Happy Birthday, Alice!

The wonderful Alice Davis celebrates her birthday today. The photo shows her at last year’s birthday dinner. I have known Alice and her late husband Marc Davis for many years. Marc enjoyed the company of young artists and so does Alice. There is a reason why Alice has a lot of friends. Everyone loves her unique sense of humor as well as her positive outlook on life.

A while ago I had the opportunity to drive Alice to Anaheim to attend an event at Disneyland. Traffic was very bad, it was slow going on the 5 South. I tell you, I had the greatest time listening to Alice’s stories about Walt and the old studio.

Later, on the way back we had to deal with traffic again,  and the topic of conversation was Mary Blair, who Alice adored and had known very well. They both had worked together on the IT’s a Small World Attraction back in the early 1960s. It was a privilege to find out about Mary’s life, which over the years had its ups and downs.

Alice’s first job for Disney was to produce the dress worn by actress Helen Stanley, who performed scenes for the animators as Aurora for the film Sleeping Beauty. That dress is a marvel, the fabric creates the most graphic looking folds when in motion, and therefore helped to give Marc’s animation so much elegance.

Alice and Marc also worked together on Disneyland’s ride Pirates of the Caribbean.

The Gang

Disney’s top animators got together sometime in 1973 for a photo shoot to promote their latest animated feature Robin Hood. Looks like Woolie just cracked a joke, for some reason only Milt Kahl and Les Clark are not laughing.

Most of the animators were involved in this production except a few. Marc Davis came over from Imagineering, his home since the early 1960s. Ward Kimball and Les Clark were involved in directing a variety of TV and theatrical specials. Eric Larson did a bit of animation on the film, but he started to focus on developing a training program for new talent.

Ollie Johnston loved his assignment to animate Prince John and Sir Hiss, Frank Thomas did not find a fun way to express himself in this film. Milt did beautiful work on Robin Hood and several other characters, but questioned the film’s story structure.

All of them were incredibly gifted artists, highly opinionated and critical. Marc Davis summed it up: ”I think that one of Walt’s greatest achievements was having all of us work together without killing one another.”

In other words they all knew that you had to be a team player in order to make these movies.

A Cool Guy...

…named Milt Kahl would be 105 years old today. This photo was taken during one of my earlier visits to Marin County, where he spent the rest of his years after leaving Disney Studios.

I remember asking him if he was going down to LA to join a Snow White anniversary reunion organized by Disney, but he had no interest. Animation was in his past, now he enjoyed being remarried and seeing his children more often. He was a happy man, and I was happy and grateful that Milt took the time to see me and answer my many question about the art of animation.

Here are a few visual reminders of his extraordinary talent, covering the second half of his career.

There is plenty of Milt’s artwork to see on this blog. Here is the link to my first post on Milt:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/06/milt-kahl.html

Orville

Most of the personality scenes with the albatross Orville from the film The Rescuers were animated by Ollie Johnston. This is an interesting character, he is pilot and airplane all in one. Jim Jordan’s voice brought a confidence to the character despite his questionable flying maneuvers. 

For Orville’s take offs and landings Ollie used some live action footage as reference for his animation.

The Disney 1952 documentary Water Birds included scenes of an albatross’s awkward attempts to get airborne as well as his crash landings.

These design sketches are full of personality, and they show the character’s comical potential.

Milt Kahl took a shot at Orville’s design as well. His albatross is a little shorter in length. Milt was somehow able to add a funny baggy pants appearance, which is reminiscent of a vintage  aviator’s outfit. I wished that part would have been kept in the final design.

Never before published designs by Ollie and Milt. I hope you enjoy them.

Ollie's Reason and Emotion

Ollie Johnston animated the two female parts in the 1943 propaganda film Reason and Emotion. (Milt Kahl did the sequence featuring the male parts).

For those of you who have not seen this short, there are two opposing characters inside the human head. One of them is Reason, proper and dignified, the other Emotion, intuitive and fun loving.

The film’s point is that only a good balance between the two guarantees a successful way to conduct one’s life.

This is one of the best War Time shorts Disney produced. The contrast between the characters makes for interesting conflict and fun situations.

Here are some of Ollie’s character layouts showing Emotion getting a hold of the driver’s seat.

I recall Frank Thomas suggesting way back that we study this short as character inspiration for The Black Cauldron. I know he felt that cartoony designs like these would be easier tho handle by a new, green animation crew. The designs Milt Kahl had suggested looked too familiar to him and too difficult to draw.

Reason and Emotion can be seen as part of the Disney treasures DVD called: On the Front Lines.

Ken's and Milt's Shere Khan

Storyman Bill Peet had done just a few sketches of the villain from The Jungle Book before he departed from the studio. Ken Anderson picked up the pieces and tried to go beyond a typical, evil  Disney tiger. It was his idea to go for personality traits like arrogance, self assurance and sarcasm.

When actor George Sanders was hired to do the voice Shere Khan’s character came to life, and everybody loved the concept. 

These are Ken’s design explorations.

Milt studied George Sanders’ facial features and drew Shere Khan resembling the voice actor.

Animating the tiger turned out to be one of Milt’s favorite assignments. He was originally concerned though that Shere Khan turned up so late in the movie.

After an early screening of the story reels, Milt turned to Walt Disney and said: “Don’t you think this would be a good time to discuss where we are going with the story, and at what point the tiger should enter?”

Walt petted Milt on the shoulder, assuring him that things would turn out alright. “You guys take care of the personalities, let me worry about the story.” (Milt recounted this episode during a 1984 interview).

Before Walt died in1966 he did see Milt’s pencil animation of Shere Khan interrogating Kaa, the python, about Mowgli’s whereabouts. He liked it and approved the sequence for final color.

Here are a few Milt’s key drawings from various scenes. I think he reached a new personal level of excellence with Shere Khan. He invented new expressions, which gave great authenticity to the acting. One for the ages!