MEETING THE PIONEERS (part I)
By Peter Adamakos

One of Ontario's animation schools recently did a field trip to the Heritage Museum, where a four month-long exhibition on our company was in its last weeks. We sponsored a lunch, had a special film screening for them. In response to a question about Chuck Jones I mentioned something he had told me, and that started a volley of questions about who had I met and what were they like. Today's fascination with celebrity has even come to animation! For this issue, here are some impressions I've gathered about some of the pioneers of our craft. In the next issue I'll add some more.

It was at the Expo 67 World's Fair where I met some of the real pioneers. I got a press pass which enabled me to go to press conferences, and even request private interviews. John Randolph Bray was a distinguished-looking gentleman. Pioneer of silent movie cartoon series and co-inventor of the cel in animation, he was friendly and dignified even in advanced age. He had given Shamus Culhane his contrast filter, which he wore around his neck to
constantly use on artwork in the silent days when the young Shamus impressed him. He gave it to him but told him to pass it on to someone someday who he found to have an equal love of animation. After we did some films together in the 1970s, Shamus gave it to me, with the same instructions, and I am still looking for the person I'll give it to. Animation is only 100 years old on film, and our ties to the pioneers is not that long ago.

Paul Terry was tall and big. He was always laughing and seemed to enjoy being Paul Terry. Ub Iwerks was the opposite, seeming to shrink a little in public, not uncomfortable, polite, but not overly outgoing either. Steve Bosustow, the UPA producer during its golden age of the 1950s, was, (like everyone in animation it seemed,) very outgoing and helpful to someone new in the business, with advice and even with blank storyboards he thought we should use. It was good to see his son win the animation Oscar later. Dave Fleischer was articulate and friendly, not at all as others, especially Shamus in his books, have written. He had none of the bitterness toward things from the past others sometimes did.

Walter Lantz was a joy to be with. I first met him and his wife, Gracie, who was the voice of Woody Woodpecker, at their deluxe hotel, in an empty ballroom off the lobby. After a long talk, filled with funny anecdotes he asked her to do the Woody Woodpecker laugh for me. She declined, saying it wouldn't be dignified in a ballroom. We headed toward the bottom landing of an ornate staircase. She went up the long staircase while Walter and I stayed at the bottom still talking. When she reached the top, she gave us a loud whistle, then, having our attention, (and everyone else's,) out came the Woody laugh. Everyone applauded, she did an overly theatrical bow, then went on her way.

Another time, visiting Walter Lantz in California, after a nice talk, he invited me to his club at Toluca Lake for lunch. I offered to do the driving in my rented car, and he agreed. At the car I found I had locked my keys inside. He found that hilarious, laughed uproariously and arranged for his secretary to call the car rental people and deal with it while we were at lunch. We then proceeded to his car, only to find that he had locked his keys in his car. I thought he was going to fall down, he was laughing so much. A wonderful man, he was still in love with animation though he had started off long before in the silent era as a teenager under Bray.

When he told stories of his relationships with Walt Disney, Tex Avery and others you could just see his love for animation and those in the field. He was always interested in our special Walter Lantz nights when we would screen his cartoons from our film collection and wanted to know which ones people liked best. Similarly, Ward Kimball, who I wrote about in the last issue, sent nice behind the scenes comments on our screenings that were dedicated to his films.

Cartoon history loomed larger than it should have I discovered. Once when at a morning meeting at Disney, I was asked to join them for lunch, but said I had a meeting with Walter Lantz after seeing them and we were going to do the lunch thing. Turning cold for a moment, one of the senior people said. "Okay. You know it was Lantz who stole Oswald from us." This was almost 40 years later! And actually it wasn't true. It was Friz Freleng and the bunch that did. When they made a mess of it, Universal gave Oswald to Lantz, and Walt Disney once wrote he got a kick out of how they lost it and it went to Lantz. Other times I'd bring up someone's name at Disney and they would say that he did or didn't go out on strike in the 1940s, again many years after the fact. Once I mentioned a young animator I admired to another, and the first comment was "Of course his father went out on strike." We read about animation history, they live it still!

Jay Ward (ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE) was the strangest of all. I wrote a Wardish-type letter in the mid-1970s that I was coming down to California and insisted on meeting him and wouldn't take no for an answer, or else, (or something like that.) He wrote back that he now feared for his life and would have to meet me on such and such a day and time. When I got to his studio, I found he was unable to meet, but Bill Hurtz, one of his key people, top animator, writer and creative touchstone would, and we had a fine time talking about everything from his old Disney days to the madcap ones at Ward's.

There was a Jay Ward shop in those days, and when I went over, Jay Ward's wife was manning it and we started talking. She called out her assistant after a while, because he knew about the Jay Ward studio too. He was a fountain of information, and we had a fine, relaxed time. After my friend and I left, I told him that we had just met and talked to Jay Ward who I recognized from the few photos that had been printed of him in those early days. I hadn't let on that I knew it was him, if that's the way he wanted it. Perhaps it was the anonymity that let the afternoon's meeting happen.  I have since heard that he was an unassuming type of fellow, and while not a recluse, others have said that it didn't surprise them that he would have been very outgoing during our talk, but secretive as to his identity. Some thought it was a way of being less vulnerable, but most thought he was probably just having fun, and enjoying meeting his fans without the fawning.

Peter Adamakos is an animation producer and director who founded an animation company 31 years ago. He has also founded the Animation Museum which has sent traveling exhibitions to museums in various countries for many years.

He also teaches in animation. He can be reached by e-mail or by snail mail at

Peter Adamakos
P.O. Box 37009
3332 McCarthy Road
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1V 0W0