by Bob Thomas
It is not our intention to make a straight story out of this, we want to gag it in every way we can and make it as funny as possible. These little pigs will be dressed in clothes. They will also have household implements, props, etc., to work with, and not be kept in the natural state. They will be more like human characters.
ALL GAGS MUST BE HANDED IN BY FRIDAY DECEMBER 30TH AT 4 P.M. I EXPECT A BIG TURNOUT ON THIS STORY IN SPITE OF THE CHRISTMAS.
Walt’s choice of men to work on Three Little Pigs was inspired. To draw the pigs themselves he selected Fred Moore, a brilliant, intuitive animator who had arrived at the Disney Studio in 1930 with a set of sketches on shirt-laundry cardboards. He was only eighteen, but soon he was animating alongside the veterans. Moore invested each pig with a distinct personality and drew them with a rounded solidity that made them seem like authentic porkers. Norman Ferguson, who had come west from the New York studios, created the wolf and made him a sly, slobbering masterpiece of a villain. Walt stressed the need for a song to tie all the elements together, and that was the responsibility of Frank Churchill. He had dropped out of UCLA to play honky-tonk piano in Tijuana and Juarez bars, and became a radio and movie studio musician before being hired by Disney to arrange cartoon scores. For Three Little Pigs he composed a jingle along the pattern of “Happy Birthday to You,” and story man Ted Sears provided some couplets: “I build my house of straw…and I build my house of sticks…” The chorus came naturally: “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” There seemed to be no way to end the chorus until Pinto Colvig, who had portrayed many of the voices in the cartoons, played a phrase on the ocarina.
Three Little Pigs breezed through production and was previewed with excellent results. Walt was elated, and he sent a message to his brother Roy in New York: “At last we have achieved true personality in a whole picture!” Roy conveyed Walt’s enthusiasm to the United Artists salesmen. When a print of Three Little Pigs arrived in New York, Roy arranged a screening in a projection room at the United Artists office. The hardboiled salesmen remained silent during the cartoon, and one of them afterward said, “This is kind of a cheater, don’t you think?” Roy asked what he meant. “The last cartoon Walt sent us was Father Noah’s Ark, with dozens of animals,” said the salesman. “Now he gives us only four.”
The United Artists publicity man, Hal Horne, laughed and assured Roy, “This is the greatest picture Walt’s ever made.”
The salesman’s glum comment seemed to have been borne out when Three Little Pigs opened at the Radio City Music Hall. Audiences found the cartoon amusing, but the personalities of the pigs and the wolf failed to register on the Music Hall’s mammoth screen. Only when Three Little Pigs started playing neighborhood theaters in New York did the explosion begin.
Audiences everywhere were captivated by the pigs and joined in loathing the wolf. He, after all, was the symbol of the Depression that had crimped everyone’s life. The song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” became a national rallying cry.
The Disney organization was unprepared for the sudden success. The company had never had a song hit, and no contract had been made to publish “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Orchestra leaders all over the country sent their arrangers to theaters to copy the tune and lyrics so the song could be played for audiences. Irving Berlin’s music company sought permission to publish the song, and Roy entered into a contract.
The success of Three Little Pigs was unparalleled in cartoon history. Theater marquees all over the country billed it above the feature movies. First-run houses changed their feature attractions but kept offering Three Little Pigs week after week. One New York theater played it so long that the manager drew beards on the pigs in the lobby poster; as the run extended, the beards grew longer.
The United Artists salesmen responded characteristically; their message to Walt was “Send us more pigs!” He refused, never wanting to repeat himself. But Roy convinced him that bringing back the pigs would be good for business. Walt made three more—The Big Bad Wolf, Three Little Wolves, and The Practical Pig. None approached the sensation of the original, and Walt made a comment he repeated for years afterward: “You can’t top pigs with pigs.”
On November 18, 1932, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its first award for a cartoon to Walt Disney for Flowers and Trees; he was also presented a special award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. His status as a maker of film entertainment had been officially acknowledged, and Walt was beginning to make a modest venture into Hollywood society, through polo.
He had taken up the sport with his usual thoroughness. Encountering Jack Cutting in the studio hallway, Walt remarked, “I understand you’re a good horseman. Would you like to play polo?” Cutting said he would. Walt also enlisted Norm Ferguson, Les Clark, Dick Lundy, Gunther Lessing and Bill Cottrell, and he even persuaded Roy to join. All were summoned to the conference room at the Hyperion studio, where they found pads and pencils and copies of the text, Cameron’s As to Polo. Walt had hired a polo expert, Gil Proctor, who lectured about maneuvers, plotting them on the blackboard. When the rudiments had been learned, the eight poloists began practice sessions at a riding academy in the San Fernando Valley. Practice started at six in the morning and was completed in time for all of the players to report to the studio by eight. Walt erected a polo cage at the studio; on the lunch hour or during work breaks, the players could sit on a wooden mount and practice hitting the wooden ball. When their coach considered them well enough trained, they began competing in matches at Victor McLaglen’s stadium on Riverside Drive. Walt and Roy later played at the Riviera Club with such figures as Will Rogers, Darryl F. Zanuck, Spencer Tracy, James Gleason, Big Boy Williams and Frank Borzage. Walt was not the best of the players, but he was a hard-riding competitor, making up with aggressiveness for what he lacked in skill.
In 1933 Walt and Lilly moved into a new home they had built in the Los Feliz district a few miles from the studio. It was a handsome house with a swimming pool dug out of the hard mountainside rock. Soon there would be a new arrival, as Walt wrote in a letter to his mother in Portland:
…The doctor says Lilly is in perfect condition and everything is okay, and within a week or so everything will be over—except the crying!
The spare bedroom, where you and Dad stayed, is all fixed up like a nursery. We have a bassinette and baby things all over the place. On the dresser, bed and everywhere else are all kinds of pink and blue “tinies” that I don’t know anything about. Really, it’s quite a strange atmosphere to me—I can’t conceive of it belonging to us. It seems all right for somebody else to have those things around, but not for us. I presume I’ll have to get used to it, and I suppose I’ll be as bad a parent as anyone else. I’ve made a lot of vows that my kid won’t be spoiled, but I doubt it—it may turn out to be the most spoiled brat in the country.
I bought my baby a present last week. I found a nice half-thoroughbred mare, which I thought would make a wonderful present for my baby. Of course, I figured I could make use of it until the baby got old enough to use it. I will stable it and use it for polo until the youngster grows up and is able to take it over. Don’t fall over dead when I tell you I have six polo ponies now. But after all, it’s my only sin—I don’t gamble or go out and spend my money on other men’s wives or anything like that, so I guess it’s okay. Anyway, the wife approves of it….
The baby girl arrived on December 18, 1933, thirteen days after Walt’s thirty-second birthday. She was named Diane Marie Disney.
BY 1934 Walt was employing a dozen story and gag men, forty animators, forty-five assistant animators, thirty inkers and painters, and a twenty-four-piece orchestra, plus camera operators, electricians, sound men and other technicians. In the six years since the loss of Oswald the Rabbit, the Disney staff had grown from six to 187.
The turnover in creative personnel was high. Because Bert Gillett was credited as director of Three Little Pigs, he was quickly hired away by another cartoon studio. The ma
jor studios recognized from the Disney example that gold could be mined from short cartoons, and they began making their own. One cartoon producer made a habit of luring away Disney artists after each Disney success. “Let Disney win the awards and train the artists,” said the rival; “I’ll hire them away and make the money.” It was a logical plot, but it somehow failed in execution. The rival’s cartoons could never match the Disney quality.
The nation still hadn’t escaped the Depression, and new young artists were easy to find. Within the space of two or three years, Walt hired the animators who, along with Les Clark, were to form his basic crew for decades to come: Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Marc Davis, Woolie Reitherman, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Ward Kimball, Ollie Johnston.
All came to Disney with little or no knowledge of animation. Walt wanted to shorten the apprentice period and prepare the newcomers—and the studio veterans who were willing to learn—for the challenges he was envisioning. In 1934 he converted the Disney Art School to a full-time basis, instead of a limited schedule of night classes. He put Don Graham on the payroll to work three days at the studio and two nights in classes. Graham sat for hours with Walt in sweatboxes as they reviewed the photographed pencil sketches of the new animators. Twice a week Graham took groups of artists to the Griffith Park zoo to sketch animals. At the studio, the artists spent half a day drawing in life classes, half a day studying production methods. Night school was expanded to five nights a week, with 150 students attending classes in animation, character drawing, layouts and backgrounds.
Early in 1935, Walt’s plans for the future were taking shape, and he instructed Don Graham: “I need three hundred artists—find them.” A massive talent search was launched through want ads in newspapers from California to New York. Graham opened an office in the RCA Building in Manhattan and interviewed applicants and reviewed their portfolios.
In a long, insightful memo to Don Graham in 1935, Walt articulated better than he ever had before his beliefs about animation, drawn from his sixteen years in the medium.
He began by saying that he wanted to talk with Graham about establishing “a very systematic training course for our young animators…and a plan of approach for our older animators.” He had been encouraged by the results of the school thus far; after lectures by such veterans as Norman Ferguson, Fred Moore, Ham Luske and Fred Spencer the quality of animation at the studio increased measurably.
Walt listed the qualities of a good animator:
1. Good draftsmanship.
2. Knowledge of caricature, of action as well as features.
3. Knowledge and appreciation of acting.
4. Ability to think up gags and put over gags.
5. Knowledge of story construction and audience values.
6. Knowledge and understanding of all the mechanical and detailed routine involved in his work, in order that he may be able to apply his other abilities without becoming tied in a knot by lack of technique along these lines.
Walt was convinced that a scientific approach to the art of animation could be achieved. Then he discoursed on his own conclusions about animation:
The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen—but to give a caricature of life and action—to picture on the screen things that have run through the imagination of the audience—to bring to life dream-fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives. Also to caricature things of life as it is today—or make fantasies of things we think of today….
A good many of the men misinterpret the idea of studying the actual motion. They think it is our purpose merely to duplicate these things. This misconception should be cleared up for all. I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real. This point should be brought out very clearly to all new men, and even the older men.
Comedy, to be appreciated, must have contact with the audience. This we all know, but sometimes forget. By contact, I mean that there must be a familiar, sub-conscious association. Somewhere, or at some time, the audience has felt, or met with, or seen, or dreamt, the situation pictured. A study of the best gags and audience reaction we have had, will prove that the action or situation is something based on an imaginative experience or a direct life connection. This is what I mean by contact with the audience. When the action or the business loses its contact, it becomes silly and meaningless to the audience.
Therefore, the true interpretation of caricature is the exaggeration of an illusion of the actual, possible or probable. That idea, behind the things I just mentioned above, can be incorporated in every stage of instruction—from the life drawing clear on through to the planning and staging of the work.
I have often wondered why, in your life drawing class you don’t have your men look at the model and draw a caricature of the model, rather than an actual sketch, but instruct them to draw the caricature in good form, basing it on the actual model. I noticed a little caricature of one of the models in the life class made by Ward Kimball, and it struck me that there was an approach to the work that we should give consideration. I don’t see why using this method, you can’t give the class all the fundamentals of drawing they need and still combine the work with the development of a sense of caricature….
During the few brief years since Steamboat Willie, a creative pattern had evolved at the Disney studio. At the top, of course, was Walt, who supervised the entire process in a total and comprehensive way. Then came the directors, who were responsible for assembling the creative efforts and carrying out Walt’s dictates in terms of character and action. The Story Department, with Walt in constant collaboration, provided plots and gags. The animators made the drawings that gave life to the cartoon. They were aided by assistants and in-betweeners, who relieved the animators of the tedium of multiple drawings. Finally came the women who copied the drawings on celluloid with ink and applied the colors.
Of all the contributors to the creative process, Walt had greatest respect for the animators.
Throughout his career, Walt maintained a curious relationship with the animating breed. He kidded them, abused them, praised and berated them, but above all he recognized their indispensable contribution to the art of animation. It was something he could not do himself. His early attempts at animation were admittedly primitive; his work was fast but it seldom rose above the level of comic-strip humor along the lines of George McManus and Bringing Up Father.
His relationship with animators formed an abiding pattern. The cough was an important part of it. The Disney cough, aggravated by his heavy smoking of cigarettes, was prevailing and individualistic. It could be heard down the corridors of the Hyperion studio—and later at Burbank—and it announced his presence, passing or imminent. For the lazy, the cough could inspire terror; others, surer of their accomplishments, found it reassuring—it meant that their work might be reviewed and perhaps approved. The cough, his animators were sure, was a courtesy to them. It sounded Walt’s impending arrival, and, although he ran the studio and paid their salaries, he respected their privacy and would not barge into their offices unannounced.
But Walt didn’t mean the cough to summon his workers to attention for his arrival. He was irritated when he entered an office to find the artists had hurried to their desks after hearing him. “I don’t care if you’re loafing,” he said angrily. “Everybody gets tired. If you feel stale, get some fresh air. But don’t let me catch you jumping back to your desks.”
Another Disney pattern: the drumming fingers.
Walt’s fingers were expressive and forever moving. He made eloquent use of his hands while he was describing a cartoon plot to an animator, or even a casual acquaintance. He had an artist’s fingers, narrow and pliant, and hence he was good at making things. His animators learned that the fingers acted as a device to reveal his degree of approval or annoyance. If Walt was engrossed with the action
on the screen in a sweatbox, his fingers would be motionless. If his interest started to drift, he began to drum on the arm of his chair. Animators listened for the sound, and if the drumming became a tattoo, they knew they would be sent back to their drawing boards.
There could be no doubt that Walt Disney was the boss. He enjoyed the position, and he enforced it. But he could be tolerant of the foibles of his artists. A Disney favorite was Roy Williams, a zany, roly-poly gag man who had arrived at the studio in 1930. One day Williams found that his salary had been reduced by a director because of tardiness. Williams rigged a bucket on a door, and the director was splashed with water. The director stormed into Walt’s office and demanded that Williams be fired. “That’s personal business between you and Roy,” Walt replied. “Now get the hell out of here; you’re getting my carpet all wet.”
Another Disney favorite was Norman Ferguson. He was an animating natural, an artist whose knack of capturing character comedy helped make Pluto one of the most durable of the Disney stars. Walt feared that Ferguson’s genius would be blurred in the copying of the drawings by his assistant, Nick George; to prevent that, Walt turned over a wastebasket and sat on it next to George’s desk. “Now don’t get it too polished, Nick,” Walt instructed as George did his copying. “Keep that rough quality of Fergie’s.”