Whistle While We Blog: Destination D - 75 years of Animation

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Destination D - 75 years of Animation - Golden Age of Animation

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend D23's Destination D celebrating 75 years of Disney animated features at the Disneyland Hotel. The weekend was wonderful. This year they had an area where guests could queue up before the presentation hall opened inside the airconditioning, which was needed, it was hot! I have so much to share from this event, this will be the first in a series of posts recapping the events of the weekend. Enjoy!

The first panel was Walt and the first golden age of Disney animation featuring panelsits Becky Cline, Burny Mattinson, Joe Hale, and Ted Thomas. Mattinson will celebrate his 60th year with Walt Disney animaton next year. When he first started he worked delivering mail around the studio. Every Friday, Walt's secretary would call him to Walt's office. There he would pick up a check Walt had written for $300 made to cash. Mattinson would take it down to payroll and take the cash back up to Walt - his week's spending money. Later, Mattinson was assistnat to Marc Davis on Sleepying Beauty. The panelists exaplained that at first the animators that Walt refered to Walt's nine old men resented the nickname - they were old! But the name stuck. And eventually they grew into the name. Another interesting fact about the nine old men was that there is only one feature that all nine worked on - Peter Pan. Joe Hale's first film was Lady and the Tramp. Frank Thomas' son related that the hardest part for his dad was animating Tramp pushing the meatball across the plate. It is not anotomically possible for a dog to move in that way. Cinescope also provided an anditional challenge for animators: in fact, some of them hated it. It would take an extra week of animation just to get a chararter off a screen!