Drake's office, and he said, “We called your home, and we want to know if you'd like to come to work for us.” I was living in Hollywood at the time, about three miles from the studio at Hyperion, and I ran all the way home! I didn't even wait for a bus or anything! I got there breathlessly [yelling], “I got a job at Disney's!” So that was the beginning of my career at the Disney Studios. We started in a class, a tryout class, for a month's tryout. At the end of that time, why, they'd selected some of us, and some they didn't. There were fellows from all over the country that applied.

DP:
How many do you think there were in your class?

XA:
I would say about fifteen.

DP:
And how many of them would they have chosen?

XA:
They probably took about ten, I guess. And I'm the last one!

DP:
Well, it was a good choice!

XA:
Vip Partch was in that group, and George Baker of
Sad Sack
fame was in that group. So we had some good talent.

DP:
Was Walt Kelly—

XA:
Walt was ahead of me. He had already gone through that routine, I guess.

DP:
It is interesting to me, all the cartoonists who came in at Disney's. Hank Ketchum was there.

XA:
Hank Ketchum came right after I did.

DP:
You have no regrets about missing Scrappy, I take it?

XA:
No, that was the end of my thoughts. I don't know, I guess subconsciously I just felt that my chances of getting a job at Disney's were nil. I guess the fact that I had this contact in this uncle-in-law, that I just didn't think too much about Disney's at that point in time. I probably would have later on.

DP:
And if you had gone to Mintz, you would have been going to the enemy! Were you an assistant animator then?

XA:
I started out as an inbetweener. This training class was just before
Pinocchio.
After doing the routine of bouncing-ball tests and flag-waving and things like that, they put us on production. I went to work with Woolie Reitherman as an inbetweener. Bill Justice was his first assistant. He'd been there a year or so before me. So I started on
Pinocchio
as an inbetweener and then went into assistant [work] after that picture on
Fantasia.
So I worked as an assistant to Woolie Reitherman then on
Fantasia
and on
Dumbo.
Then the war came, and off I went to fight the nation's battle! I was gone four years in the service and then came back. The picture at the studio had changed quite a bit then; [it] had slowed down economically, and there wasn't the advancement that there had been prior to that time. I thought, “Well, if I'd have stayed and hadn't had to go off to war, why, I could have advanced quicker,” but that didn't bother me. It was so enjoyable working for the Disney organization, no matter what capacity.