Working with Disney (20 page)

DP:
But that is probably the thing that has made the Disney animation the best, that attention to detail.

BJ:
That's right.

DP:
Sometimes when I think of all the work that went into something like
Pinocchio
or
Snow White,
I wonder how many of the people that see the film have any idea of the work that went into it. The average person can't sit there and appreciate all this unless they know about it. But it is their experience of the film, I guess, where it all pays off.

BJ:
I think that it has been proven that people appreciate it, because those films will still go out and make money again and again and again. People that have seen them before like to see them again, and people that haven't seen them are delighted to see them for the first time. The film library over there will last forever, I hope.

DP:
I understand that you used to sell newspapers to Walt and Roy Disney.

LD:
Yes, this was before the Hyperion studio. I sold papers on Kingswell [Avenue] and Vermont [Avenue], and Roy and Walt had their first studio before Hyperion maybe 150 feet off Vermont. There are pictures downstairs [in the Animation Building] of the Kingswell studio.

DP:
Yes, I've driven down that street.

LD:
Oh, well, then you know it. I was right there on the corner. Yes, I got to know them well. I wasn't particularly interested in animated cartoons at that particular phase of my life. They always called me Whitey until the very end. I guess there might be one or two that still call me Whitey, which is all right. I never cared. What the hell! Yes, I did sell papers to both of them. As a matter of fact, while I was still selling papers, young Roy [Roy Edward Disney] was born to Roy and Edna, and Roy used to hold young Roy in his arms on my corner, talking to me while his wife was in the market shopping. We always had a great rapport. Roy was, of course, easier, quite a different personality, as you've heard by now, than Walt's, although Walt was just super to me—just super to me. But Roy, through the years I've known his boy growing up and then working with him in later years, and then his children I've gotten to know, and God, it seems like I'm an old man, but I'm really not! I love to ski and I'm active.

DP:
Well, if you were selling papers, you had to be pretty young.

LD:
Yes, I guess I was eleven or twelve in those days. Get this! I'm on the corner selling papers. If I would get a dollar and I had just started the afternoon's work, I'd have to go onto this little beanery, Mr. Ferris's little restaurant, and get change from Les Clark. Before Les started working for Walt, I knew Les. And then in later years, when I started at the studio, I took out his sister. I've known the father [James Clark, studio security guard] and the mother [Lute, homemaker] and Mickey Clark
[Disney studio employee later with Retlaw
(Walter
spelled backward), Walt's personal company].

DP:
Did knowing Walt and Roy lead to your going to work for them?

LD:
Well, now to jump ahead a little bit, Don, I used to go up to Santa Barbara. I had a girlfriend there, and [we'd] go to the theater. One night, I saw
Lullaby Land
(1933), the old Silly Symphony. It was then I got the adrenalin shock of, “My God, this is sheer magic!” The sheer magic of it turned me on. I was only a half-assed cartoonist like many kids are in junior high school and high school, but I felt closer to Roy, and I wrote to let him know that I'm his old friend, Whitey, and I'd like to be considered to do some work at the studio on Hyperion. I lived, oh, probably a fifteen-minute walk [from the studio], and John Marshall High School, where I went, was only a block up the street. It was just before Christmas, and his secretary wrote back that Roy was in New York, “but you can be sure, Mr. Debney, that your letter will be brought to his attention the minute he gets back.” I turned eighteen on January 3, and within two weeks after that, he wrote me a letter and had me come over. He introduced me to Bill Garrity, who was the head of the whole operation, not on the creative side, but on projection, recording, editing, camera, and that phase. I was mechanically inclined; that would sum up why I thought I might fit in. They did hire me for $12.50 a week. I started in the Cutting Department, assembling pencil tests. At that time, there was Bob Cook, who later became head of the Sound Department and Editorial Department, and one other man, Jim Loury. Jim came out from Kansas City. Sam Slyfield was really the head of Sound then and Bob took over the Cutting [Department]. And that's how it started there.

This is my first [job]. I would cut the film, assemble it, put the dialogue with it or the sound effects, thread the machine. The first sweatbox was not as big as this room. Jaxon [director Wilfred Jackson] is sitting on the floor with a cigar. I'd roll [the film], and they'd back up, and they'd analyze the scene a little more, take another second here, eight frames there. Then they might say, “Whitey, could you try this cut?” I'd pull those things out, run to the cutting [equipment], zip, zip, splice it together—while they were sitting there—put it back on, and run it.
Now, they could see it instantly. Today, you have a screening, and next Tuesday, you might [see the changes]. The whole goddamn enthusiasm seems to have dissipated, but Jaxon, with that cigar in the projection room, sitting there all the time!

DP:
Did it seem strange to have known them as a newsboy and then to be working there?

LD:
No, it didn't seem strange, because it was my neighborhood. I didn't come out from the East or from the North; this is where I went to school, up the street. I dropped out of high school and came to work in January 1934. Walt and Roy lived almost across the street from the high school on Lyric [Street]. I'd pass their houses when I'd go home. Sometimes Walt would be out; sometimes Roy would be out. I was on my home territory, so it didn't seem strange. It took a short while to make me fully realize what a coup this was to find this house of magic so close by. I had many of my friends still going to John Marshall and then graduating and going on to UCLA or [the University of Southern California] or different places. I kept all my friendships there. It was interesting the number of people that said, “Gee, Debney's over there. Why don't I drop in there?” So we got Erwin Verity and then later, Card Walker and Carl Nader, Bob Jabow and Art Jabow, and a number of guys. They started in Traffic. But no, it was always super, particularly when we got on the bonus plan, and I would bring home a bonus check or show Card Walker a bonus check of 150 bucks on
Snow White,
let's say. Card graduated from UCLA in the spring, I guess, of 1938. He had been a very good friend of mine and lived in the neighborhood. I'm going off on a little different tangent here, but it was a case of, “Well, now I've graduated. What the hell am I going to do?” His dad was with Arden Dairy in promotion/sales, and he had spent summers working in the sales end of Arden Dairy Ice Cream. I said, “I happen to have a very fine friend at the studio, a wise man, Mr. Gunther Lessing,” who was our first legal eagle. He had a son the same age as me. Gunther just treated me like a son. It was easy for me to say, “Mr. Lessing, I've got a very good friend of mine I'd like you to spend a few minutes with and see what you can line up.” “Oh, sure.” So I brought Card in and introduced them and left. That
afternoon, I found out that he was going to start the following Monday in the Camera Department. [Card Walker went on to become the president of the Walt Disney Company in 1971.] To this day, we are still very close friends. By sheer coincidence, Card has a son who is about twenty-two. I have a son who is twenty-four. My son's name is John Cardon Debney [a Disney composer], and his son's name is John Cardon Walker. The two are best of friends.

I stayed with the Cutting Department. The Camera Department was right downstairs, and we got to know the whole operation. It was then, while we were getting started on the preliminary story sketches and everything, shooting what we used to call Leica reels on
Snow White,
that I was set up to be the man that would assemble all the tests from all the sequences in
Snow White.
I guess it was in a matter of months that Ben Sharpsteen was assigned as a sequence director on the film. Ben and I always got along real great. Ben wanted me to switch from the Cutting Department to assistant direction, which was a very easy transition to make. While I was with Ben, we finished
Two-Gun Mickey
(1934), the last black and white cartoon. We were together for many, many shorts. I guess maybe one of the things that attracted Ben to me—I like to think one of the things—was sort of a flair that I had for sound effects. I found it just a great unexplored area really, to get involved with sound effects. They really gave me carte blanche to record sound effects [in house] or go off the lot. I remember when we were doing
Snow White
and the [scene where the] witch pries the rock, and she falls and it falls, I went over to Columbia and I bought some sound effects for a buck a foot or something, maybe forty dollars worth of thunder and lightning from, I guess it was, the old Frank Capra movie
Lost Horizon.
The animators, when they would bring me their tests to be assembled in continuity, and they wanted them to be enhanced, it was fun finding sound effects. Woolie [Wolfgang Reitherman] would do the Goof on a surfboard and he would crash, and we would get snare drums rolling and cymbals, bong. So I helped a lot of scenes get over by adding sound effects, and many were retained.

Then, after my sessions with Ben Sharpsteen, which seemed like a number of years, Walt wanted to make a director out of Jack Kinney on
Pinocchio.
So he moved me over with Jack, and I tried to take over everything in the music room, leaving strictly creative functions to Jack Kinney and Ralph Wright. They would develop stories and I would be there when they recorded, handling all the recordings, the assembly of tracks, the making of exposure sheets. I worked with Jack for a long time. We did many in the “How to” series. Then after that, I remember on
Pinocchio,
Walt wanted to make a director out of T[hornton]. Hee, so I moved over and performed the same function [since he was] a new man, not familiar with the routine. T and I worked together on many sequences on
Pinocchio.
Then I switched up and doubled up with Jaxon on certain sequences on
Pinocchio,
including the sequence with Stromboli and the marionette show. He was a sensitive man. He sort of wore blinders. I mean, he knew what he was looking for. Jaxon was always a true sweetheart. He might say in a low tone, “Whitey, when Pinocchio comes dancing down the steps, I want it to have a little bit of character, instead of just jingling wood.” He knew what he wanted. In contrast, let's say, to Gerry Geronimi, who was a “Goddammit, Whitey, it was better before you changed it!”

I guess at that time I was also involved with Jimmy Algar. I was his assistant on “The Sorcerer's Apprentice” in
Fantasia
and then
Bambi.
Then I switched over to Gerry Geronimi and we worked on
Susie, [the Little] Blue Coupe
(1952), and then I worked on
Lady and the Tramp
and
Peter Pan.
In about 1952 or 1953, I guess, I switched over to live action. Walt then wanted to do his first True-Life Fantasy where we could do more. We could use the word
fantasy
and get away with dream sequences and so forth. Did you ever see
Perri?

DP:
Yes.

LD:
Paul [Kenworthy] and I formed a team and went up to Utah and Wyoming and Idaho, where we were thirty months together making
Perri.
After
Perri,
I came back and got involved with the second year of
The Mickey Mouse Club.
I was Bill Walsh's associate on a hundred episodes. I had all the Mouseketeer sequences. I had fifteen minutes to fill every day for twenty weeks. It was exciting to have a big storyboard. Twenty weeks, five days a week, every day, blanks and then filling in with names and story ideas that were fed to Bill Walsh and to me and
to Walt. Then after that, I switched over to associate producer with Bill Anderson. I think we did eighty-two shows of
Zorro,
where I was his production coordinator.

Then one day, Walt—you know, after twenty years—called me in, and he said, “Whitey, I think I've got something here that is going to make you.” He gave me a script that Ellis Marcus had written,
Moochie of the Little League
(1959). Walt said, “I want you to read it, and I've got a couple of ideas, and you're going to produce these. I've got a couple of hundred thousand dollars for each episode.” It was truly exciting. It starred little Kevin Corcoran playing Moochie.