interviewing John Canemaker about his new book WALT DISNEY'S NINE OLD MEN & THE ART OF ANIMATION (published by Disney Editions). The Nine Old Men should be no strangers to readers of this website. The illustrious assemblage of Disney animators, comprised of Les Clark, Woolie Reitherman, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery and Marc Davis, were as much responsible for the success of the Walt-era Disney features as any other group of artists at the studio. But even as Canemaker celebrates the numerous accomplishments of the Nine Old Men, he also helps us understand them as human beings. He paints an insightful and revealing portrait of each of the 'old men,' exploring their personal lives, relationships with co-workers, unique struggles and individual impacts on the Disney oeuvre. WALT DISNEY'S NINE OLD MEN is an engaging and inspiring read from start to finish, and it is one of the few animation books that deserves a spot on the bookshelf of all animation artists, historians and cartoon aficionados.
AMID AMIDI: I should probably start off by asking what you feel is the greatest misconception about the Nine Old Men?
JOHN CANEMAKER: That they were all the same: a bland bunch of cogs who turned out masterly animation mechanically with little effort, and worked easily and well together from the beginning to the end of their careers. I hope that readers will instead discover, as I did, that each of the Nine are fascinating men and artists. As I wrote their stories, I bonded with each of them and I saw each and every incident in their lives not as good or bad, but as human and understandable.
I've heard some people who haven't read your book ask what info could be in it that wasn't already in THE ILLUSION OF LIFE. While you reference the Ollie Johnston/Frank Thomas text frequently, your book has a level of detail and analysis about these artists that isn't available in ILLUSION. Can you talk about how you used that seminal text in the writing of your book, and in what ways your volume goes beyond THE ILLUSION OF LIFE?
I think ILLUSION OF LIFE is the greatest book written about Disney animation techniques. I quoted from it when I needed to reinforce an opinion or historical fact with the esteemed author's voices of authority. Thanks to the generosity of Frank and Ollie, for my book I had access to the original transcripts of the interviews they conducted for their book back in the 1970s with numerous artists who have since passed on. Also, Ted Thomas gave me the full transcripts of all the interviews for the documentary FRANK AND OLLIE.
In addition, the Disney Archives found for me various interview transcripts (including those for TV appearances), copies of correspondence, and periodical articles about each of the Nine Old Men and other animators. There is also my personal archives: twenty years of data located at the John Canemaker Animation Collection at NYU. So I gathered a lot of research. I wanted to delve into great detail about each of the Nine, personally and professionally. I was interested in discovering their individual approaches to animation techniques, their philosophy of entertainment and communication, etc. I also wanted to know them as people, what their personal lives and personalities were like, and how that affected their work and relationships. I think all people's lives are fascinating. I enjoy trying to find out what makes them tick, what makes them unique, and I try to put that across to readers in a direct way.
You've known a number of the Nine Old Men personally for many years. With that background, I'd be curious to hear what is the most interesting new thing that you learned about this group of artists while writing the book?
I suppose I gained a clearer picture of how well and how poorly they all fit together as a group and as individuals, depending on their personalities; I figured out how they each functioned within the big picture of Disney animation and its development during different periods. The studio was not a smoothly functioning machine, but a very human one that was subject to changes based on the strengths and failings of any human endeavor, including Walt's. I hope that comes across to readers as well.
Who was the most challenging Old Man to write about - either because of an elusive personality or a very multi-faceted personality? And also, who was the easiest?
None were easy to write about. They were all challenging exactly because of your description: some were elusive, like Les Clark and John Lounsbery, because they were shy men and there is less text about them and fewer quotes from them than the others. Others of the Nine I have known socially and personally for years (Frank and Ollie) and so I tried to be as candid and honest about their foibles as well as their virtues as I was with the others. It was an exhausting process, like doing nine separate, detailed biographies: digesting the research material; selecting quotes; interweaving the stories without being redundant. It's essentially the same story nine times -- so I had to find what makes each one a different personality and give them their special "voice."
Your book noted many animation pioneers at Disney who preceded the Nine Old Men, including Ham Luske, Freddie Moore, Norm Ferguson, Art Babbitt, Ub Iwerks, Grim Natwick and Bill Tytla. Do you feel that any of these artists, or any other animator at Disney for that matter, deserved to have been in the Nine Old Men group?
Sure, all of them. But timing had a lot to do with it. Some were gone from the studio (Babbitt, Tytla, Natwick) when Walt focused on the Nine and gave them their nickname and power. Ferguson and Moore were on the way down. Luske was directing, Iwerks was inventing optical effects. There was luck and an arbitrariness to Walt's chosen few; it caused jealousy and resentment at the studio among many top talent, because the attention focused exclusively on animation. Art director Ken Anderson, for example, is said to have been angry because he wasn't one of them. Bill Peet once loudly complained that there wasn't a Nine Old Men group in the story department.
This is your third volume about a specific group of Disney artists - first it was conceptual artists in BEFORE THE ANIMATION BEGINS, then storyboard artists in PAPER DREAMS, and now animators. Obviously, each of the individual artists are unique, but have you noticed any overall differences in temperament, personality or family backgrounds between the various artist groups (animators, storyboard artists, development artists)?
That's a wonderful question, Amid, and it deserves a fair answer. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to make that kind of comparative survey and I'd prefer to not make a general statement until I do. However, maybe one of your readers might be doing just that and if they draw some conclusions, I'd love to hear about it.
In your view, how responsible are the Nine Old Men for the declining quality of the later Disney features? (By this I mean not a decline in their animation which was still as strong as ever, but in the quality of the overall films).
I believe that in post-101 DALMATIANS (through FOX AND THE HOUND), that is features involving participation of several of the Nine, there was an emphasis on character animation performances to the detriment of story construction and development. It's a pity that the great storyman Bill Peet left the studio. Walt trusted him and considered him to be his equal as a storyteller. But Peet argued with the animators on JUNGLE BOOK (he felt they were interfering with his storyboards) and then had a public
falling out with Walt and quit (see PAPER DREAMS for details or Peet's own autobiography). Then Walt died, and the animators were bereft; they tried to figure out how Walt might have done things creatively storywise, while they continually fell back on their real strength: personality animation. In the book, I cite a Hollywood wag saying that watching Disney animated films in the 1970s was like watching great chefs cook hotdogs.
Being one of the leaders in the field of biographical research about animation artists, how do you feel about the overall state of biographical writing in this field? Today many of the most influential artists like Bob Clampett, John Hubley and Grim Natwick still lack proper biographies. Do you feel this is relatively normal compared to the scholarship of other artforms, or is animation research lagging behind in the area of biographical studies?
There's not enough biographical writing in the field of animation. There's a lot of books about Walt Disney, of course, and many general histories and technical books. Walter Lantz, Hanna and Barbera, Lotte Reiniger, Norman McLaren, and the Fleischer's have books about them, but several of those subjects deserve another "go" -- a fully researched, scholarly, candid and critical approach to life histories and their work. To me, Don Crafton's Emile Cohl biography is the ideal: fully researched, beautifully
written, with scholarship to spare.
More recently there have been bios of Ub Iwerks, Len Lye, and Alexander Alexeieff; an upcoming a biography of Oskar Fischinger by William Moritz, a fine writer and scholar, should be superb. So gaps are being slowly filled in. But where, indeed, are the biographies of Bob Clampett, Faith and John Hubley, and Grim Natwick? I'd like to see full-blown, serious bios of Chuck Jones, Joe Grant, Vladimir Tytla, Art Babbitt, Ken Harris, John Lasseter, Tex Avery, John Randolph Bray, Richard Williams, John Halas and
Joy Batchelor, Yuri Norstein, Jiri Trnka, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Vinton, Robert Breer, Jules Engel, James Whitney, Jan Lenica, Ladislas Starewich, Emile Reynaud, George Pal, Ray Harryhausen, Fred Moore, Caroline Leaf, and Mary Blair, among others.
A great place to start researching many of these artists would be at your own research archives at NYU. Can you talk a little bit about what that's all about?
Yes, I'd like to remind scholars and future writers of those books that you will find a great deal of research material available to you in my own animation archive, the JOHN CANEMAKER ANIMATION COLLECTION, located in the Fales section of Bobst Library at New York University, which is available to all scholars and anyone interested in the history of animation. It contains over twenty years of information on animation - files on animators, books, artwork, posters, magazine articles, interview transcripts. It is a "living archive" in that I continue to donate all the research I do for every article or book I write to the Collection. For example, all of the NINE OLD MEN data (and there is a lot of it!) will be
arriving soon. For more information and a finder's guide, please visit the collection's website.
Where do you go from here? Are there other groups of Disney artists, or individual Disney artists, that you'd like to write about, or do you plan to move on to other endeavors? Who is the one animation artist that you would like to see a biography written about?
How about GREAT DISNEY INBETWEENERS I HAVE KNOWN? Seriously, I am currently the Acting Chair of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Kanbar Institute of Film & Television Department through August 2002 and then I will take a year-long sabbatical (2002-2003). I plan to concentrate on a long animated film in progress on my father's life. I also will be bouncing around the world lecturing on various animators, selling my books and a new home video distributed by Milestone Film & Video of my independently-made animated shorts: JOHN CANEMAKER: MARCHING TO A DIFFERENT TOON. It is available through MilestoneFilms.com.
Both the video and books will be prominent along with lots of other data and photos on my website, which will launch soon: JohnCanemaker.com.
As for a new book: Disney Editions has asked me to write an appreciation of the art of Mary Blair, an assignment I have happily accepted; that book will appear in one year. And as for the one animation artist I would like to see a full bio written about, that would be George Dunning (and I'd like to write it).
John Canemaker will be at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on February 2, 2002 for a NINE OLD MEN screening, lecture and book signing. Stay tuned to AnimationBlast.com for more details.
Buy WALT DISNEY'S NINE OLD MEN & THE ART OF ANIMATION at Amazon.
