Walt's Family & Friends Interview with: Ollie Johnston Ollie Johnston began working with Walt over 70 years ago -- when he joined the studio to help work on Mickey Mouse cartoons. He began as an in-betweener, the artist who fills in animated steps that bring together the steps of animation drawn by an animator or assistant animator. His talent quickly showed itself, and he ultimately worked on 24 animated features, beginning with "Snow White." Ollie retired in 1978 - if you can call it retirement. Since then, he wrote several books including "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life," with his lifelong friend and fellow animator Frank Thomas (who passed on in 2004). Following are some excerpts from an interview with Ollie, focusing in on his earliest efforts working with Walt. Q. You started as an in-betweener in 1935. Did you have any contact with Walt at all? Q. And there was a lot of training that went on within the Studio at that time? Q. When did you first hear about "Snow White"? Q. The quality of your work was quickly noticed. How did Walt treat you as you rose through the ranks? Q. Can you give us a feeling about what it was like having your work reviewed by Walt in the sweatbox? And why was it called that? Q. "Bambi" was a whole different effort, with a different kind of animation. Can you share some memories? Q. And how did that all work out? Q. You've said that as time went on, Walt seemed to lose some of his interest in animation. Is that right? Q. You started as an in-betweener in 1935. Did you have any contact with Walt at all? Ollie:    Not really. I'd pass him in the halls and at that time, I hadn't heard all that much about him -- I'd seen his pictures, when I was in college and loved them, but hadn't ever thought I'd be there. And I was there because I was requested to come and take a try out, so really, I was going to Art School and Walt was looking for art talent because he knew he was going to do "Snow White." None of us knew at that time that he was going to do it but he was preparing for it and he knew that most of the animators and assistants that he had there at the time, were more comic strip artists. And he wanted people that knew how to draw the anatomy and make the characters feel more believable. Q. And there was a lot of training that went on within the Studio at that time? Ollie:    Oh —Really going to school all over again. It was wonderful. We studied live-action, timing. We drew things like Cezanne - would place them to get depth in a picture and had models there at night. It was wonderful. Q. When did you first hear about "Snow White"? Ollie:    It was probably in 1935 sometime, I can't tell you the date. But I remember he called a meeting and had a large group over on the soundstage one evening and he went through and told the story. And gee, I was just spellbound by it and then he even acted out some stuff as I recall. And he was a great actor. Wonderful, spontaneous actor. He'd be telling something and say, "Like this!" you know, and he'd get up and do the stuff and have you all laughing at what he was talking about and you'd visualize what he was presenting to you. It was amazing. The guy thought in terms of entertainment and that was the wonderful thing about him and that's what I guess made us all so loyal to him because he was doing something that was good for the public and good for all of us to work at. Q. The quality of your work was quickly noticed. How did Walt treat you as you rose through the ranks? Ollie:    Walt didn't do too much complimenting. He didn't come to you and say, "Here you're doing great and I'm going to give you a raise!" I got three raises on "Pinocchio" because he liked what I was doing, and I couldn't believe it. But one time, I was loafing out in front of his office, talking to one of the secretaries, if you can believe I was so stupid! And he came out of his office and he says: "Say I like those Pinocchios you're doing." And I said, "Gee! Well, I'm just trying to do them like the other guys." You know? And he says, "…just keep doing it!" and walked off. And of course, by that afternoon, why everybody in the place knew that he liked my Pinocchios. But ordinarily, he wouldn't say that. He would say, "I hear that you've done something pretty good!" He wouldn't say, "I like it." He'd say, "I hear from the director that something you did was pretty good." [But] he had this remarkable ability to lift you up above what you thought you could do. And the guys that he could do that with were many. Not everybody, but many. And everybody would like to be. But it was a wonderful thing because you ended up doing something you never thought you could do. You would make the characters live in the way that he wanted them to live. He always wanted the two personalities or the three personalities to react to each other and that is the thing that the audience loved so much. Because they got to know the characters, just like if you talk to somebody, you get to know them. You talk to a third person, that brings in something else. And that's what Walt did. He realized quite early that it was the acting and the relationship of the personalities that made his business and that's what he asked us to do better and he was constantly helping you in a way that made you lift yourself up. Q. Can you give us a feeling about what it was like having your work reviewed by Walt in the sweatbox? And why was it called that? Ollie:    Because you sweated it out when he gave the criticism to whatever you were doing. Those sweatboxes held maybe a dozen people or something like that and that is where Walt would look at the film for the first time, that you had been working on. And I was called in there. I was Fred Moore's assistant and Fred Moore was the top guy in the Studio at the time. Top because his work had more appeal to it than anybody else's. Anyway Walt would look at it and he would say something about it to him and there was one scene there as an example and he'd pick on everything. He'd say, "Well, this dwarf in the foreground isn't big enough. You're not getting the depth in the thing that you want." And in one scene, he kept picking on what Grumpy had done, and Fred had made Grumpy's finger too big and so Walt said, "Hey Fred, that finger's too big." Said, "Run it again." And ran it again. "Yep, Fred that's it." And Fred said, "Right here, that finger's too big?" "That's it, you gotta make that finger smaller." So then we ran on to the next scene and then when we were getting ready to run the next scene over he run back again, and here's this finger and Walt says, "Hey Fred, see that's it. That finger's too big!" "I know Walt, I know! I'll fix it!" Q. "Bambi" was a whole different effort, with a different kind of animation. Can you share some memories? Ollie:    It was a difficult picture because we'd never done any character with anatomy, any animal with anatomy, and Walt wanted the deer to be very believable. He wanted the deer to have personality but be believable. Not realistic, but believable. And so that is what we had to do, and we had a special teacher he got and brought him down to teach us the anatomy of a deer, and we studied the deer in the drawing classes. The relationship between Bambi and Thumper -- when Walt discovered that, he found he had what he really wanted in his picture. Up till then, there were a lot of little animals all around and he was trying to figure out how do I make this thing into something that the audience will grab? And Bambi and his mother and Bambi and Thumper, are the things that really made it start to come to life to him. And of course the great thing in that picture was how he presented the death of the mother. And that went through story guys saying, "Walt, we gotta show the mother lying there after she's shot and Bambi comes back and sees this bloody mess there." And Walt says, "Gee I don't know guys, that doesn't sound quite right." And about two months later they'd bring it up again. And he says, "Well maybe. " Q. And how did that all work out? Ollie:    The story people were anxious to do that because they were the ones who were planning it and they wanted Walt to show Bambi's mother lying there and Bambi to come and find her and cry over her. And he kept putting them off and saying, "Gee, I don't know guys -- that might be too strong." So finally he worked it out so that the way he felt it should be was that Bambi comes back and searches and calls for his mother and cries out but he never sees her. And he says, "This is the way to do it because if you show her lying there, would be too much. What we want to do, is just show Bambi's feelings and how much he cared. Q. You've said that as time went on, Walt seemed to lose some of his interest in animation. Is that right? Ollie:    Well what happened was that the War came when Walt was at the height of his powers and had just made - "Bambi," and "Dumbo," "Fantasia," "Pinocchio" and those pictures didn't make a lot of money because we lost the European market. And he had to - so many of the guys had to leave, go in the service - and Walt was really down. I'd run into him in the hall and he, I could tell, he just felt lost, didn't have any good stuff to put his heart into. It was like being in the middle of a - two thirds of a novel done, and you're cut off and you can't work on it for ten years. And so when he came back to animation again, he never had that same enthusiasm for it. He had enthusiasm for the nature pictures and live-action and he cared about the animation, he worked with us on it, but it was never like it was on the early pictures where he knew every frame of film.