BAMBI

Frank: Well, "Bambi" was a real interesting picture because it was one that no one knew how to do -- even Walt didn't know how.
Ollie: "Bambi" was an interesting picture. A lot of gags came out of that with Walt. You know there was this thing in there where it says, man is in the forest, when the deer have to run and hide. Well that became a sort of a regular thing. I mean, Walt would be coming down the hall to the meeting and, a director would say, "Hey, everybody! Man's in the forest!" That meant that Walt was coming and generally you could hear [coughs]. Walt would cough, because he didn't want to walk in on the meeting without letting the guys know that he was approaching.

CINDERELLA

Ollie: He put his heart in that to a degree, but never like he did on "Pinocchio" or "Snow White" or "Bambi" or "Fantasia." He was very helpful but not getting in on every scene.
Frank: It was very well put together. Crafted very well and he insisted that we plan it more carefully and shoot it all in live-action first so we could judge it. This was without costumes or without a set. Just go on a lonely soundstage in front of our two boards here next to the door and see whether that scene's going to work. Is it going to be too long? Is it going to be too short? Is it going to hold your interest? He said, "we can't afford to animate it and then change it. Animation has to be right the first time."

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Frank: He'd done two short cartoons in black and white on the "Alice in Wonderland" story. And he knew what he wanted to do with it. But he didn't know what he wanted to do with it. You know, I don't think there's ever been a good motion picture made of the Red Queen. It's better to read or think about but to see on the screen? No, it didn't hold out.
Ollie: Well, that's because it didn't have emotions in it and it was in segments. You know Alice would be disturbed in one sequence and she'd stomp out and go to another, and it's a different story. And it - there was no place in there where you really cared or worried about Alice.

PETER PAN

Ollie: Well, he just couldn't make up his mind what type of picture to make out of it. How to handle the characters. And he kept bringing it up and then dropping it. Bringing it up and dropping it and finally brought it up and this was it. I think he wanted something that had a certain amount of heart in it and the relationship between Wendy and the boys and Peter and something you could really care about and I'm not so sure that we ever got just that. I think the strongest stuff came in Captain Hook that Frank worked on.

LADY AND THE TRAMP

Ollie: I got to tell something about that. Frank and I were walking out one night and Walt joined us walking out and here's a typical Walt statement: He turns to Frank and he says, "I hear you got the best scene in the picture." He didn't say, "Hey I saw your stuff, it's the best thing in the picture!" No, it's just, "I hear you got the best scene in the picture."

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Frank: "Sleeping Beauty" was a transition picture because at the start of it, Walt was just beginning to get hold of other things he could do like "True-Life Adventures" and the "Mickey Mouse Club," and "Zorro." And his live-action stuff, was coming along. And suddenly we'd call him up and we'd say, "Walt, we got a problem here with 'Sleeping Beauty.'" "You have?" "Yeah, could you come in?" "Well, all right, just for a little while." He'd come in and look at the sequence we were troubled with and he'd say, "You're not in any trouble." And he'd walk out. Now you couldn't believe Walt would do that because back on "Pinocchio" or "Bambi" or any of those, you'd say, "Walt would you come in and look at it." "Yeah, yeah. That's supposed to be good stuff in there, what trouble are you having?" And he'd throw things out and put things in and change it around and stay there for two weeks.

101 DALMATIANS

Ollie: Well he didn't like the Xerox and he didn't like the method Ken Anderson used on the background where you draw everything in and then you paint underneath it but you don't paint forms. You just do it with a Xerox line and you put whatever you want under there.
Frank: We thought it looked great. We thought it made a perfect match between our drawings and the background, and we'd had trouble with the earlier pictures with all the glittering and sparkling -- just full of wonderful things. And then we'd try to suspend a little character up here in front of it, and it didn't stand a chance against all this stuff in the back and we'd say, "Why do we have to have the background so juicy?' And he'd say, "Oh that looks great, looks good. What do you animators know anyway?"

Animated scenes in MARY POPPINS

Frank: Well, he was very high on it and towards the end he said that "You know fellas, this may be the best thing we've ever done." And I didn't like the whole picture that much -- I felt it was kind of predictable -- and overly sweet. I thought Julie Andrews did a real good job and Dick Van Dyke was very good and they sort of brought life to it and that's when he wanted to do the penguin sequence because we had to play against them and that felt good to me.

JUNGLE BOOK

Frank: Well, probably the biggest thing is we started out, Walt said, "Get someone good for the bear." You see the story was a very loose travelogue. The boy and the panther going through the jungle and they meet a rhinoceros and they meet somebody else and they meet an elephant and they meet something else and they keep meeting all these characters until finally you bring down the curtain and he's back in the man village where he belongs. And we said, "Oh Walt, that doesn't give us much to get hold of in there -- can't we start the story or can't you bring in the tiger early, you know, the tiger's going to be your main villain thing in this picture, can't we get him in there?" And Walt said, "Just stick to the rules."