Monday, September 5, 2016

Walt Disney Goes to Work...



Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt spent at least one full day at Disney Studios sometime in 1953 to document Walt Disney in action. I just love the two pics above, as Walt is entering the animation building. His animators are still working on Lady & The Tramp, but he is off to a story meeting to review material for the next feature Sleeping Beauty. What a great shot below, I recognize director Wilfred Jackson, John Hench and  Frank Thomas among others. This is a real meeting, not staged, the photographer was a fly on the wall.
Some of these pics from Getty Images are low res, a few are high res.




That's Frank Thomas on the left, and story man Bill Peet on the right.







A great photo featuring Ken Anderson, background painters Thelma Witmer and Claude Coats, and also director Ham Luske.



Milt Kahl was not at the meeting, downstairs in his office he is going over John Lounsbery's work.
Here he is drawing the policeman outside the zoo in Lady & the Tramp.



I can only hope that over time more photos like these will surface that document the daily "routine" at Disney Studios. They provide a fascinating glimpse into just how these groundbreaking films were made.

6 comments:

  1. I think Walt he was the boss of the company, he works very heard to make movies everyone believe it to make dreams come true and he's a heard worker and a nice man.

    In 1939 he was very attractive to make the fairy tales of Hanse Christian Anderson of The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen a production number 1092 but no one did it was canceled at the time in the 1940s it was a difficult time but Walt make movies to tell stories are light and dark like Snow White to Bambi at Sleeping Beauty it's very intresting.

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  2. It's funny though ...... How times have changed like with the whole system of sketching and character studying. ...... Wait has it though?

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  3. man, the more stuff I see from this era, the more it demystifies for me. And the more it demystifies, the more impressive it becomes.

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    1. Your right but its cool to discover how it is back then how the Disney team works in the 50s but thanks.

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