Walt's Family & Friends Frank Thomas On September 8, legendary animator Frank Thomas died at his home at age 92. During his 43-year tenure at the Walt Disney Studios, Frank worked at major animated features from "Bambi" to the animated penguins in "Mary Poppins." Together with his close friend and fellow animator Ollie Johnston, Frank also authored several books, including "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life." Following are excerpts from an interview that we conducted in 2000: Q. Tell us about your start with the Disney Studio. Q. Your earliest animation work was on Mickey Mouse cartoons? Q. Tell us about Walt acting out scenes from "Snow White." Q. What was it like, having Walt cut scenes that were already animated? Q. Is it true that Walt had an amazing memory? Q. What happened when you were animating Captain Hook for "Peter Pan?" Q. What did he need to do to bring out the best in you? Q. Was there somebody who was Walt's favorite any given week? Q. Did Walt withdraw some from the animation as the years passed? Q. Did the animation suffer for lack of his regular attention? Q. Tell us about your start with the Disney Studio. (See the Video) A: I started in 1934 as an in-betweener. That's where everybody had to start. You had two weeks to prove that you could do it ... If you were good enough, they hired you and if you weren't, well you were out the door. Q. Your earliest animation work was on Mickey Mouse cartoons? A: Yes. I worked for about a year as an assistant and as an in-betweener, working my way up, before I got into animation. My first animation was actually "Donald Duck and Three Seals." And from that I went to "Little Hiawatha" and several very nice shorts - I enjoyed those. And then suddenly this great mound of work appeared: "Snow White." I thought, what's he doing, what's he doing? We do shorts here! You know, I was thinking, I have some fun doing the shorts, but "Snow White" scared me. Q. Tell us about Walt acting out scenes from 'Snow White.' A: We were pretty confused about what he was doing - why he was doing a feature in the first place. What made him think that he could sustain the audience interest, entertainment for a whole feature length? And so we were all a little nervous about it and we sat around in a half circle, as I recall. And he started telling the story, and of course, typical of Walt, he was a terrific actor, but he couldn't do it by memorizing lines or doing anything he'd rehearsed. But he would just say, you know, "The queen gets up here and does this, and Snow White's down here and she's singing . . . and here comes the prince on his horse." And he just acts out every part of it spontaneously, as he's giving the lines of dialogue that he's writing at the time. Kept changing the dialogue, trying to get it to fit in right with the character he was developing. Q. What was that like, having Walt cut scenes that were already animated? A: It was painful for a couple of the animators whose only contribution they made to the picture involved one or the other of those sequences. And it was painful of course to Walt, but he was just beginning to realize, not only the problems you had with a feature film, but the opportunities. Q. Is it true that Walt had an amazing memory? (See the Video) A: There was one fellow who went from animation into doing story work and he left the studio and worked in radio. Well, he was gone for nearly 30 years. He was left-handed and Walt had said. "Oh, he'll never be an animator, there are no left-handed animators." He came back to the studio. He used to write the introductions for Walt for years for his TV characters and show. And so he was scribbling on the notebook here and Walt said, "I told you that you'd never make it as an animator! There are no left-handed animators." Thirty years later! Q. What happened when you were animating Captain Hook for "Peter Pan?" A: He gave us seven weeks or something like that to work out the new characters in "Peter Pan," and each of us had a different character we were working on. And the director of the picture felt that Captain Hook should be real mean. And the story man, who'd developed the character, thought he ought to be a fop. He always had these grandiose suggestions and theatrical, overdone things, and that he'd be funnier that way. So I said, "Hey fellas, can't you get together, what am I supposed to animate here? Put a foppish head on the top of it and the hunched shoulders?" And it all didn't work out. And I did one scene and I did another and one of the other animators said, "Gee, I wouldn't show that one to Walt." And I had more problems and finally the day for showing came and the story guys, me and a lot of guys, they would sit around Walt and they would wait to see how he's reacting to this stuff . And Walt looked like he didn't think too much of it. And the guys start saying, "Walt I think his head's too flat on the top, you know, people's heads aren't that flat," " I think his feet are too small, I think that he ought to have bigger feet on him," picking on all these things, which didn't mean a thing when you're trying to develop a character with a personality and find an audience identification. Small feet? Flat head? The audience shouldn't even notice those things and Walt was saying, "yeah, yeah," and it was obvious he didn't like it. But he said, "Well, I think he's a hard character to get hold of." Bless you Walt, I thought. "I think Frank's getting close to it now. Let's let him go for another stretch of time and see what he does with it." So with that blessing on it, the story men all had to shut up. In actuality, you always had that kind of conflict between the story men and the animators and the directors and the animators and the layout men and the background painters. Everybody had their own problems in their own department and Walt had a way of treating everyone differently. With one guy, he would always have to be tough and pushy, 'cause the guy was very competitive, even in introducing a gag. With another guy, he would be very brotherly, "Well, I don't know here, what do you think we ought to do here with this scene?" And he wouldn't get these people mixed up - that would have been disastrous. Q. What did he need to do to bring out the best in you? A: He tried a lot of different things. But as he said on one of the scenes of the dwarfs when Snow White had died, they're all crying around her there, and the story man said, "Gee, who are we going to get to animate that? That's a tough scene." He said, "Oh we'll put Frank on it, we can talk him into anything." I didn't find that out until several years later.... Q. Was there somebody who was Walt's favorite any given week? A: This day, not this week! Guy would come in and say, "Well who's got the wig this morning?" The wig referred to the fair-haired boy. Because overnight it could change and you'd have a meeting where your work was passed - he liked it, but he never complimented you directly, you know? But you could tell that he liked it and wanted you to do more of it. And then the next morning you'd come in to work all bright-eyed and ready to have a lot of fun and you'd find out no, he threw that whole sequence out after you left! Q. Did Walt withdraw some from the animation as the years passed? (See the Video) A: Oh yes of course, he had to. Because he was involved in so many things and they weren't things he had to do, they were things that were just as interesting as he had found the cartoons to be. And the whole thing was a hobby with him. If there wasn't any fun in it, he wouldn't do it. Q. Did the animation suffer for lack of his regular attention? A: I don't think so, no. Probably the story work suffered more. As animators, we had improved very much, we'd learned an awful lot from "Snow White" on. We were just growing by leaps and bounds and we were able to animate so many different things that were very difficult to do. We were able to contribute things and get the good connection with the audience and we could judge things and we had learned, from the start, to help each other out. Walt had always insisted that we would always work together. Thank you.