Prod. 2079 - Lady and the Tramp (XV) - Seq. 09.0 - Lady in the Chicken Yard
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This Final draft dated 8/10/54.
Børge Ring - mentor and playmate.
Working with Børge was fun, hard, boring, exciting, unusual, normal, and most of all educational. Over a year before leaving high school, in March 1978 I found out he lived in my neighborhood from a tv program about him and his wife Joanika. So I found him in the phone book (remember those?) and called him up. While studying art history, for a year I was his "pupil" doing animation tests, dropping by and having him correct them. Then, fed up with my art history professors, I moved my animation desk with my Neilson-Hordell disc into his Blaricum attic! (I am pointing at it in this photo taken last year:) Here, for almost four years, from March 1980 to November 1983 I smelled of his Douwe Egberts Red Amphora pipe tobacco and every day incl. weekends, Christmas and New Year from 10 to 6 we worked to the sound of BBC World Service if there were no jazz songs he had to listen to over and over again for an upcoming gig. I started doing simple non-production tests from his animation...
we start off with a unexpected suprise, Woolie being teamed up by his assistant, Bob McCrea! Then Ed Aardal animates one scene and when they get to the chicken coop, the chase begins with Woolie, McCrea, Fraser and Hatchcock doing their best skills. And then who shows up, oh no!, it's Ken O'Brien animating Tramp, but only in four scenes!. I think Woolie specially assigned O'Brien to Tramp to "re-issue" the rest of Jerry's scenes.. O'Brien however animates Lady a sequence ago but for the rest of this movie he mainly animates humans.
ReplyDeleteFinally, a Ham Luske sequence where Thor Putnam isn't doing layout. Al Zinnen is still here, though.
ReplyDeleteBob McCrea and Fred Kopietz join the uncredited roster for the film. Lots of scenes by Woolie and Hugh Fraser in here, too.
A more expected assignment for Woolie and his team - a chase sequence. We haven't seen Marvin Woodward or Hugh Fraser on this draft for a while - Woodward was last seen animating the rat, and Fraser animating Trusty's first scenes - both probably under Woolie's supervision as they are here.
ReplyDeleteA few more uncredited animators: Fred Kopietz and Bob McCrea, along with Harry Holt again. As on Sleeping Beauty, most of the animators who didn't get screen credit are working for Woolie. Coincidence? Connection?
Christopher: Are you a sports commentator by trade? :)
ReplyDelete"for the rest of this movie he mainly animates humans" - not only that, but for most of *his career* he animated humans.
In fact, if you look at the scenes on this draft where O'Brien is listed as animating dog characters, Woolie's name isn't far away. I don't know how much control the directing animators had, but it looks like Woolie was the one "casting him against type".
Well, Ken O'Brien did work for Walter Lantz briefly along with Fred Moore in the late 40s; so he wasn't a human animator all his career.
ReplyDeleteThe earlier scenes of Tramp enticing Lady to chasing chickens: animated by Woolie and Hatchcock--are brilliant. The facial expressions of Tramp's line 'Ever chased chickens?' is executed wonderfully. Shows how he was more than the average guy.