July 15 - Al Bertino

Image courtesy disney.fandom.com

On this day, in 1912, Albert Bertino was born in California. And that statement is literally as close as I have been able to pinpoint his place of birth. Somewhere in the vast swathe of area known as California. Needless to say, there's a reason we pick up Al's story in 1934 when he began working for the Charles Mintz Studio (for those of you who think that name might sound familiar, it is the same studio that screwed Walt out of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit six years earlier). After some time there, Al moved over to the Harman-Ising Studio, thinking that he was moving to a better outfit. Unfortunately, Harman-Ising was soon going to lose their distribution deal with MGM and would cease to exist. That's how Al ended up as an assistant animator at the Walt Disney Studio in 1939.

Al started on features like Pinocchio and Fantasia before moving up to animator in the Shorts Department and eventually landing in the Story Department. His name actually appears as part of the 1945 Goofy short Hockey Homicide. All the players in the short are named after real people at the studio and Ice Box Bertino keeps getting into fights with Fearless Ferguson, named after fellow animator Norm Ferguson (the real irony here is that by all accounts Al was a sweetheart of a guy and wouldn't fight anyone).

Image copyright Disney

When the medium of television came along, Al began writing episodes of the Disneyland anthology series. One of his favorite stories to tell was about a show they wrote for the Christmas season that included a segment on the birth of Christ. Walt sent Al to the church down the street to get the nuns approval on his script. The Mother Superior read it over, declared it good and asked where Al got his good ideas. Al, mindful of who he was talking to, look upwards and said he wasn't shy about getting "help from the man upstairs." The Mother Superior immediately agree that Mr. Disney was indeed a wonderful man, Al was too flustered to correct her and took his leave before he burst out laughing.

When Disney dissolved its Shorts Department in the late Fifties, Al became a victim of downsizing as most of his story work had been with that group. He then began doing freelance work with whatever studio needed him, a time he once described as one of the happiest of his life (mainly because he got paid more for contract work). He spent the next several years working for UPA on Dick Tracy and Mr. Magoo, Terrytoons on Hashimoto and Hector Heathcote, Bob Clampett on Benny and Cecil, and the Walter Lantz Studio.

Image courtesy tripadvisor.com

In the mid Sixties, Al returned to Disney, this time as an Imagineer with WED Enterprises. He became part of the teams that created such classic attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, America Sings and the Country Bear Jamboree. Big Al, the large Country Bear that keeps trying to sing Blood on the Saddle during the show, is not only named after Al, but he considers it a bit of a self portrait in the medium of Audio-Animatronic bear. Call it the perks of being an Imagineer.

Al retired from Disney in 1977, but he did one more freelance project before actually finishing his career. He was co-designer of the Monster Plantation (now called the Monster Mansion) dark ride that opened in 1981 at the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park. Al continued to reside in Los Angeles, California until his death on August 18, 1996. He was 94.