Meet Bill Peet

Bill Peet is known to Disney enthusiasts as a storyman with the Disney Studios from the early days. His involvement with the studio's animated films culminated with screenwriting duties on 101 Dalmatians and The Sword and the Stone. Peet also had a second career (outside of the world of Disney) as a children's book author and illustrator. His 30+ published works include How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head, The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg and The Caboose Who Got Loose. In 1989, Bill Peet became his own subject as he penned his autobiography simply titled "Bill Peet - An Autobiography". Although Peet is obviously front and center as the main subject of the book, he spent a good chunk of his life working for the Walt Disney Studios and as such Disney plays an important role in his life story.

His story, however, begins with his childhood and his love for drawing. Somewhat similar to Walt Disney, Peet had a cold and rather harsh upbringing and found peace and escape in his drawings. There were many points in Peet's young life where his talent for art was both a blessing and a curse. He was able to secure some odd jobs with his artistic talents but teachers often found him odd and unfocused. Peet tells about the few wonderful memories he had from his childhood and how they helped shape who he became. Peet met up with the Disney organization in 1937 and was hired on as an "in-betweener" mostly on Donald Duck shorts but also finding some side work on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Peet worked for Disney because he needed a job, but he hated the assembly line type work of drawing the same thing over and over. One day after a new assignment of Donald Duck drawings came in, Bill snapped and made quite a scene in the middle of the studio. Fed up with the repeativeness of his job, Bill stormed out of the building hoping to never return. He did return the next day, however only to pick up his jacket. It was then that he discovered that he had been let go from his job as an in-betweener and reassigned to the story department.

Peet went to work in the story department, drawing panels for the storyboards for Pinocchio. His first project was working on images for a proposed scene called Bogyland which featured little creatures and monsters. The scene was eventually cut and Peet went on to sketch storyboards for more films. All the time while at Disney, Bill Peet had hoped to one day on his own create books for children. Many of his ideas he scratched as he lacked confidence in his own writing abilities. After some successful contributions to Walt Disney's Cinderella, Walt asked Peet to develop some ideas of his own into cartoon short subjects. Peet went back to his own personal drawing board and took some of his abandoned ideas and turned them into to animated shorts. Lambert the Sheepish Lion, Goliath II, and Susie the Little Blue Coupe were all stories that originated from the pen of Bill Peet.

This book offers an interesting perspective on Walt Disney, the man. So many works about Walt Disney offer portraits of the man in either extreme. Often you get the corporate-approved, mythical, perfect Walt Disney that did no wrong and had no bad ideas. Other books set out with an agenda to paint Walt as an evil Nazi, racist, control freak. Bill Peet neither idolized nor hated Walt Disney. Peet offers a fair peek behind the curtain at this great man that we all love so much. Walt and Bill had their moments good and bad, and Peet isn't afraid to share what he though about Walt sometimes. As documented in the recent Jungle Book DVD, Peet and Disney came to odds over the script for The Jungle Book and eventually Bill Peet left the studio before the project was finished.

Bill Peet - An Autobiography offers a unique look into both the Walt Disney Studios of yesterday and the man Walt Disney. Oh yeah, and it also gives you a look into Bill Peet's life as well. You'll find this a fair but different portrait of Walt Disney than you are used to seeing. At almost 200 fully illustrated pages, Autobiography is a breezy informative ride into the Walt Disney cartoon factory and a look at a man trapped inside.

Fun Facts and Fantasy

Someone could probably run a blog on the single subject of Disney Trivia Books. There sure are plenty of them out there! This one I found at a used book store last summer. It's got 42 pages of your standard Disney questions in catagories like "animated films","live-action films","theme parks" and the ever popular "mousecellaneous".
It's all actually a game you can play with the family, with easier questions for the kiddies and grown-up questions for Mom and Dad. The game portion of the book looks very confusing. There are about 100 tinny-tiny little pieces to punch out of the back of the book so that you can keep score and pick categories and all that good stuff. The book starts out with "The Disney Story" a brief overview of the company's history, managing to make it from Steamboat Willie to Splash in less than five pages.


The Disney Channel plays a major role within this volume of Disney Trivia. Not only are The Disney Channel logo and several early shows featured on the cover many of the questions deal with programing found on The Disney Channel. There's not too many Disney Trivia challenges out there that are going to ask you about "Five Mile Creek", "Mousercise", or "Gun Shy". The emphasis on cable television, the 1984 print date and the lack of a UPC code on the back of the book make me think this book was a giveaway associated with signing up for the then-new premium service. Perhaps it's a gift the local cable operators gave new customers or perhaps Disney sent this book to new subscribers when they signed on during one of The Disney Channel's many...many free preview weekends.

Another neat thing in the book is the number of small black and white illustrations of characters, people and places. Take a look at two pages from inside and enjoy:

Keeping The Classics Special

I picked up this paperback at a yard sale last summer, The Official Disney Trivia Book by Bill Ginch and Fred Miranda. It's from 1988 and it's nothing really special except maybe for offering 20 questions on The Gnome-Mobile and 30 for The Happiest Millionaire!?! However, after leafing through it for a couple of weeks I finally got around to reading the introduction and found a passage that really struck a cord with me:

"We can all recall our first encounters with the Disney mystique without too much trouble. Impressive television and print campaigns everywhere let us know what was coming next from the master himself. You never had to ask Mom and Dad twice to take you to a Disney feature film; they were all too happy to accompany you. A Walt Disney film never left you disappointed. You traveled home from the theatre on a cloud."

The sad thing is, there's no cloud to travel home on anymore. The only way to experience the classic Disney films of yesterday is on television wheter it be by DVD, VHS, or network television. Sure, we've all got our larger screen televisions but even the best home theatre system doesn't compare to taking your kids to see Cinderella, Snow White or Peter Pan on the big screen at your local theatre. Going to the movies is still somewhat of an event, especially for little kids. I'm afraid for a generation of kids there's going to be no difference between one of the classic animated films from Disney's golden years and modern day movies like Ice Age 2 or even Barbie The Island Princess. To kids brought up in this media saturated world everything is just a DVD you pick up at Wal-Mart. The viewing experience of watching a true work of art is just the same as watching the latest made-for-DVD movie. It will be a shame if an entire generation doesn't have an appreciation for the special magic of Walt Disney's animated films. It's a problem that could hurt the Walt Disney Company later down the road.

It was common practice with Walt Disney Pictures to re-release the classic animated films every seven years. Each of the big cartoon movies were on it's own schedule so that every Spring, Summer or Christmas there would be a great Disney classic in the theatre to take the kids to. Every child's first movie going experience was something along the lines of Cinderella, or Lady and the Tramp or Pinocchio. This was done from the earliest days of the studio up until the mid-90's. It seemed with home video making it possible for people to have all their favorite movies at home that releasing 30 to 40 year old movies in the theatre wasn't quite practical. Each of the classic animated films got one last bow in theatres and then were dumped onto VHS where the money kept on pouring in. The last of the features to be re-released to theaters were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1993 and The Little Mermaid in 1997.

I realize there is a boatload of money to be made from DVD sales, but I can't imagine that releasing Cinderella to theatres at Christmas 2005 and then putting out the DVD the following Christmas could have done anything but bring in extra money from ticket sales and raised the profile of the eventual DVD release.

No matter how you slice it, the very core of the Walt Disney Company - what makes it special, what makes it unique, what makes it magical - is the animated products. Everything else: the books, the music, the theme parks, the tv shows are all off-shoots of Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the films and characters that came after them. If people aren't allowed to take part in these films in a grand theatrical setting, the movies start to blend together with all the other media out there. And without the special-ness of these films, what magic will the Walt Disney Company have to sell to a generation or two from now?