Who Am I? June 2023
My parents were Russian Jews that settled in Omaha, NE where I was born early in the last century. My dad bought carp and other invasive fish from the game wardens who were trying to preserve the trout population in our nearby streams and lakes. Dad shipped off those fish packed in barrels of ice to Chicago for his living until one day he injured his spine jumping out of a wagon. He broke a vertebra that eventually paralyzed him. I was a prankster and troublemaker in high school. After dad’s disabling accident I set out for Brooklyn to live with relatives and send money home.
I originally thought of going to medical school and becoming a psychiatrist but I was broke. I did have some artistic talent and landed some commercial art gigs drawing cartoons for magazines and for the companies that advertised in them. I apprenticed at the Terrytoons Studio in the Bronx where I developed a fast friendship with another artist just after he had returned from Europe. We roomed together in N.Y and later did so again in CA when my dream of working for Uncle Walt became a reality.
In the 1920’s I Americanized the spelling of my last name to mask my Russian Jewish ancestry because of both the ‘Red Scares’ and the anti-Semitism prevalent at the time. In 1930, before setting off for California I was living with my first wife in a brick apartment building at 170 Broadway in Passaic N.J. That edifice still stands today. My first marriage was later annulled.
It may surprise you that ‘Uncle Walt’ was once a Democrat; however, when he became a super successful and self-made millionaire he became a staunch Republican and a foe of unionization. His studio had an independent union run by the studio employees. I developed into one of the leading animators at the studio and became president of that union. Soon after, I joined the nascent Screen Cartoonists Guild which brought me into direct conflict with my boss because we led a strike at the company. I was personally being well-paid but I felt the pay scale and benefits did not in any way compare to the rest of the industry. There was lots of unpaid overtime expected of us and that made us feel exploited. Even then I had an earnest sense of right and wrong. My union efforts led to my firing when Uncle Walt threw me “out of the front gate.” The N.L.R.B. (National Labor Relations Board) helped resolve the strike and Walt did eventually sign a union contract but I was still persona non grata and my name was thereafter omitted from the company’s history. I was reinstated a couple of times but my relationship with Walt was compromised
permanently.
During World War II I enlisted in the marines, served in the Pacific theater and attained the rank of master sergeant. After the War, Uncle Walt reached cash settlement with me.
While I worked for Walt I considered myself a consummate professional. I started giving actual drawing lessons to the other animators. Walt thought that was a good idea and hired the Chouinard Art Institute, a leading professional at school in L.A., to lend more professionalism to those drawing lessons. I learned a lot from one particular instructor the Institute sent over to us to teach drawing, action analysis and movement.
I took dancing lessons to learn how dancers move and bought a 16mm camera to study how muscles move so as to communicate feelings through movement. Heck, I even took a year of piano lessons to understand the music I might be asked to illustrate. I was perhaps the studio’s fastest worker and its most inventive animator. I enjoyed great success at my craft and my work speaks for itself. There were some who observed my work and thought I must have been high on hallucinogenic drugs while I was creating some of my fantastical animations but I assured them it was only “Pepto Bismol and Feen-A-Mint.”
Many years later, Walt’s nephew, Roy, invited me back to celebrate the 50th reunion of the Studio’s First feature’s animation team. I was then almost 80 years old. Roy restored my good name into the company’s history books. That me as a marine in the photo below.
(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What was my first wife’s name, the one I was married to when I lived in Passaic. She’s not the one commonly referred to as my first wife because our marriage was annulled. (2a)Who was my good friend, colleague and roomie at Terrytoons and later in CA? (2b)Who was Uncle Walt? (2c)What was our studio’s first feature full length animated film? (3a)Name 2 of my most famous animated work projects for Uncle Walt. (3b)Who was the instructor from the Chouinard Art Institute that taught me so much? (4a) At the studio I made the character of a human-like dog very famous. That dog wore a turtle neck, white gloves and often sported a tall hat. He was also clumsy and slow-witted. What is his name? That dog was loosely based on another dog. What was his name? (4b)I’m buried in a niche at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. There is a quote on a plaque near my remains that was written by The Bard. Where is that quote taken from and who said it in what play? (5) There is a recent book that came out chronicling the labor troubles at Walt’s Studio. I am prominently featured in that book. Who wrote it and what is its title?
