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Bill Peet interview - continued
Peet: It proved to them that I had imagination. I drew a lot of crazy creatures doing all sorts of things. It was the first time I had a chance to show them I could do anything other than in-between ducks. If I hadn't had the chance to go into story I wasn't going to stay around. I spent almost two years on Pinocchio and received no credit. Province: Obviously not receiving screen credit bothered you a great deal. Peet: Yes, it was a crusher. There was a committee of the older men which was kept secret. These were mostly old dried-up newspaper cartoonists and people Walt felt had experience even though they couldn't draw as well as the younger men. This was who decided who got screen credit. They hated the younger men who had talent because they were a threat to their jobs. They gave credit to themselves and their friends. We dared not complain since in the long run it would always be Walt Disney's [name] and that long list of names [below his] like a page in the phone book. The drawing quality had to be improved when we went into features, and that's when the younger talent began to do more. Walt began to realize that these people were real artists and not just dried-up old newspaper cartoonists. Province: I understand there were art classes at night. Peet: They were sort of training people, but it was silly to think that you could do it in a few weeks. They tried to get me to teach life-drawing after I'd been there a few years, but I couldn't deal with people who didn't know how to draw. There's no time for that. You have to have real talent and there were guys there who were very gifted from the beginning. Province: If you arrived in 1937, Snow White would have been in production. Did you do any work on it? Peet: I worked at night tracing dwarfs for two weeks without pay. There was no [paid] overtime, and everybody was pressed into action to get this thing done in time for the premiere. They were down to the last few weeks in getting it down so prints could be run. It had gotten around to the theaters that there were no prints, and we were all scared to death. There were rumors all over Hollywood that this thing wasn't going to go over and that Walt Disney had gotten too big for his britches. [They said,] "No one is going to sit through a full-length cartoon; it's all right for a few laughs." The big producers, of course, were hoping to see Walt Disney fall flat on his face. They thought it was arrogant for the "Mickey Mouse Man" to rise up and compete. I think it angered them that he wouldn't stay in his place. He played polo with them you see, and they used to kid him about being a "Mickey Mouse third-rater." "The Little King" they called him because Walt's ego was quite large. Province: Is it possible that some of the people who attended the premiere were there to see if Walt Disney had failed? Peet: A lot of the press and people who had worked on it were there. Everyone had been working on pieces and parts. It had not been seen in its entirety. When you see something in a sweatbox, very cramped quarters with just a few people, you really can't see the film in its proper perspective. It's like trying to put a car together in the dark. They will never see the finished product until it's unveiled. When Snow White was shown, neither Walt, or anybody else really knew what they had. Province: Snow White was the big gamble for Disney. Do you think the studio would have survived if it had bombed? Peet: Oh no, and no one would have dared make another full-length feature. Short subjects just weren't making it. Walt had even borrowed money on it, and a lot of the investors in Hollywood were waiting to buy him out. Giannini2 promised Walt, "You'll never be in hock to me and I won't take your studio." He had faith in the film. Province: So after all those months of anxiety it was a great success. Peet: You could feel it. I mean right away there was a burst of spontaneous laughter and applause. You could feel the spirit of this film lifting the whole audience. It was also done without pretension and as a simple fairy tale without trying to be a tremendous explosion like they do today. Now whenever they make a new one it has to break box office records. Province: You also worked on Fantasia. Peet: I worked on the Beethoven thing, the "Pastoral Symphony." I was part of a group, and I was very unhappy with that. There were too many people on it. I really don't have anything to say about that. Province: Is the story true about Fantasia originally being planned as a short? Peet: Yes, it began with "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" as a short and grew from there, much in the way that Dumbo did. It would have been twenty minutes or so, which wouldn't have been anything. Province: You did a great deal of work on Dumbo. Peet: I was one of the "poor boys." They put all the rich boys, the top animators making the big salaries, working on Bambi. They wanted to make it a gem. Originally Dumbo was going to be only a half-hour, sort of a special. When Walt saw what we were doing with it, he said it might make a good feature. Well, Dumbo made money. In fact, it was the only Disney film to make money until Cinderella. Province: Were budgets monitored closely? Peet: Walt got a little stingy with us on Dumbo because they had a showpiece with Bambi. They could play around with little things like the raindrops. Beautiful, but slow and expensive. We weren't allowed any trimmings. Bambi was a wedding cake. Dumbo was one layer with a little bit of icing. Ours was more successful because it had common appeal, even though the animation was crude in some places. Dumbo didn't make big money. It had only cost $800,000, so all it had to do to make its cost back was go a little over $1 million. The other features had cost $3 million, plus the cost of the prints, and with no foreign market because of the war. Province: Two of the best, Bill Tytla3 and Fred Moore4, worked on Dumbo. Peet: People were always amazed at Bill Tytla, that he could draw the giant devil for "Night On Bald Mountain," and the giant in "Brave Little Tailor;" these ponderous, muscled characters, and then do this little elephant. After he got his first scene on Dumbo, he passed me in the hall and said, "Y'know, Bill, I can't draw these goddamned little elephants. If I send Nick [his assistant] up with the scene, would you see if you could work it out?" Nick brought up this stack of drawings, Bill's scene where the elephants first appear was just a mess. So I went over every one of them, probably a couple of hundred drawings, every damned frame in the picture, and redrew the whole scene. They shot the pencil test and showed it to Walt. He was ecstatic! Nick came up and told me, "Walt loved that thing, and I want to shake your hand!" Well, Bill never bothered to thank me, Walt either.
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Copyright@1997-99
Hogan's Alley Magazine. All rights reserved. |
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Province:
That would be the "The Boogie Men" sequence you suggested. Though it didn't
appear in the film, it did get you out of in-betweening. 
