July 10 - The Fox and the Hound

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On this day, in 1981, Walt Disney Pictures released its 24^th animated feature, The Fox and the Hound. Based on a novel of the same name, Fox the movie began its journey in 1977 when Woolie Reitherman, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men and a long-time Disney director and producer, read the story. Of course he may have only chosen it because his son had a pet fox once, but whatever the reason, Woolie would come to regret that choice (even though what transpired over the next few years would probably have happened no matter what movie was in production at the time).

Things started off well enough. Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two more of the Nine Old Men, took the lead of a team made up of a new generation of animators including John Laseter, Brad Bird, John Musker, Ron Clements, Tim Burton, the list goes on and includes most of the names of the people responsible for the Disney Renaissance period a decade later. Fox was a transitional film between two generations of great animators and, like most hand offs between the old and new guards, it did not go smoothly, but not because of conflicts among the animators.

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For their part, Ollie and Frank had finished most of their animation by 1978 when they both retired and left the finishing of the film to the young bucks. Maybe they had confidence in the next generation, maybe they saw what was coming and didn’t want to watch first hand. Around the same time, studio management, under Ron Miller, began to be unhappy with some of Woolie’s decisions and added a co-director to the picture, Art Stevens. Art had been an animator since the Forties and had just co-directed The Rescuers. As Woolie was most likely still smarting from what was essentially a public slap down, it quickly became apparent that the two directors had very different visions on what kind of film they were making.

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It’s hard to tell who had lost their way more in this dynamic, the aging director, who was running out of ideas (as we shall see in a moment) or Disney management, who would next produce the debacle known as The Black Cauldron. How a movie got made at all with those two factions constantly fighting is something of a minor miracle. Looking at Woolie’s insanity first, at some point in 1979, he decided that the film’s second act needed a boost. At the point that Todd, the fox, is left in the woods, Woolie wanted to insert two cranes, played by Phil Harris and Charro, singing a song to him called “Scoobie-Doobie Doobie Doo, Let Your Body Turn Goo.” He even went as far as having Charro record soundtracks and live reference footage before Art declared it a terrible idea and, through management (and just plain good sense), got the scene cut.

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Even though they were right about the cranes, Studio management wasn’t all about making good decisions at this point in company history. A large group of animators was becoming highly dissatisfied with how things were being run in general. The grumbling came to a head on September 13, 1979 when Don Bluth and fifteen other animators suddenly resigned their positions and asked that their names be taken off the credits of Fox. With 17% of the animation staff gone, Disney had to scramble to hire new people to fill the gaps and finish the movie. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Woolie had his last fight with management as director, got pulled from the position, was relegated to a producer credit only and the release date was pushed back from Christmas 1980 to Summer 1981.

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When it was finally released, in spite of all the infighting and behind the scenes drama, The Fox and the Hound received mostly favorable reviews. Critics generally said it wasn’t anything particularly special but it did show glimpses of that old Disney magic at times. The fight scene between Todd, Copper and the bear is generally cited as a masterpiece of animation and everyone loves Pearl Bailey’s performance as Big Mama the owl. Financially, Fox did okay as well. Because of the delays in production, costs for the picture totaled $12 million, making it the most expensive animated film ever made up to that point, even adjusted for inflation (which is kind of laughable today; animated movies routinely cost over $100 million to produce versus Fox’s $35 million in 2019 dollars). Fox grossed a comfortable $39.9 million in its initial run and an additional $23.5 million in a rerelease seven years later, making it a profitable if somewhat ho-hum addition to the Disney family.

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In the end, The Fox and the Hound holds an awkward place in Disney history. It marked the end of the era of Walt’s Nine Old Men. Woolie Reitherman was the only one who remained by the time of its release and Fox left a bitter taste in his mouth. He spent the next few years working on a handful of projects that never moved into actual production and was killed in a car accident in 1985.  The next crop of animated genius was in place but still had to go through the painful valley of The Black Cauldron before they would start to come into their own and launch the Disney Renaissance. The baton might have been passed and audiences might have been mildly entertained, but no one who was running could really say they’d enjoyed the race.

April 25 - Ron Clements

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On this day, in 1953, Ronald Francis Clements was born in Sioux City, Iowa. After graduating from Bishop Heelan Catholic High School, Ron hightailed it to Southern California to become a student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His professional career actually began in 1974 at Hanna-Barbera, but he was only there a few months before getting word that he'd been accepted into Disney's Talent Development Program. At that point, it was goodbye Scooby Doo, hello Mickey Mouse (even though not much animation was being produced with Mickey at that point) and he's never looked back.

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Ron came to Disney at a perfect time. For his first two years, he apprenticed under none other than Frank Thomas, the last of Walt's Nine Old Men to still officially haunt the studios. His first work, totally uncredited of course, made it into Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. By 1977, Ron was working on his own as a Character Animator, contributing to both Pete's Dragon and The Rescuers. For The Fox and the Hound, he'd been promoted to Supervising Animator and worked with John Musker, a Character Animator on the film, for the first time. Ron and John really hit it off, and became writing collaborators on Disney's next project, The Black Cauldron.

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The Black Cauldron's production process is notorious for its controversies within the company. A growing number of animators were horribly unhappy with the direction the project was taking, Ron and John among them. Only a few years before, Don Bluth had led a walkout of a whole group of employees over the same kind of complaints. Not wanting another mass exodus, Ron and John proposed to then head of the studio Ron Miller that an adaptation of the children's book series Basil of Baker Street be added to the production slate as an 'alternate' movie for staff to work on if they could no longer stomach Cauldron. Miller agreed, putting Jon and and famed storyboard artist Burny Mattinson in the director's chairs and giving Ron the task of adapting the story. When schedules shifted and became a whole lot tighter (mainly after Cauldron tanked), Burny was moved into more of a producer role and Ron became co-director for the first time.

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The Great Mouse Detective opened to positive reviews and financial success. Coming only one year after the disastrous Cauldron, Ron and John's little-movie-that-could literally saved the animation department by convincing the powers that be that they could still generate income (in spite of the fact that they let Vincent Price sing). As Detective was wrapping up production, the new bosses, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, held a meeting with all the animators to generate new ideas for films. Ron brought a two page synopsis of an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and a quick concept piece about setting Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island in space. Eisner rejected both. Within days, however, Katzenberg quietly asked Ron to expand on his treatment of Mermaid, eventually giving Ron and John the green light to write and direct it.

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When The Little Mermaid opened on November 17, 1989, it was a smash hit, earning over $200 million in worldwide box office receipts and ushered in the era that became known as the Disney Renaissance. It also cemented the partnership between Ron and John as a co-directing powerhouse. For their follow-up film, they reworked and resubmitted their idea for a space themed Treasure Island. It was rejected again. Instead they were given the helm of an adaptation of a story from 1001 Arabian Nights called Aladdin.

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The duo struck gold again in November 1992, as Aladdin went on to become the first animated picture to gross over $500 million. For a third time they submitted what was now being called Treasure Planet as their next film and, for the third time, the studio said no, thanks, why don't you two direct this Greek mythology project we're developing. They said fine, but when the time came to sign new contracts during the production of Hercules, they made sure that one of the stipulations was that their science fiction adventure flick was guaranteed to be their next project. Despite mostly positive reviews (and near universal acclaim for James Woods' performance as Hades), Hercules failed to score at the box office like its predecessors, taking in a paltry $253 million. While still a moneymaker, the Disney Renaissance was starting to wind down.

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Following the wrap of production on Hercules, Ron and John finally got to go to work on Treasure Planet, more than a decade after first coming up with the idea. In retrospect, the fact that the movie had been rejected so many times (and that they had to kind of force the studio into making it at all), should have been an omen for everyone involved. Changing the genre of established classics is not only hard but doesn't make people already familiar with the story happy. Treasure Planet opened in November 2002 to tepid reviews and dismal sales. It became the first Disney animated movie since The Black Cauldron to fail to make back its budget. It's not a bad film, but you'd also be hard pressed to call it a good film. The Renaissance was over.

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Ron and John inherited a concept called Fraidy Cat as their next project but the production was fraught with problems. When David Stainton, then president of animation, refused to green light the movie in September 2005, both of the co-directors resigned from the company in protest. The successful duo's absence wouldn't even last a year, though. By the spring of 2006, John Lasseter installed as the new chief creative officer of animation and he asked Ron and John to return to Disney to helm an adaptation of The Frog Princess.

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As the entire industry was embracing fully computer generated animation, Lasseter was willing to give traditional animation another shot. Ron and John were a perfect duo to head 2D animation's last hurrah. Their direction, along with Randy Newman's blend of zydeco and jazz, pushed The Princess and the Frog to the highest box office receipts in years, over $270 million, but still far short of what had been realized during the Renaissance. It didn't help that Princess opened a week after Avatar (Princess is clearly the superior movie, but there really is no accounting for taste). The 2009 film managed to earn four Oscar nominations (getting edged out by Up in most of them) but is, as of right now, the last film put out by a major studio using traditional techniques. Hand drawn animation is over.

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Traditional storytelling, however is not. After The Princess and the Frog, Ron and John became quite secretive about what they were working on. All they would say is yes we're working. After a couple of years of development, they finally came clean about the fact that, yes, they were moving into the realm of computer animation and their next story was inspired by Pacific Island cultures. The movie that came out in November 2016, Moana, became their biggest hit yet. With songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and overwhelmingly positive reviews, Moana brought over $643 million in box office receipts to the table. The directing team was back on top of the animation world.

Since the release of Moana, John Musker, who obviously felt like walking away a huge success was the way to go,  has retired from Disney and the animation business. Ron hasn't made that decision quite yet. Despite the fact that his long time partner in crime has folded up his directing chair, Ron may (or may not) have another epic story in him just crying out to be told. Whether he goes for it or just spends a few more years, like his old mentor Frank did, guiding the new guys at the start of their journeys, Ron has undeniably spent the last 45 years creating the highlights of two generations worth of childhoods.And for that alone, he deserves a tip of the mouse ears. Happy Birthday, Ron!

February 11 - Blaine Gibson

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On this day, in 1918, Ira Blaine Gibson was born in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Growing up on his parents' melon farm, Blaine showed his artistic talents at an early age. When he was twelve, he won a national contest sponsored by Proctor and Gamble for carving a figure out of a bar of Ivory Soap. The grand prize was $10 for his elephant.

Blaine would go to Western State College and the University of Colorado studying art until his family ran out of money. At the age of 21 he wrote to the Walt Disney Studio inquiring about a job. The studio sent him an application that required him to show off his drawing skills. Not only did he get the job, but he was asked to sign a release for the sketch he made of a boy milking a cow into a cat's mouth as the company wanted to use it right away. So, in the spring of 1939, Blaine moved to Southern California.

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Blaine began as an assistant animator at Disney. He worked on features like Fantasia, Bambi and Song of the South. By 1949, he was permanently assigned to working under Frank Thomas, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, and assisted him on such films as Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty and Peter Pan. He was good at animation but always kept an interest in sculpting, so much so that he would attend classes at Pasadena City College to improve his work. That dedication would pay off in 1954.

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As work was gearing up on Disneyland, Walt began pulling more and more people from the studio to work on his park. He discovered Blaine's talent as a sculptor and immediately put him to work on the new Project. Over the years, Blaine would sculpt faces for Audio-Animatronics in attractions from an uncanny likeness of Abraham Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair to the Haunted Mansion to Pirates of the Caribbean to It's a Small World. When asked where he got his inspiration for so many different looks, he admitted that some of the ghouls and pirates he created might have looked a lot like people from his church while others were people he'd had dinner with over the years.

When Walt Disney World was being designed, not only were many of Blaine's creations duplicated in the Florida versions of existing attractions, but he was tapped to sculpt each of the Commanders in Chief for the Hall of Presidents in Liberty Square. Even after his retirement, Blaine would return to sculpt each new president. The first 43 Presidents in the Hall, from George Washington to George W. Bush, were all done by Blaine.

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Blaine's best known work, however, was produced in 1993, the statue known as Partners. The copper statue of Walt, holding hands with Mickey Mouse, gesturing out over the park and towards the future, has become synonymous with the Walt Disney Company. Working from a 1960 bust of Walt, Blaine modeled it after what he considered to be Walt's prime years, the mid-Fifties. He once said that the hardest part of the piece to get right was Mickey's fingers as they wrapped around Walt's. The original Partners is located in the hub area of Disneyland. Reproductions have found their way into four other locations around the world: the hub area of the Magic Kingdom in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California and The Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, France. The statue was also given out in a miniature version, called Partners in Excellence, for a while to recognize Cast Members who were nominated by their peers as someone who embodied the spirit of Walt Disney.

Blaine retired from the Walt Disney Company in 1983 after 44 years of enduring contributions to the company's legacy. Besides returning every 4-8 years to create a new face for the Hall of Presidents, he would come back in 1993 to be honored as an official Disney Legend, for obvious reasons. On July 5, 2015, Blaine passed away from heart failure at his home in Montecito, California. He was 97.

September 24 - Brad Bird

On this day, in 1957, Phillip Bradley Bird was born in Kalispell, Montana. Since his grandfather was CEO of the Montana Power Company and his father was in the propane business, you might have thought that Brad would have had leanings toward a career in energy. You would have been wrong. Brad decided pretty early in life what he was going to do with his and it had more to do with using electricity rather than producing it.

On a family trip at the age of 11, Brad was taking a tour of the Walt Disney Studios when he met Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's Nine Old Men. This meeting prompted him to turn to his family and announce that he would be part of Disney's animation team some day. For most 11 year olds, that would have been the end of it. Brad returned home and actually began working on a 15 minute animated film. And it only took him two years to complete it. By the age of 14, Brad was getting mentoring from another of the Old Men, Milt Kahl. It's no surprise that Disney would eventually give him a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. It's also no surprise that one of the people Brad made friends with at CalArts was a student by the name of John Lasseter.

After graduating, Brad of course went to work for Disney. He contributed to The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Then he got fired. But that was okay, it happens to the best of us (right Tim Burton?). Brad moved into television animation. He did an episode of Amazing Stories. He co-wrote the movie *batteries not included. Then, in 1989,  he started working at a little animation studio called Klasky Csupo. One of the first assignments Brad got was taking these one minute filler animations on The Tracey Ullman Show and developing them into a full half hour stand alone program. For the first eight years of its life, Brad helped develop the look of The Simpsons and even directed a few episodes. Some might also recognize that Klasky Csupo was the company that produced The Rugrats. Brad was an animator for the pilot of that show as well.

In 1999, Brad's feature directorial debut, The Iron Giant, was released by Warner Brothers. The movie was a huge critical success (it still has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and a huge box office failure (it only managed to earn 31 million dollars on an 80 million dollar budget). Because Warner had decided they were getting out of the animation game, the studio basically did the equivalent of heaving Giant out of a moving car and squealing off. Zero marketing, zero caring, zero anything. Which of course meant that Giant would become a cult classic. Nevermind the fact that it's also a great movie. Again, the movie's financial woes were okay: that's when Brad made the move to Pixar.

The first project Brad pitched to his old friend now new boss, John Lasseter, was a superhero flick. It would be the first Pixar film to be mostly populated by human characters, which are much harder to animate than animals or toys. Brad got the go ahead to write, direct and act in the movie, so he wrote, directed and did voice work for his second feature film, The Incredibles. This time around, Brad achieved both critical and box office gold. And like any good director, he saved (in my opinion) the best character for himself, Edna Mode. That's right. Edna is voiced by a guy and yet she's still fabulous! You may have also noticed that Mr. Incredible looks a bit like Brad. Supposedly, he didn't realize the animators had done that until too far into production to change anything. Supposedly.

After The Incredibles, Brad went on to write and direct another Pixar hit, Ratatouille. He became part of the senior creative team at the studio, overseeing such gems as Up, Toy Story 3, Brave, Monster's University, Inside Out and Coco. At some point in there he got the opportunity to direct his first live action film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol for Paramount. That led to a second live action movie, Tomorrowland, this time for Disney, which he also wrote, produced and did some design work. Then, earlier this year, he finally released The Return of Edna Mode, more popularly known as The Incredibles 2. It was worth the 18 year wait.

Brad's work has earned him numerous Annie Awards, Oscars, Golden Globes, Saturn Awards and BAFTA Film Awards. He reportedly has several project ideas in the works. I'm pretty sure that whatever the future brings for Brad, he's going to need more shelf space in the den.

September 8 - Frank Thomas

On this day, in 2004, Franklin Rosborough Thomas passed away in La Canada Flintridge, California.

 Born in Fresno, California in 1912, Frank grew up the son of the President of Fresno State College. He figured out what he wanted to do in life pretty early. By the time Frank was nine, he'd already asked his dad how to make a living drawing pictures. When he was a sophomore at (surprise!) Fresno State, Frank wrote and directed a movie poking fun at college life. The local theater even ran it for a while. Frank's career was on its way.

After finishing his schooling at Stanford University, Frank enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute. He moved into a rooming house in Hollywood where one of the other boarders worked for a little outfit called the Walt Disney Studio. That boarder told Frank he should apply and on September 24, 1934, he became Disney employee no. 224.

For Frank, animation was all about personality. Doing funny things in interesting places wasn't enough for him. "Until a character becomes a personality, it cannot be believed," he said. And no one could infuse their characters with more personality than Frank. Some of the most iconic scenes are as memorable as they are because Frank animated them. Think of the following:

The dwarfs crying at Snow White's grave.

Bambi and Thumper learning how to skate on the ice.

Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti.

Pinocchio singing in the marionette theater.

Merlin and Madame Mim in their wizard's duel.

King Louie singing "I Want to be Like You" with Baloo.

Scenes with Winnie the Pooh and Piglet exploring life together.

Every one of these scenes has become so much more than ink and paint on acetate because Frank was a master at infusing personality into his drawings. And it wasn't just about touching or rambunctious scenes either. Frank was a directing animator for some fantastic villains, too: Lady Tremaine, the Queen of Hearts and Captain Hook.

Frank easily earned his place as one of Walt's Nine Old Men. He even joined Walt on his goodwill tour of South America in 1941. Frank was absent from the studio from 1942-46 as he had joined the Air Force as part of the First Motion Picture Unit, creating training movies, but hit the ground running on his return like he'd only been on a short vacation.

After Walt's death, Frank would spend another 11 years at the studio creating such characters as Pongo and Perdita for 101 Dalmatians, Baloo, Mowgli and Kaa for The Jungle Book, Prince John and Sir Hiss for Robin Hood, and Bernard and Bianca for The Rescuers. After more than 43 years of outstanding animation artistry, Frank retired from the Disney Studio on January 31, 1978. But his work didn't end there.

Throughout his career, Frank was best friends with another of the Old Men, Ollie Johnston. The two were practically inseparable at Disney and they would remain so in retirement. After both had laid down their drawing pencils in 1978, they began new careers as authors. The first book they published together was called "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life". It is generally recognized as the bible of hand drawn animation. I have a copy myself, not because I'm an artist but because it's a gorgeous, richly detailed book. The duo went on to co-write three other books: Too Funny for Words, Walt Disney's Bambi, and the Disney Villain (which I also own, a signed copy no less, be very jealous).

Several homages have been given to Frank and Ollie over the years. In the 1995 Mickey Mouse short "Runaway Brain", the mad scientist's name is Dr. Frankenollie. Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles movies, loved Frank and Ollie so much he immortalized them in not one but two of his films. He made them the train engineers in The Iron Giant and the two geezers talking about the "old school" in the first Incredibles, which would come out after his death. 

Frank was named a Disney Legend in 1989 along with the other Nine Old Men.