WALT SAT IN THE dark, overheated projection room watching a work-in-progress reel of the latest cartoon, The Mad Doctor. When he wasn’t in a story meeting, Walt spent a lot of his time here, in what the fellows termed the “sweatbox.” They called it that for both climatic and psychological reasons, as Walt had a piercingly critical eye.
It was around late October 1932. His perfectionism was already paying off. In a few weeks, Walt would attend the fifth annual Academy Awards ceremony and accept an award for Flowers and Trees, winning in the new category of Best Short Subject: Cartoons. He would also collect a special award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. In the sweatbox, the final pencil tests had been cut together into this test reel. The director, Dave Hand, sat alongside Walt and the supervising animators. Trainees like Babbitt were not invited to sweatbox sessions. A film cutter operated the projection booth, and by request he could splice out a few frames at a moment’s notice and play back the sequence almost instantly. A change might be as fine as a single drawing or as extensive as an entire sequence. “Walt seemed to know what he wanted to see before it was even on the screen,” one of his animators recalled.1 A supervisor would then pass sweatbox notes among the team of animators for revisions.
Walt watched each scene intently as Mickey Mouse attempted to rescue Pluto from the Mad Doctor. Then one scene caught his attention. The Mad Doctor hung Pluto by his tail and bisected his shadow with scissors. It was neither cute nor funny; it was terrifying, not like a Disney cartoon at all.
Ben Sharpsteen knew which trainee had been given this scene. It was Babbitt. Sharpsteen leaned over to Walt. “We’re going to have to hold this guy down,” he said.
“No,” Walt replied, “we’ll bring the other guys up!”2
When notes were distributed, Sharpsteen passed the compliment along to Babbitt. Something about “bring the other guys up” activated Babbitt. He reflected on the art classes he had taken in New York. There was an ethos best expressed by Kimon Nicolaides, one of the Art Students League’s top instructors when Babbitt was there: “Where no class is available, I suggest you try to organize a small group to share the expense of a model. In such a group one student should be elected monitor so that there will not be any confusion.”3
Babbitt decided to host figure drawing sessions in his home. One of the other trainees, Hardie Gramatky, suggested finding a model at his alma mater, the nearby Chouinard Art Institute.4 Babbitt arranged to hire one of the school’s models for a private nude figure drawing session. He invited the seven other animators from his room.
That night, every animator from Babbitt’s room showed up—as well as every animator from the adjacent room. In all, fourteen young men crammed into Babbitt’s home to sketch the model from life. Babbitt acted as monitor, keeping time for poses as well as collecting the model’s fee.5
He invited the animators back the following week. This time, twenty animators arrived; they had to find space in Babbitt’s quarters by sitting on orange crates.6
Not long before hiring Babbitt, Walt himself had driven some of his animators to Chouinard for evening drawing sessions. It had never occurred to Walt to bring the sessions to his animators. Shortly thereafter Walt called Babbitt into his office.
Walt told Babbitt that it might be bad for the studio’s public image if word got out that Disney artists were gathering with nude women in a private home. Instead, Walt suggested hosting the drawing sessions at the studio soundstage, under company auspices. He even volunteered to provide drawing materials and the models’ fees. He asked Babbitt how much models usually charge. Knowing that the fee was usually $0.60 an hour, Babbitt responded, “$1.25 an hour, plus car fare.”7
Walt obliged, and drawing sessions began at the Disney soundstage. Babbitt remained class monitor, but they needed an instructor. Once again, Babbitt consulted Hardie Gramatky, who suggested a young art professor at Chouinard named Donald W. Graham. On Babbitt’s invitation,8 Walt gladly hired Don Graham, and thus, as Graham would recall, “On November 15th 1932, the Great Disney Art School was born.”9
The classes were held two evenings a week, and twenty to thirty artists attended each class.10 Though not an animator himself, Graham demonstrated an uncannily intuitive understanding of the medium. His anatomy lessons concerned the body as consisting of moving parts, and how they are affected by physics, gravity, and motion. Graham would later write, “Only if the drawings utilized are true action drawings, drawings that convey the idea of action, can convincing action be realized.”11 It was nothing short of groundbreaking.
At random times, the sound of marching music could be heard through the windows. One of the story men, Vance DeBar “Pinto” Colvig, had organized an ever-growing band. He was tall and gangly, a self-identified goofball, having previously worked as a clarinet-playing circus clown. At the studio, he enlisted fellow artists in his band, proudly proclaiming in the studio bulletin that the ensemble included Wilfred Jackson on “Horrible Harmonica,” Chuck Couch on “Terrible Tuba,” and Art Babbitt on “Mussy Mandolin.”12 Colvig’s repertoire of silly voices included that of a “corn-fed hick,” and Walt liked it enough to use for a reoccurring character named Dippy Dawg (later known as Goofy).13
Walt was eager to grow his cast of recognizable characters—the Disney brothers had just begun working with a merchandising executive, and it was important to brand their cartoon stars.14 Thus, Dippy Dawg was cast opposite Mickey and Minnie Mouse in the upcoming cartoon, Ye Olden Days. Director Burt Gillett worked with his musical composer, Frank Churchill, timing out the action note by note on an upright piano. Like all Disney cartoons, Ye Olden Days would have a continuous musical score from beginning to end. “It is the rhythm that has appealed to the public,” Walt had said in 1929. “The action flows along and we have to work hard to keep the movement flowing with the music.”15 Because a director was paired with a composer, a director’s office was called the music room. A supervising animator knew to pick up scenes in the director’s music room, where the action and timing were notated.
Burt Gillett teemed with nervous energy, and the cartoons he directed were particularly loud and fast. The artists noticed that the room Gillett shared with Churchill “was especially noisy, as Burt acted out all the parts, beating on the tables, chairs, or the piano top and hitting the rhythm with a heavy foot.” Gillett timed every movement on screen to a musical note and was called “the first ‘tink-tink-tink’ director. Every time Mickey took a step, there was a metallic ‘tink.’” Churchill, meanwhile, had a versatility that fit whatever the scene required and could write what the artists called “foot-tappin’ and whistlin’ music.” As with his musical tastes, he appreciated sophistication, dressing well and enjoying expensive drinks—yet was not above an impromptu jam session.16
One day around November 1932, Wilfred Jackson was startled by the “thumping and bumping” he heard coming through his ceiling from Burt Gillett’s music room upstairs. He rushed up to see “Frank Churchill over at the piano with his cigarette hanging down, with his eyes closed and his foot stomping away.” Across the room, Gillett was swinging his fists madly at supervising animator Fred Moore, who had his back against the wall trying to dodge the blows. Before Jackson could act, the music suddenly stopped, and the three men walked to the center table to make timing notations of their choreography. They were role-playing a fight scene for Ye Olden Days.17
Ben Sharpsteen picked up his scenes for Ye Olden Days and handed Babbitt his assignment: Dippy Dawg as a dastardly prince, forcing his jowly lips on Princess Minnie Mouse’s arm before she slaps him in the face.
Dippy Dawg had always been a well-meaning and comical goofball, but this role in Ye Olden Days was ill-fitting and out of character. He was unconvincing, either as a villain or as comic relief. He was simply a plot device, lacking an independent personality. As Walt would later say, “Without a definite personality, a character cannot be believed. And belief is what I’m after.”18
Babbitt pencil-tested his animation on the Moviola, and it was then sweatboxed by the supervisors. His work must have been impressive; after Ye Olden Days, he graduated out of the animation trainee program. He was now invited to pick up his assignments himself. In Burt Gillett’s music room, Babbitt received his next assignment. It was not a Mickey Mouse cartoon but a Silly Symphony. Like all Silly Symphonies, it would be experimental, this one being the ultimate experiment in personality animation.