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Bill Peet interview
Not so in the case of Disney storyman and sketch artist Bill Peet. In the mid-1960s when many of his studio colleagues were savoring the advent of a comfortable retirement, Bill Peet was just getting his second wind. Leaving Disney Studios in 1964 after completing story and character work on The Jungle Book, Peet launched himself into another successful career as a popular author and illustrator of his own line of children's books. His first book, Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure, appeared in 1959, and today, thirty-five years and thirty-four books later, Bill Peet continues to enjoy an immensely popular following with millions of books in print both in the United States and in several foreign countries. Peet is one-third of the grand triumvirate of American children's authors that includes his only serious rivals, Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss. Born in Grandview, Indiana, in 1915, Bill Peet spent several boyhood years on his grandfather's farm, where his fascination with animals was born. As a young boy he decided to teach himself how to sketch when his photographs of zoo animals failed to develop properly. A special interest in animals both real and imaginary has remained to this day. Quite often animals have taken center stage as the central characters in a Bill Peet tale, whether for the large screen or the small page. Bill Peet was hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1937. Although mostly remembered for his character and story work on the feature film Song of the South, during his years at Disney Studios Bill Peet provided a cavalcade of story sketch and character development work on many of the classic Disney films such as Dumbo, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, and The Sword In the Stone. He wrote original stories and provided characterization drawings for some of the featurettes such as Lambert the Sheepish Lion, Victory Through Air Power, Goliath II, Ben and Me, as well as a series of popular Goofy shorts. In addition to drawing and writing, Peet auditioned voice talent and directed the recording of the dialogue for many of the films on which he worked. His twenty-seven-year on-and-off feud with Walt Disney was well known among studio employees. It's been suggested that the clash between the two talents had its genesis in the fact that they shared so many similarities in both background and personality. Both came from rural farm beginnings. Both were essentially highly creative loners preferring to create in solitude rather than in teams as was the studio method. Disney and Peet were also similar in their immensely strong sense of pride and fierce protection of their work. Walt Disney's story-telling ability was legendary even during his lifetime. A subsequent rivalry with his top storyman, albeit perhaps unconscious, seemed inevitable. When we met in November 1988, his latest volume, Bill Peet, An Autobiography, had been outfor two months and was selling well. As he later indicated, the life history came about in part as a rebuttal to the many Disney histories in which, in his opinion, Bill Peet feels he has either been ignored, misrepresented, or the victim of creative theft. As the interview continued, it became clear that Peet, now an outsider and no longer required to recite the Disney party line, was letting the chips fall where they may in an attempt to set Disney history straight according to his experiences. His crowded studio loft in the hills outside of Los Angeles is a cannon blast of graphic medium where walking space is at a premium. Charcoal drawings of his characters are thumbtacked all over one wall. In one corner lay an immense pile of his storybooks in various foreign languages. Another stack was composed of original manuscripts. Along a wall sits a large box of Disney storyboards and sketches from his studio years. Against the windows with an impressive view of the valley below rests a drawing board where Bill Peet, wordsmith, illustrator, and ringmaster of the world's most unusual menagerie, weaves his imaginary tales. A bear of a man with a twinkle in his eye, even the harsh words and occasional expletive fail to conceal the remaining traces of the Indiana farm boy still residing inside this now elderly frame. Even as he speaks, I realize that a tiny part of Bill Peet is still off in the countryside catching frogs in the creek. After nearly 60 years of writing and illustrating animated films and storybooks for three generations of the world's children, Bill Peet is still just catching his second wind John Province: More than one of your former colleagues at Disney has described you to me as a natural artist. Are yourself-taught or did you have formal training? Bill Peet: Not as a kid, no. I started out because I loved it. By the time I got out of high school and got a scholarship to the John Herron Art School I was ready to go. You really can't teach people how to draw though except to say "Draw better!" You can go through all the routines of telling them how to do it, but if they don't have a feel for it they will never become what you could call an artist or draftsman. You can point things out to them, but as far as taking them by the hand and carrying them along, there's no way you can do that. Province: You're from Indiana and attended the Arsenal Technical High School just as Bill Justice1 did. Were you classmates or did you know him at the time? Peet: Yes, I knew him, but we were not close friends. He admired my older brother George, who knew him better than I. George was a good artist and a meticulous draftsman but not in a real creative way. He could do beautiful work and ended up as a commercial artist in New York. Province: As did you yourself for a brief while. Peet: Well, not really. I was just with a greeting card company, but I was trying to get anything. I didn't want to go to Disney particularly [though] I'd seen some of the films. One day while visiting some friends one of them handed me a brochure and asked If I'd be interested. I said, "Well, anything." I sent the rough sketches out to the studio. This was in 1937 and as I explain in my book, there was really no hope for me to do anything original there other than in-between and I was about ready to kiss it off. It was like telling someone who wanted to be an architect to lay bricks so we can see what you can do. That's how silly it was to come in as an in-betweener. You can't prove that you can do anything other than draw like a robot, stay between the lines and be careful. Actually the poorest artists made the best in-betweeners because it was less creative and they could more or less stay within limits without ever being tempted to do anything better. They could be turned into a machine without it hurting too much. They were glad to do it. The contracts were rotten and it was a one-way street; they could either fire you or keep you. George Drake was the straw-boss of the in-betweeners and he was a real son of a bitch. He could draw a little, but not well enough and had failed. He was Ben Sharpsteen's brother and Ben was a producer. The better you were the more he hated you. At Christmas some of the guys found out what he liked to drink and brought him a bottle of Four Roses. I didn't bring him anything. He was a bastard. The studio was a brutal place, really. The sad part was that a lot of good men went out the door on his say-so. Drake's main motivation was jealousy. I know that I would have been fired if I hadn't sent my ideas for Pinocchio across the street.
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Copyright@1997-99
Hogan's Alley Magazine. All rights reserved. |
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Most
artists would consider themselves fortunate to have enjoyed one successful
career. 