WORKING WITH DISNEY

Working with Disney: Interviews with Animators, Producers, and Artists (210 6x9-inch pages, b/w, no illustrations; University Press of Mississippi, hardcover, $55; paperback, $25) was assembled by the self-proclaimed ultimate Disney fan: Don Peri, a Baby Boomer who’s watched Disney films all of his life, met 30-year Disney veteran Ben Sharpsteen in 1974 and collaborated with him on his memoirs, which, unpublished, resides in the Walt Disney Archives. Peri then began interviewing other graduates of the Disney Studio who had known and worked with “Uncle Walt.”

The University Press published the first collection of the Peri interviews in 2008, Working with Walt: Interviews with Disney Artists, and we reviewed it at the Usual Place, Rants & Raves, Opus 225. This volume publishes another 15 interviews, including those Peri conducted with Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Marc Davis — three of Disney’s legendary Nine Old Men of Animation — Dave Hand (first director, “after Walt,” of short-subject cartoons and of “Snow White”) and cast members at Disneyland on opening day, a couple of Mouseketeers, and others, among them Walter Lantz, who never worked for Disney but was a contemporary in early animation.

The interviews, in addition to offering deep insights into Disney and the operations of his Studio, are laced with other fascinating tidbits.

The Walter Lantz interview sheds new light on the incident of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the Disney creation that was stolen by Charles Mintz, who had insinuated himself into the Disney operation by marrying Disney’s distributor, Margaret J. Winkler, and then, in 1928, finessing Oswald away from Disney by claiming that he, Mintz, owned the Oswald copyright.

Not so, said Lantz: the Oswald copyright was always owned by Universal, for whom Disney as well as Mintz was producing animated cartoons. Devastated by what he supposed was the loss of Oswald, Disney invented Mickey Mouse. “Universal didn’t want any part of it,” Lantz remembered, “ — they said that mice wouldn’t go.”

But Universal wanted its own cartoon department and asked Lantz to set one up. Lantz, who by then had ten years experience in animation, said he would, “providing I could redesign the rabbit. I made him a white rabbit, which is not the Disney rabbit at all.” Disney’s Oswald was all black, and he was reincarnated in Mickey but without long ears.