Wandering the halls with Roy E. Disney

To hear Roy Disney tell the tale, he basically owes his entire career in animation to his mother needing a babysitter.

"When my Mother needed to go shopping, she'd drop me off with my Dad's office," Roy explained. "And my Dad would eventually say 'Get out of my office and find someone else to play with.' So I'd then wander the halls and see what the other people were working on."

Of course, the place where Disney's dad worked wasn't your average office. But -- rather -- the old Hyperion Studios. And what seven-year-old Roy got to see as he wandered up & down those hallways were animators hard at work on the studio's first feature-length film, "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs."

Which -- you'd think -- would have compelled Roy O. Disney's son to become an artist. But that wasn't actually the case.

As this Disney Legend told the crowd that had assembled at the Prince Music Theatre last Saturday night, Roy's dream was to design airplanes.

Photo by Jeff Lange

"I grew up right under in the flight path for Lockheed. And back then, their Burbank plant were cranking out two new B17s every day," he explained. "I'd see those planes flying over the house and think that designing stuff like that looked like a really good job."

So with that goal in mind, Roy started college in 1946 at the very young age of 16. He then studied engineering for two years at Pomona College 'til a failing grade in calculus pretty much grounded his dream of ever designing airplanes.

From there, Roy started his show business career the way that so many other people have: At the very bottom. Not working at his father & uncle's company, mind you. But as a page at NBC. And when that job ended after five or six months, Disney then became an assistant editor on the "Dragnet" TV show.

Once production of that Jack Webb series wrapped for the season ... Well, given that this early incarnation of "Dragnet" was actually shot on the Disney lot, Roy just walked down the hall to Disney's own editing department and applied for a job. Which is how he eventually wound up working on the True-Life Adventure series.

Photo by Jeff Lange

Now it's important to stress here that Roy never ever played the "Do you know who my uncle is ?" card when applying for work at the Mouse Factory. Which is not to say that his Dad -- from time to time -- didn't try to lure him into Roy O.'s side of the operation.

"Dad tried to push me into the accounting side of things," Roy remembered. "But I wasn't really interested in that. I enjoyed writing & editing those nature films. Taking all that raw footage and then finding a way to turn that into a coherent story."

Mind you, all those years of dealing with story problems wound up serving Roy well. Particularly in 1984 after he and Stanley Gold had helped to oust then-Disney CEO Ron Miller and installed Michael Eisner & Frank Wells as the new heads of the Mouse House.

Now Roy (Who had spent his formative years wandering the hallways at Hyperion as well as at the "new studio" at Burbank) felt a special affinity for animation. Which is why he asked Michael and Frank to put him in charge of that department. Which -- to be frank -- could use all the help that it could get right about then. Given that Walt Disney Productions was getting ready to release "The Black Cauldron."

Having seen a rough cut of this Ted Berman / Richard Rich film, Roy knew that "The Black Cauldron" wouldn't do all that well at the box office. More to the point, given that the studio had just spent $25 million (A truly  astronomical sum back in 1985) to produce this 70MM disappointment ... Well, Disney was worried that Eisner & Wells would take one look at this movie and then shut down Feature Animation forever.

Photo by Jeff Lange

But as he wandered the halls of the old Feature Animation building, Roy discovered two young animators -- John Musker & Ron Clements -- hard at work on another project. Which was an animated adaptation of Eve Titus' "Basil of Baker Street."

" Ron & John had recognized early on that 'The Black Cauldron' had some serious problems," Roy explained. "So they begged to be taken off of that project so that they could then work on a film of their own. And you know who was a good friend of theirs back then? Working on his own film right across the hall? John Lasseter."

Roy immediately saw the potential in "Basil of Baker Street." Which is why he arranged for Eisner & Wells to meet with Musker & Clements one Saturday morning to sell these Disney executives on the idea of putting this new film into production.

"And the 'Basil' storyboards ran down one entire hallway, through some animator's room, then down another hallway," Roy laughed. "And Michael & Frank were big guys -- six feet tall -- and they filled whatever space they stood in. And Ron & John are walking them down this corridor, trying to act out the story as they went. With Eisner & Wells really struggling to connect what Musker & Clements were telling them with the images that they were seeing on the boards. It was pretty funny."

In the end (in spite of the fact that Michael & Frank never quite did get what was going on with all of "Basil" 's storyboards) Eisner & Wells did eventually greenlight production of "Basil of Baker Street." Which led to a second golden age of Disney Animation.

Of course, that was 23 years ago. But the way Roy sees it ... Things today honestly aren't all that different from the way they were back in 1984. I mean, Ron & John are back at WDFA working with their old pal John Lasseter. Once again trying to revive & revitalize Walt Disney Feature Animation by putting an ambitious new project into production.

And Roy? He's back too. When Bob Iger negotiated that settlement with Disney & Stanley Gold back in July of 2005, Disney's soon-to-be-CEO asked Walt's nephew what he wanted. And Roy replied:

"I really want a job. Give me an office and pay me something. After all, everyone knows me there. So let me walk around and see what's going on."

So, some 70 years after Edna Disney first dropped off Roy at Hyperion and Roy O. then shooed his son out of his office ... Roy E. is once again wandering the halls at Disney, sticking his very-familiar-looking face into offices, helping out where he can.

And for some reason ... That just seems right.

Photo by Jeff Lange

Special thanks to Leonard Maltin for doing such a superb job interviewing Roy Disney this past Saturday night.
All of the stories that are featured in today's article were actually culled from Maltin's interview with Disney.